Always an Adventure: An Autobiography
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by Hugh A. Dempsey
University of Calgary Press, Calgary, 2011
413 pp., illus., $34.95 paperback
Hugh A. Dempsey has had a many-faceted and illustrious life and career, as is told in the heartwarming book Always an Adventure. He was a child of the Depression era born to a World War I veteran who had married an English lady repatriated to “the bleak Canadian Prairies.” Life situations took the family to Edmonton. “Even the patches on my trousers had patches,” Dempsey recalled.
He realized that he wanted to be a writer when he landed a job at the Edmonton Bulletin. When the paper folded in 1951, Dempsey found employment with the Publicity Bureau of Alberta. While there, he published the booklet Historic Sites of the Province of Alberta.
Dempsey married Pauline Gladstone of the Blood Tribe and credits her and her father, Senator James Gladstone, president of the Indian Association of Alberta, as helping to open many doors and to make numerous friends in the Native community. His lifelong interest in history — particularly Native history — led the once shy and insecure young man to become an archivist, administrator, historian, lecturer, and public speaker. In his time with the Glenbow Foundation, he feverishly acquired historic materials. Dempsey also worked with the Indian Association of Alberta and the Historical Society of Alberta.
“I don’t know that I ever contemplated writing an autobiography,” Dempsey states, “but as I’ve always been an inveterate diary keeper and pack rat such an end might have been inevitable.” With his latest book, Dempsey has provided a fascinating account both of his personal life and of the history of Western Canada.
This review appeared in the February-March 2013 issue of Canada's History magazine.
— Beverley Tallon (Read bio)
Beverley Tallon is a freelance writer and the former Assistant Editor for Canada's History.