What would a June in the 1980s have been without a visit from Mark Messier? The Edmonton Oilers player made his almost-annual trek to St. Albert’s Bruin Inn in June 1987 to share the Stanley Cup with locals. Across town, potential violence loomed at the St. Albert Canada Post distribution centre during a two-day strike. Workers picketed the location, some waiting with vicious-looking dogs, waiting for replacement workers. There was some name-calling and shoving and the bus was pelted with eggs, but there were no major incidents.
June of 1988 saw a near-tragedy averted thanks to some quick-thinking emergency responders. Firefighter Charles The and RCMP Const. Marc Guerin ended up trapped in the storm sewer system after trying to track down three young boys spotted inside. A short bout of rain nearly drowned all of them, but the two responders were able to climb a ladder to a manhole cover and climb out of harm’s way. They were eventually pulled from the manhole, along with the three boys, who were given “a stern reprimand” by police. Also getting a stern reprimand was former St. Albert resident and CFB Namao 435 squadron commander Lt.-Col. Kenn Moody, who discovered he had been declared persona non grata by the Soviet Union. Moody had previously worked as the assistant air attachĂ© at the Canadian embassy and the Soviets claimed he had visited a military base disguised as a tourist. It was part of a series of tit-for-tat expulsions between Canada and the USSR, but it didn’t affect Moody as he was now working in Ottawa and had no intentions of returning to Moscow.
While people have been repeatedly banned from St. Albert by judges, a dog named Thor, weighing in at 80 pounds, became the first animal to receive the designation in June of 1989 after a judge banished the canine as punishment for running wild for several years, biting three people and compiling a total of 14 complaints. He ended up moving to a farm near Cherhill. Several animals were also affected in Big Lake when 90 barrels of oil spilled into the area from a leaky well eight kilometres away. Winds swept much of the spill into Big Lake, where marshlands were burned to clean up the mess.
June of 1990 saw local product Geoff Sanderson, 18, drafted by the Hartford Whalers. The whooping cough outbreak continued, with a record 143 cases recorded since February, compared to 10 in total the year before. Students at Vital Grandin School got a special treat as they received tomato seeds that had spent six years aboard a NASA satellite. Five of the seeds were donated to Hole’s and all were planted to compare to regular tomatoes to see if cosmic radiation had any effect on the plants.
The draft board was busy again in June 1991 as local goaltender Jamie McLennan was drafted by the New York Islanders 48th overall. It was also a touching moment for local curling legend Hec Gervais as he was formally inducted into the Alberta Sports Hall of Fame.
The following year saw lots of sports news, some good, some questionable. Jennifer Krempien, 17, a student at Paul Kane who played wheelchair basketball, was selected as an alternate for the upcoming Paralympic Games in September. She was later promoted to the starting roster after another player backed out. But there was one local resident who wasn’t going to the games — wheelchair weightlifter Jack McCann. Though he had tested positive the previous month for steroids, his subsequent ban from competition had been overturned. Two days later, he was tested again and both his A and B samples came back positive for steroids. McCann explained he took the drugs after surgery to repair a blood clot in a torn muscle and another procedure to remove a benign tumour from his spine, but he was banned for four years. He vowed never to represent Canada again, claiming he was the victim of a witch-hunt.
June of 1993 saw council reach an agreement to build a casino on two acres of land in South Campbell. But it also saw one of the city’s political legends dethroned, as former mayor and MLA Richard Fowler was upset in the provincial election by Liberal Len Bracko. Most credited Fowler’s loss to reports he had used $20,000 of an allowance available to out-of-town MLAs for housing in Edmonton, even though he lived 20 minutes away.
The St. Albert real estate market was flooded with 500 new units in June of 1994 as CFB Namao officially closed and resident airmen moved away. The city also decided to take the moral good of residents into its own hands and banish any proposed strip clubs or adult stores to its industrial areas in its revised land use bylaw.
Nude jogging was all the rage in June of 1995 as Michael Michels ended up in the Edmonton Remand Centre. Having appeared in court to answer charges of jogging nude through the city the previous month, he was charged again after five more reported incidents following his court appearance. He was later released on bail.
Residents responded enthusiastically to the new pay-as-you-throw system introduced in June 1996 that saw homeowners subscribe to different service levels depending on the amount of garbage they put out. As the majority of households chose the least expensive (one bag a week) option, the city was forced to upgrade its recycling facilities to meet demand. In hockey news, St. Albert Saint Fernando Pisani was selected in the NHL draft by the Edmonton Oilers, going 195th overall.
June of 1997 was all about politics. Reform member of Parliament John Williams won re-election with almost double the number of votes over his closest competitor, Liberal Doug Kennedy. And west bypass opponents presented a 10,000-name petition to city hall calling on council to step back from any plan to build a road that would cross the Sturgeon River near Big Lake.
Peter Boer is an editor at the St. Albert Gazette.
