Haeden E. Stewart

This dissertation studies the history of Mill Creek Ravine, one of the first industrial areas in Alberta, Canada. Formerly a site of industrial activity and home to a large working-class community, the ravine is now a city park; however, industrial remains still mark the ravine and pollute the soil. This investigation of the history of Mill Creek Ravine provides insight into the specific ways in which the lure of industrial jobs produced and polluted working-class life in early twentieth-century Edmonton, as well as how industrial detritus defines how the local environment was lived, conceived, and designed. The combination of archaeological investigation with environmental science and ethnography produces a map of the ongoing social and environmental impacts of industrial remains over the past hundred years.