Read the August issues of the St. Albert Gazette for the decade of the 1970s and it’s easy to see the societal changes that crept in as the community grew from a small town to a city.
Politically, the end of August 1971 marked the beginning of the Peter Lougheed years with the election of the Progressive Conservative Party and the end of the Social Credit era. With that election, there was a sense of youth and buoyancy in the government and in St. Albert.
The baby boomers were growing up and St. Albert’s builders and businesses were beckoning.
Scarcely any housing ads appear in the Gazette in August 1970, but one, found in the classified section, listed a Braeside bungalow for $18,000. Housing ads grew along with the rows of showhomes that enticed young people to move to the new neighbourhoods in Forest Lawn, Akinsdale and finally Lacombe Park. “Why rent?” asked a 1973 advertisement, along with a listing for a new three-bedroom bungalow for $24,900. By 1976, the same 1,000-square-foot bungalow, with no garage, was listed at $65,000, and in 1979, a Forest Lawn bungalow could be purchased for $81,500.
Every newspaper in those years featured full-page advertisements for wedding apparel and, in the summer months especially, there were multiple announcements of engagements and weddings.
Once those young families moved into those new houses, they started planting sod in their yards, building their garages and finishing their basements. LBH Lumber opened in the summer of 1974 along with an advertisement for a double-garage package delivered for $1,399. Fence packages were sold as Good Neighbour fences, Suburban fences and The Weaver fence to describe different board layouts and designs. Cedar posts sold for 3.3 cents per linear foot for a four-by-four. Economy studs were 49 cents each.
Growth brought different problems to the attention of the town council, which in 1972 debated the need for a subsidized day care. A 1972 headline read “Debunking the day care myth” and the story explained that children raised in day cares were as well-grounded and safe as those raised by stay-at-home mothers. Council agreed to open St. Albert Day Care Centre Sept. 1, 1972, but that led to further debate about the appropriate cost for child care.
Council decided a cost of $5 per day would be in line with what average “female” wage earners in the area would make. But Mrs. Stibee, chair of education and finance for the Preventive Social Services Board, said that price was too low. She argued that, since lunch was included, the fee per child should be at least $1 per hour and asked, “What can you buy these days for 60 cents?”
In August 1972, members of the Alberta Pioneer Railway Association, armed with crowbars, tore off the planking making up the old CN Rail station. It was removed and taken to its new location near Namao.
The 1972 Sturgeon River Cleanup included an explosive stump. Letters to the editor debated whether the exercise had caused popped corks on expensive wines in the Alberta Liquor Control Board store in Grandin Park. The manager responded that the tremors “weren’t even strong enough to cloud our more delicate champagne.”
One story from outside St. Albert’s borders described the closing of part of the North Saskatchewan River to allow the creation of 20-mile long Abraham Lake and the completion of the Bighorn Dam.
An editorial cartoon that summer addressed book censorship at the library and asked why current movies such as Portnoy’s Complaint and Clockwork Orange could be shown in theatres but the books were not available at the local library.
In 1973, the new Meals on Wheels program was started and needed drivers. Council discussions that summer centred on the new “recreation complex” as well as on the need for a bypass road to the north and west of St. Albert. In 1974, Akinsdale Recreation Centre was opened.
In August 1977, council gave first reading to a bylaw for an ambulance service and, in the larger community outside St. Albert, a University of Alberta panel was examining solar technology.
An editorial that August argued that St. Albert was afflicted with “dormitory townitis” because there was no place for young people to go at night. This resulted in a high degree of vandalism. The same editorial went on to ask for higher density, cheaper housing.
Folks were starting to question what went into their mouths. In Parliament that summer, there was a request for better labelling on cereal boxes to show how much sugar was in different varieties.
Gambling was raised as a concern in a 1978 article. Government figures from 1977 showed Albertans spent $110.8 million on bingos, casinos, raffles and pull tickets, up from $52.2 million in 1974. Alberta racetracks took in $106 million and $60 million was spent on inter-provincial lotteries.
St. Albert annexed parts of Sturgeon County in 1978 and that meant a realignment of Sturgeon School Division boundaries. Lois Hole was the chair of the Sturgeon School Division, but could no longer sit in that position as Hole’s Farm was now within St. Albert. It was reported that Mrs. Hole was “shocked” by this decision, but when asked about her future political ambitions in St. Albert, she replied, “My husband would have 10 fits if he knew I was interested, however you cannot take the politics out of a person by moving to a new area.”
World events had an impact too when 200 “boat people” from Vietnam arrived Aug. 9 at the Namao Airport.
Annexation by Edmonton reared its ugly head once again in 1979, but St. Albert held its ground with arguments in council about how St. Albert would become a “middle income ghetto.” Council members agreed taxes were higher here than in Edmonton, but snow removal, road maintenance and park supervision was superior to that of the bigger metropolis.
The Alberta Summer Games and Festival were hosted by St. Albert Aug. 2 to 6 that year and required the housing and feeding of 3,000 hungry athletes. And, in council, a bylaw was passed to ban “restricted” movies from being shown at St. Albert Drive-in Theatre because nude scenes and foul language bothered nearby residents, whose windows faced the screen.
