A History of the Edmonton City Market, 1900-2000: Urban Values and Urban Culture (review)

The gentrification of downtown cores and suburban centres in the past two decades has rekindled commercial interest in farmers' markets in Canadian cities. These centres of trade can bring rural and urban, heartland and hinterland together in a manner unlike other city ventures. A well-structured, well-organized market can entice pedestrian traffic into the downtown core, enhance surrounding businesses, strengthen market gardening in and around the city, and encourage cultural and social activities. A rundown market building, ignored by both city council and shop goers, can serve as a lure for crime and vice. The grey area that exists between these two extremes has provided fodder for city improvers, councilors, newspapers editors, and the public at large in Edmonton for over a century.

This dilemma is well represented in Kathryn Chase Merrett's A History of the Edmonton City Market, 1900-2000, the most recent addition to a resurgence of interest in the history of farmers' markets. The argument is straightforward. The Edmonton City Market proved a centrepiece of economic development and social contact, despite concerns from improvers and some boosters who pictured a central core devoid of such rural trappings. This conflict of civic vision played itself out over the decades and included changes in market locations, buildings, and regulation. Unlike many towns and cities in Canada which struggled over the location and number of farmers' markets that would shape the commercial centre, Edmonton's governing body often questioned the need for a farmers' market at all. Perhaps stemming from its early twentieth-century development, and certainly influenced by the City Beautiful movement, some city planners and lobby groups, such as the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire, argued that a farmers' market reflected antiquated traditions, and not the order and beauty necessary to create a modern city.

Chase Merritt's book leans more towards a popular history of the market, rather than a pure academic treatment of its social and administrative history. The strongest analytical section comes in chapter 1, which provides an overview of the market's struggle for existence. The remainder is mostly personal profiles of individuals who have woven their lives in and out of this economic centre. The market was home to fishmongers, butchers, vegetable sellers, florists, and other retailers of almost every product or service imaginable. These stories are presented with care and attention, although at times extraordinary detail bogs down the narrative. A discussion of market stall rates, for example, and appeals by farmers for reductions in price highlight the intricate ties between market and council, but make for tedious reading. All told, however, Chase Merrett effectively stitches this social history into the economic and political fabric of the city's past.

Modern-day challenges that face many downtown centres, including Edmonton, stem from a distinct lack of pedestrian traffic. City councils continue to discuss what many perceive to be new approaches to bringing people into the city centre, ideas that include revitalizing the market tradition. As the author notes, it is an old and ongoing debate. Chase Merrett sees this struggle as an opportunity that slipped, and is still slipping, through the fingers of Edmonton's past and current crop of politicians.