Come February of 1978, there was good and bad news when it came to city facilities. The good news was the Devonian Foundation ponied up $457,000 of the $1 million needed to build Red Willow Park.
But there were problems with the city’s new ice rink. Akinsdale Arena was set to open but the city had run into a number of problems. There was a leaky roof that couldn’t be fixed until the end of winter and some benches that were never built, but the biggest problem was the concrete surface on which the ice was made. The ice refused to “stick” to the concrete, forming air bubbles and crumbling easily. The city later learned the contractor used a curing compound on the concrete that created the problem. After consulting with other businesses and university professors, the city managed to deglaze the surface.
February 1980 proved a busy month. Council adopted the city’s flag from seven submitted designs — blue and white in colour, featuring the city crest in the corner and red diagonal stripe through the middle. Member of Parliament Peter Elzinga won another term with the Progressive Conservatives and the city debated widening St. Albert Trail to six lanes. Opponents wanted to see construction of a ring road or of the long-debated west bypass.
But just up the Trail, on the morning of Feb. 21, a fire gutted the St. Albert Inn, causing $2.5 million in damage. The suspected culprits were unextinguished cigarette butts emptied into a garbage can in the bar area. Also, someone at the inn had shut off the alarm system because the smoke detectors kept going off. The facility was also not equipped with a sprinkler system. As a result, the entire main floor was almost destroyed, while the tower sustained only water and smoke damage. Fortunately, all guests were successfully evacuated.
1981 saw St. Albert up in arms against the City of Edmonton, still fighting the proposed annexation. The Anti-Annexation Centre started selling St. Albert Victory Bonds to raise money for the fight against Edmonton. The bonds were simply a unique receipt and had no commercial value or dividend. Edmonton city Ald. Ron Hayter added fuel to the annexation fires by suggesting the City of Edmonton review the status of all its employees who lived in St. Albert and Sherwood Park. St. Albert council blasted the suggestion as “blatant blackmail.”
Canada Post was also stirring up passions — it installed parking meters outside the post office. Neighbourhoods without door-to-door service were particularly incensed at paying five cents for 12 minutes of parking or a $5 fine.
Money is on the minds of everyone the following February when the draft budget raised the real possibility of a 29.4 per cent tax increase. Council vowed to trim it back to a palatable 15 per cent by freezing staff hires, reducing bus service, conducting less mowing and spraying and delaying curb and sidewalk repair.
February 1983 saw Elzinga win the presidency of the Progressive Conservative Party, but international issues were boiling to the forefront locally. St. Albert Citizens for Nuclear Disarmament pushed for a local referendum on total nuclear disarmament during the next civic election. No doubt knowing St. Albert had no nuclear capability, the group simply hoped to use a ballot win as a public relations tool. Technology took over at city hall as the entire budget was prepared, for the first time, on a computer.
Downtown, lunch preparations at the Bruin Inn doubled as the facility introduced strip shows during the noon hour. And after a 10-year absence, St. Albert once again fielded a team in the Capital Junior B Hockey League, it was announced. The unnamed team would boast a roster of 18- to 20-year-old players. But the new team wasn’t the only one in the news. The St. Albert Saints decided to fire coach Doug Hicks, who had guided the team to a record of 35-21 with the playoffs imminent. His predecessor Darryl Havrelock had received the same treatment, fired after amassing a 31-12 record.
“It seems that coaching the St. Albert Saints is a no-win situation,” Hicks said.
If Hicks was unpopular with his players, Mayor Dick Fowler made enemies out of the business community in February 1985 when he proposed during a chamber speech to raise business taxes by 50 per cent. The intent was to create a fund to market St. Albert against West Edmonton Mall businesses. The idea was greeted by almost total silence.
And, as if it had just been too long since they fired someone, the Saints fired head coach Rob Daum in February 1986 after he lead the team to second in the north division at 23-16. Daum would go on to become one of the winningest coaches in Canadian university hockey history with the University of Alberta Golden Bears.
There were some people getting jobs, or at least keeping them — Myrna Fyfe survived a challenge by Gerry Tersmette for the local provincial PC nomination and St. Albert Transit hired its first two employees, including one young man named Desmond Liggett. Fowler announced he would run for a fifth term, while former mayor and alderman Ray Gibbon mused about running as well.
Near the end of the month, the first distinctive history of St. Albert was finally created when 2,000 copies of The Black Robe’s Vision, written by the St. Albert Historical Society, were unveiled at the St. Albert Senior Citizens’ Club. Every citizen could then hold a piece of the city’s history in its hands or read excerpts in the Gazette.
Peter Boer is an editor at the Gazette.
