Stranger Things: Peculiar Sessional Papers in Alberta.

• Author: Close, Heather
• Position: Sketches of Parliaments and Parliamentarians Past

When parliamentarians table material in legislative assemblies, you would likely expect to see some letter or legal-size papers. But there have been some interesting and novel items that have made it into Sessional Paper collections over the years. In this article, the author tells the story behind Alberta's quirkiest sessional papers.

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What do a hamburger, a can of caviar and Monopoly money have in common? All were tabled in the Legislative Assembly of Alberta and are now part of the Legislature Library's Sessional Paper collection.

It is recorded in the Assembly Journals that, on March 27, 1969, the Member for Banff-Cochrane, Clarence Copithorne, "Tabled edible material (a hamburger) to sustain his argument." But what might that argument have been? Given there was no official Hansard until 1972, we are reliant on secondary sources for the details of what was said. According to the Edmonton Journal, Copithorne tabled the burger in protest of the food being served in the Legislature Building cafeteria. He commented that, "When talking about supply one thing they should supply us with...