Daily Commercial News
On this episode of The Construction Record Podcast, Journal of Commerce staff writer Evan Saunders spoke with Nicole Dodd, one of the co-founders of the AB Anti-Racism EDU Committee which campaigns for the inclusion of Black Canadian history and anti-racism coursework in Alberta’s K-12 curriculum.
Nicole is also a Service Design Lead at the Calgary Public Library and as you’ll hear in the interview, she’s also a new mother as her 10-month-old daughter has some things to say from time to time.
Nicole and Evan talked about the legacy of Oliver Bowen, a Black Canadian civil engineer with the City of Calgary who became the architect of Calgary’s CTrain System, a monumental $144 million infrastructure project at the time which continues to transport Calgarians around the city to this day.
Bowen was born in 1942 in Amber Valley, one of several communities in Alberta settled by Black people from Oklahoma, Texas and other southern states in the early 1900s looking to escape racial persecution. Evan and Nicole discuss how growing up in that environment likely influenced Bowen’s outlook, what life was like for a Black professional in the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s in Calgary and the importance of teaching the legacy of Oliver Bowen and other racialized Canadians who have contributed so much to Canada but receive far less recognition than they deserve.
We’ve included a link to Evan’s story about Oliver Bowen below and you can listen to The Construction Record on the Daily Commercial News and Journal of Commerce websites as well as on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music’s podcast section. Our previous episode featuring Procore’s Kris Lengieza is here. Thanks for listening.
DCN-JOC News Services
Great Canadian engineers: Oliver Bowen oversaw construction of Calgary’s CTrain