Year: 2025
Location: Edmonton
Profile: Jim Selby, a founding member of ALHI, is a lifelong labour activist and author of left-wing publications. He was research and communications director at the Alberta Federation of Labour for ten years and subsequently research director for fifteen years. His interview describes growing up in Jasper Place, after his family moved from Devon in 1965. He discovered a regular, working-class place much like Devon, with its own rules, boundaries and mythological heroes, dispelling rumours that it was a dangerous place. He completed his schooling, first in Hillcrest Junior High situated in a relatively wealthy enclave, which he contrasts with the working-class culture in Jasper Place Composite High School. He critically analyzes the classification system in the school which differentiated vocational stream students from academic stream students. Selby discusses his part-time jobs, first at Agnew-Surpass and then the Starlite Drive-In, both supplying spending money needed by a working-class teenager. He describes the public transit system he used daily, as well as the relatively affordable access to university at that time. Selby discusses his early attraction to radical political thought, including the trade union movement, and its growth while living in a co-op house where the alternate newspaper Poundmaker was published.
Keywords: Co-op house; Devon; Hillcrest Junior High; Jasper Place; Jasper Place Composite High; Part-time job; Poundmaker; Public transit; Radical politics; Vocational streaming.
Transcript: Download PDF
See also: Alberta Federation of Labour