Fonds F2831 - Zahava Hanan fonds

Goldie Zahava Hanan (sometimes spelled Hanen), 1928-2015, was born in Calgary, Alberta, the daughter of Samuel B. Hanen, 1896-1972 and Lena Smolensky Hanen, 1906-1979. She left Calgary to study Art History and Hebrew Studies in New York City. In 1947, she married Calgary veterinarian Frank Manolson, 1925-1978. The couple moved to London, England and separated in the early 1960s. In the 1980s she became the companion of well-known Alberta author and environmentalist Andy Russell, 1915-2005. In 1965, Hanan purchased a flat in London, England.

In 1973, she purchased Rumsey Ranch near Millarville, Alberta. Almost immediately, she raised concerns about pollution from the nearby Quirk Creek gas plant that she felt was negatively affecting water, air and soil quality on the ranch as well as human and animal health. She presented successful interventions at several Energy Resources Conservation Board hearings relating to the Quirk Creek gas plant during the early 1980s, spending over twenty years in a dispute with the plant's owner Esso Resources Canada Ltd. (Imperial Oil Ltd.). In 1993, she settled out of court with Esso and moved to land that was formerly part of the EP Ranch, spending winters at her home in London, England until moving there permanently in 2006.

Memoirs of her quarrel with Big Oil were recorded in Heading for Home / Zahava Hanan. -- Lewes : published in association with the Book Guild, 1995; revised paperback edition. -- Toronto : Natural Heritage Books, 2001. Hanan also produced several privately printed books (Alberta Mongolia The Arctic: The Big Silence, 1993; Walk With Alberta, 1994; Nesting, 2001) and published An Alberta Bestiary / Zahava Hanan. –- Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2004. She died in London in 2015. See also "Remembering Rumsey Ranch : The Pollution of a Cattle Ranch in the Alberta Foothills, 1974-1995" / Carleton University History Collective (Don Belanger, Arn Keeling, Catherine Kiszkiel, Stephan Millar and Carman Bickerton). -- 1996 (M-9243-112) and Arn Keeling's article, "The Rancher and the Regulators : Public Challenges to Sour-gas Industry Regulation in Alberta, 1970-1994" in Writing Off the Rural West / Roger Epp and Dave Whitson, eds. -- Edmonton, 2001.