Online trivia contest tests your knowledge of Edmonton ahead of Canada Day

The City of Edmonton Archives has launched an online trivia contest with fun questions about the Capital City’s history.

It’s a way to celebrate Canada’s 150th birthday while also enticing people to learn more about the city they call home.

“There’s a lot of people  in Edmonton who are very proud of its history and know a lot,” City Archivist Kathryn Ivany said.

“I think there’s a lot of interest and we’re trying to spark some other people who maybe don’t know how to go about finding more about Edmonton’s history.

“This is an easy way to pick up a few factoids and learn some trivia about Edmonton as you’re having fun and maybe winning a prize or two.”

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The contest starts March 17 and every week for 15 weeks, a quiz with 10 new questions will be posted. Each week will focus on a different topic.

The questions are multiple choice and range in difficulty.

“For the first week, we’re just talking general information about Edmonton,” Ivany said. “We ask the name of the river that runs through Edmonton. Then, the answers are the Elbow, the Athabasca, the North Saskatchewan and the River Styx. I think most people will be able to answer that question without having to resort to a Google search or going to the encyclopedia.”

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Participants who get five or more questions right in the weekly quiz will be entered to win a weekly draw. The prize is a coffee table book Building Edmonton’s Legacy that features photographs of local architecture. People who get seven or more questions right will be entered to win a grand prize at the end of the contest: a framed archival photograph of the river valley and downtown Edmonton, taken in 1939.

“People think that Edmonton is too young to have real history, but we do have a very rich history and we have lots of interesting characters in the past and there’s a number of really funny events that happened here,” Ivany said.

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“We’re trying to highlight those and just give people a sense of how much fun it is to look at Edmonton’s history and figure out some interesting things about where we live and the people that have come here before us.”

Ivany explained Edmonton officially became a city 113 years ago, but well before that, history was being made.

“There was a town before that and there was a settlement before that and there was the Fort before that and before that, there were indigenous people who had lived on this land for 10,000 years. So, we do have layers and layers and layers of history.”

The answers to each week’s questions will be posted along with the following week’s questions.

To take the trivia quiz, visit the Transforming Edmonton website.