As we start to pull ourselves out of the turkey-eating coma that most of us have endured over the past few days, my thoughts return to family, friends, neighbours and the community where we live.
Speaking about our own St. Albert, you’ve probably noticed the blizzard of new signs that the city has installed on virtually every street corner. These signs are, I assume, designed to direct visitors and other strangers to the key sites in our city. Now, personally, I have trouble believing that some of our key attractions will really be all that interesting to some of the tourists arriving in St. Albert. Granted, grain elevators are becoming a rare sight on our Western Plains, but after staring at them for five or 10 seconds, the novelty wears off pretty quickly. Of course, the grain elevators are only one of St. Albert’s attractions, and our new signs clearly show the direction to our “historic district” – which, if you didn’t know, is apparently downtown St. Albert. Now, I’m a great lover of history, but I found myself deeply embarrassed to learn that St. Albert has a long and gloried history, a history I knew nothing about.
In a desperate effort to play catch up; I toured our historic district to immerse myself in this sweeping panorama of mankind’s existence. Yes, Rome has its Coliseum, Jerusalem boasts the birthplace of Jesus, the citizens of Cairo look across to the pyramids, while Paris offers the Eiffel Tower, and London replies with the Westminster Abbey. Indeed, all of these cities have far more than one outstanding historic attraction – the glories of all these cities are not limited to just one location, rather they appear in multiple spots throughout their glorious streets. However, when it came to handing out venues of grand historical significance, it appears St. Albert got badly short-changed. While all of us would love to have the wonders of the ancient world inside our city limits, wanting and having are two different things. When people ask me to describe St. Albert, I usually tell them “St. Albert is a city of 63,000 people, surrounded on all four sides by reality.”
There is one strange issue regarding all the signs the city has installed in St. Albert. As I noted above, there seem to be signs directing us to every conceivable location, although some of these locations offer virtually nothing of interest to the average visitor. Yet, our city does have a venue that would be of great attraction to residents of St. Albert and to the countless visitors we seek to attract. I say would be of interest, because, despite its well-earned reputation, very few people ever find Lois Hole Provincial Park. It certainly isn’t for a lack of trying. Over the years, I’ve had dozens of friends in Edmonton tell me of their desire to visit this park, or of their multiple expeditions to find this provincial park, safaris that end in defeat simply because there were no signs showing them how to reach this same park. So, here we sit, with people being lured into coffee shops, bookstores and lawyer’s offices that have little to do with history, while a wonderful provincial park sits at our doorstep, but no signs point the way.
I know that when goofy situations occur, there’s usually some political empire building in dispute, but it simply seems ludicrous that we spend money on signage to direct people to every little molehill in the city, but completely ignore a provincial park on our borders.
While the old saying reminds us that “all roads lead to Rome,” apparently it’s also true that “no roads lead to Lois Hole Provincial Park.”
Brian McLeod is a St. Albert resident.
