Celebrating celebrations

St. Albert knows how to have a good time. Don’t believe me? Step into the MusĂ©e HĂ©ritage Museum for its new exhibit and you’ll see a sign on the wall that says, “Warning! Too Much Fun!”

That relic of what was surely one of the city’s best parties is just one of the many colourful artifacts that can be found in Celebrate St. Albert! The exhibit has arrived just in time for what will undoubtedly be some of our biggest parties of the year, starting with the Rainmaker Rodeo in just a few weeks and the other is coming to St. Albert Place shortly after it.

“It was inspired by the children’s festival’s 35th anniversary,” explained Joanne White, the curator at the museum, noting that very few major community events during the last 155 years of St. Albert were missed. “It goes back to Fort Edmonton and everything up until Hometown Hockey.”

“A lot of the early celebrations were smaller scale like fairs and picnics, all of those kinds of things. We talk about people coming out here to celebrate things because it was a destination for Edmonton.”

Indeed, it was. One of the oldest records of a community celebration was found in the Aug. 2, 1884 edition of the Edmonton Bulletin when Octave Bellerose finished construction on a new farmhouse at Big Lake. People held an evening ball to mark the occasion with some guests travelling “nine miles on foot” to attend.

The village also saw stops from some notable adventurers who were passing through including the Palliser expedition in 1858 and Viscount Milton and W.B. Cheadle in 1862. Crowds naturally gathered to wish them all well.

Bishop Taché visited numerously from St. Boniface, Man., as he saw to the establishment of the new mission here. The new Vicariate of Saskatchewan was created in 1868 and St. Albert was considered the home of Bishop Grandin. When he arrived in October that year, a joyous gathering was held where people rode out on their horses to greet him, firing their muskets out of joy.

That’s because they didn’t have fireworks but they sure did in 1899 when there was a large open mass on Mission Hill to commemorate the 50th anniversary of Father Lacombe’s ordination with four archbishops and bishops in attendance. The golden jubilee was the first fireworks display in the province.

Alas, there are no photographs that remain.

The exhibit offers many mementoes of the big anniversaries that Father Lacombe celebrated – “There were a number of them!” White remarked – along with other religious events including pilgrimages to the grotto, plus visits of major dignitaries such as three governors-general, Sir Wilfred Laurier, plus Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (the third son of Queen Victoria who visited with his wife Princess Louise and their daughter Princess Patricia), and Pope John Paul II who gave a notable mass at Namao in 1982 with hundreds of thousands of people in attendance.

The Rainmaker Rodeo and the children’s fest are nothing to sneeze at either, as they each see tens of thousands of revellers and celebrants of all sizes year in and year out. The exhibit pays tribute to that in a big way with some display items that are 10-feet tall.

“There are stilt-walking costumes from the children’s fest. We’ve got some giant Christmas soldiers. We’ve got banners and signs and objects and photos … it’s a big, colourful and fun show! There’s a lot of stuff. You won’t have seen the gallery as full as this before.”

Celebrate St. Albert covers everything from milestones including 1954 when St. Albert was celebrating its 50th anniversary as a town. It was also the same time that the town was pleased to have a fĂŞte for its new sewage system. Then in 2011 the city held events in conjunction with Rendezvous St. Albert, the 150th anniversary of the mission. That year-long celebration overshadowed the three-day party in 1961 for the 100th anniversary. There was also a community celebration in 1955 for the 50th anniversary of the province and in 1980 for the 75th, and another in 1967 for the centennial of the country.