Residents were trying to make their voices heard in July of 1993 and their point was clear — don’t touch our lake. A local golf course developer had proposed to council siphoning runoff water and surface water from Big Lake. Specifically, he was looking at taking one foot for each of 302 hectares. Residents were afraid that what water was returned to the lake would be laden with chemicals. And residents were growing larger in number — the latest city census put the population at 44,195, now larger than Medicine Hat. But Alberta as a whole was in the midst of the Ralph Klein cuts and St. Albert’s hospital wasn’t spared. The province proposed a 1.5 per cent cut in rural hospital grants, forcing the Sturgeon Community Hospital to shave $346,000 from an already depleted budget.
The bleeding didn’t stop there. By July 1994, the Sturgeon was at least open as hospitals in Edmonton and Calgary closed. But the hospital decided to lay off 17 staff, 11 of whom were nurses that worked in pediatrics. As a result, six pediatrics beds were closed and, in order to save an additional $1 million, the remaining beds would now be staffed 20 hours a day by the patients’ parents.
But there was good news on the hockey front the following July as Jarome Iginla was drafted 11th overall by the Dallas Stars in the 1995 NHL draft, making him the highest-ever draft pick from St. Albert. At the Gazette, the paper paired with the city, real estate and local business to produce a new product — Discover St. Albert — for all of the new soldiers from CFB Calgary and CFB Petawawa who were moving to CFB Edmonton.
And in July 1996, residents started to cut back on trash. With the new pay-as-you-throw system in effect, the city announced after the first week that residents had cut their trash output by almost 50 per cent. While crews had initially collected between 50 and 55 tonnes of garbage on average before the change, during the first week they collected an average between 27 and 30 tonnes. The Capital Health Authority was also ready to lessen its burden, announcing it would demolish the four-storey Sturgeon General Hospital by the end of the summer. The authority had been trying to sell the property for four years without success and was spending $130,000 per year on maintenance.
Youville Home managed to steer clear of a nursing aides’ strike in July of 1997 when the two sides reached an 11th-hour agreement on a new contract. Few details of its contents were released but it was widely believed to at least restore the five per cent rollback in wages the aides accepted in 1993 during the Klein cuts. Citizens, meanwhile, were forcing change at the municipal level. After being presented with a 10,000-name petition opposing construction of the west bypass, city councillors start musing publicly that they might have to rescind their April approval of the bypass and look at other options. At the July 21 council meeting, council did just that.
The big story in July 1998 stemmed from the previous month’s provincial election, in which Progressive Conservative Mary O’Neill defeated incumbent Liberal Len Bracko. It all began during the early days of the campaign when the St. Albert Progressive Conservative Association’s treasurer, Valerie Weir, stopped attending meetings. Then she became very hard to reach by phone. Suddenly the association’s cheques started to bounce. Shortly afterwards, Weir confessed to then-association president Lesley Gronow that she had stolen $20,000 from the campaign to help support a drug habit. But the riding association chose not to contact the RCMP until after the election was done, even though it knew what had happened. Weir pleaded guilty in provincial court on June 29. Over the next several weeks, opposition members began to speculate, wondering if the required financial statements handed over after the election reflected the theft. The justice minister at the time also said that the association had erred in waiting to report the theft.
The next year, St. Albert’s Queen of Hugs was granted another distinction. Already serving as the chancellor at the University of Alberta, Lois Hole was inducted as a Member of the Order of Canada, one of the nation’s highest civilian honours.
Fire made the headlines in July 2000 as crews from St. Albert and all over Sturgeon County convened on Poundmaker’s Lodge. By the time the first crews from Namao arrived, the former residential school on the grounds had been set ablaze and was already engulfed. The fire hydrants in the area weren’t working properly, so tanker trucks had to shuttle water from hydrants in Campbell Business Park. When the fire was finally put out, a 25-year-old Edmonton man was charged with arson. The school was essentially destroyed, but it wasn’t the only local landmark. With little warning that same month, demolition crews started knocking down the 71-year-old Bruin Inn. The city had tried to have it designated as historical and even approached the province to do so, but the province ruled the only historical part of the old building was its façade. Once that was removed and safely stored, the loaders and backhoes moved in.
The following July, the city was forced to revisit a crime that had horrified the entire community. Ten years previous, Gavin Mandin, then 15, had taken a .22-calibre rifle and shot his mother, stepfather and two younger sisters to death at their summer getaway in Valleyview. The family had lived in St. Albert. Mandin had pleaded guilty in 1994 to four counts of second-degree murder and was now up for his first parole hearing. His hearing marked the first time victims were allowed to read their impact statements aloud to a parole board. Mandin’s parole was subsequently denied as the board felt he showed little remorse and still offered no explanation as to why he had killed his entire family.
Peter Boer is an editor at the St. Albert Gazette.
