Historic Lethbridge and several Lethbridge organizations are going back to the ’70s for the annual Historic Lethbridge Festival with several events happening in the next couple of weeks celebrating the styles, music and movies of the 1970s.
Things begin on Friday, May 2 at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery with a 1970s happy hour from 5-7 p.m. There will be live entertainment, ”70s themed cocktails, frosty craft beers and a costume contest for best dressed 1970’s outfits, so dig out that old polyester suit and wide tie or your favourite disco outfit on and come out and dance.
“We decided we wanted to cover what was important,” said Brian Black, chairman of the Historic Lethbridge community who is also teaches at the University of Lethbridge in the music department.
“It was an important year for building in Lethbridge. The Whoop Up Drive bridge was built in the ’70s. It is difficult to imagine Lethbridge without it and the University of Lethbridge was being built as well,” he continued.
He observed the tumultuous 1970s were an important time in North American history, with the Vietnam War, the Kent State shootings, Richard Nixon, freeing hostages in Iran and in Canada beginning with the FLQ October crisis, though the era of Pierre Elliot Trudeau and ending with the NEP and the Quebec referendum.
So there is a lot of ground to cover for this year’s festival.
“We wanted to capture the vibrant and exciting culture happening,” said Black who remembered being a young adult in Montreal during the FLQ crisis.
La Cite des Prairies is exploring the darker side of the ’70s with their first contribution — the film ‘La Maison du pecheur.”
“ It’s the first time we’ve been involved,“ said Marie Hélené Lyle, of CineImagine, one of several French cultural organizations operating at the La Cite des Prairies, and who all will be contributing.
The film is about the FLQ crisis, which sparked Pierre Elliott Trudeau to implement the War Measures Act.
The film will be screened at 7 p.m., May 7.
“ I remember there was troops all over the place. it seemed so arbitrary. But it made everybody just take a step back,” recalled Black of the October Crisis.