St. Albert will have an explosive Father’s Day this weekend as some military history buffs fire a cannon by the city’s grain elevators.
St. Albert-area families can come to the city’s Historic River Lots and Grain Elevators on Meadowview Drive this Sunday, June 15 for a free Father’s Day celebration. About 400 people came out to this event last year.
The city has once again invited the Valour Park Association and Rocky Mountain Horse Artillery to give youths and fathers some fun activities to do on Father’s Day, said Ann Ramsden, executive director of Arts and Heritage St. Albert.
“It’s a great way also to teach military history,” she added.
St. Albert has a long past with the military dating back to the 1885 North-West Resistance and the creation of the St. Albert Mounted Rifles, Ramsden noted — this community’s first militia unit. Many military families still live in town today.
St. Albert resident and Valour Park spokesperson Scott Collacutt said his group will bring about a dozen vintage military vehicles to this event, including an armoured scout car, several Second World War jeeps, and a BV 206.
That last vehicle is a tracked transport meant to traverse mountains and snow that also fared well in Afghanistan, Collacutt said. (It also serves as a “tank” in airsoft competitions he runs.)
“It’s one of the most environmentally friendly vehicles on the planet,” he said, in that it’s light enough to roll over branches without breaking them.
Mike Mussolum and his fellows with the Rocky Mountain Horse Artillery group will be on site dressed in their 1890s Canadian military uniforms (picture a Mountie wearing a tan coat and pants). They’re also bringing a cannon to shoot.
Mussolum said the cannon is a reproduction of a 1890s-era artillery piece Canadians would have used during the Second Boer War. Such 18-pounders would have lobbed explosive shells at targets two to three kilometres away. This particular cannon isn’t designed to shoot real shells (it would explode if you tried), but it can still fire blanks loaded with gunpowder and grass, spitting smoke, flames, and a 110 decibel boom in the process.
“It’s like a giant starting gun,” he said.
Mussolum said the group will fire the cannon at noon, one, two, three, and four o’clock as part of the Father’s Day event.
Guests at the event will get to check out the cannon, ride in some of the vehicles, and ask Valour Park and Rocky Mountain Horse members about the histories behind both. Collacutt said youths will also get to run through an obstacle course while wearing helmets and toting wooden firearms.
The event runs from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. June 15 at 4A Meadowview Drive. Visit artsandheritage.ca for details.
