I had lunch today in one of the historic buildings on the University of Alberta campus.  This is a turn of the 20th century building that was the original coal fired power plant for the City of Strathcona.   The City of Strathcona amalgamated with the City of Edmonton in 1912.

In those days the population of the area was far less than the about one million of today.  518 Edmontonians voted in favor of the amalgamation (74%) and 178 voted against (26%), while 667 Strathcona residents voted in favor (87%) and 96 against (13%).  This did not represent the entire population of the two cities but gives you an idea, it was much smaller back then.

Today the power plant building houses among other things a typical pub style bar which is owned and operated by the Institutions Student Union.

Breakfast is served all day, I guess this is to cater to students that stay up to the wee hours (partying or studying or both) so when they sleep in to noon they pop over to the pub for beer and breakfast.  Oh to be a young student again.

Interesting Trivia Fact

The old medical/dental school building (no longer used for that purpose) is adjacent to the power plant.  The basement of the power plant had a water pool to cool the generators and the frogs used for dissection training by the medical students were kept here – live, you had to go catch your specimen before dissection class (this is true.)

Inflation maybe?

The food, service and atmosphere was really fine although I was surprised that the pricing was not discounted.  When I attended University a glass of draft was $.0.25 cents not $6.00.  Of course that could be attributed to inflation a bit I guess.