As one of the old communities on the Canadian prairies, this city has a unique history that's worth preserving.
"If we don't know from whence we came, it's pretty hard to find any sense of grounding and to plan our futures. That's true for individuals and it's also true for communities," said Ray Pinco, chair of the St. Albert Historical Society.
Pinco said his assessment is especially true in a community like St. Albert. But St. Albert, like every other community, is slowly losing bits of its built heritage as more historic buildings fall to the wrecking ball of redevelopment.
The issue again came to a head earlier this year, with the private owner of the historic Hebert House at 11 Mill Drive Yvette Laviolette applying to rezone the property to allow her to run a business there.
With stiff opposition from neighbours to having a business in the middle of the residential Mission neighbourhood, and council denying the rezoning bylaw 4-3 on Feb. 27, Laviolette said she intends to knock down the property to build a duplex.
She said at the outset of the public-hearing process for the rezoning application that if she couldn't operate her business from the property, it would not be economical for her to keep it as is and she would seek to redevelop it. Laviolette said she had taken a significant financial loss in the decade she owned the property, and she didn't believe it could be sold for a reasonable price either considering how difficult it had been to attract and keep renters in the property.
"I truly believe (rezoning) was something that would allow the house to be retained and would not be disruptive to the neighbourhood at all," Laviolette said.
But while the decision to deny the application has been made, council is still holding out hope that the structure can be saved. At a special council meeting March 13, council directed administration to negotiate with Laviolette to see if the house can be saved, and to develop a policy that will provide incentives for private homeowners to have their homes designated as historic resources and be preserved in perpetuity.
Private preservation
Mayor Nolan Crouse said while it's unfortunate the situation with 11 Mill Drive has unfolded the way it has, there's a potential silver lining if it can spur action on further efforts to preserve historic buildings.
"If our council does something about it, or if it becomes now a possible election issue, now you've got somebody that may be able to advance and the next council may have a sympathetic ear to this," he said.
It's not that this council, or city administration, has ignored the topic. Cultural business manager Stephen Bordeau said council approved a heritage management plan in 2013, which included a 10-year time frame for some of its recommendations, including establishing a policy and potential incentives for private property owners to preserve heritage buildings.
"The next phase of the program is looking at heritage conservation, looking at possible incentives, outcomes, and working with the community to try to help identify some of these heritage assets," he said.
He said creating the policy had initially been part of a 2017-2019 plan, but with the public concern about 11 Mill Drive, the project has been pushed to the forefront, and a report to council is expected within two months.
"Council has asked us to look at heritage management, heritage policy, a possible incentive program and stepping up our timeline," Bordeau said.
Crouse said he was disappointed that this particular policy hadn't come forward sooner, noting that it first came up as part of the 2007 review of the city's Municipal Development Plan, but said there hasn't always been enough political will on council to make heritage preservation a priority.
He said he would hope to see the policy include restrictions on what could be done with exterior renovations to heritage properties, with some municipal money available to help the private owners with costs associated with those renovations – similar to what exists in other cities that have successfully maintained their historic appeal through incentives.
"What's in it for the single family homeowner is they get to preserve the look, the feel, the charm appeal, the historical appeal," he said.
Pinco said he served several years with the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation and has seen first-hand the impact that municipal incentives can have. While there is grant money available from the province, it's often not enough to offset the additional costs of heritage work. Most of the applications that he reviewed involved both municipal and provincial grants.
"From that perspective, I saw the benefit for municipal incentives," he said. "Owners do look at it and it works."
Public preservation
Providing incentives to private owners is only part of the puzzle when it comes to preserving St. Albert's heritage. There are dozens of publicly owned buildings that have been preserved in one form or another.
"Our council and the previous couple of councils have done a lot to help preserve history," Pinco said. "In particular, Mayor Crouse is kind of a heritage buff and he has sort of spearheaded council into spending a fair number of public dollars into preserving heritage."
He points to the all the city-owned assets overseen by the Arts & Heritage Foundation as examples of the effort the city has gone to in order to keep some of its physical heritage intact: the Heritage Park area by the grain elevators, the riverlot site, the train station, the Little White School on Mission Hill and Juneau House at the corner of Mission Ave. and Madonna Drive.
"This council and the previous council needs to be really commended for that," he said.
But Crouse said he's disappointed that more couldn't have been done, especially with respect to St. Albert's railway station, which used to sit near the grain elevators. A replica of that station now sits on the exact spot the original sat. The original is part of the Alberta Railway Museum, located roughly halfway between St. Albert and Fort Saskatchewan, in rural north Edmonton.
"It's just beautiful. It's 100 years old and it just smells of blood and dirt and grime and horse manure," he said. "It has all of the stuff it had in it since Day 1."
Pinco said while he's pleased that as much history has been preserved in St. Albert, he also regrets to see that so many old buildings have been lost. He used the examples of an old two-storey brick school that sat on Mission Hill below where the Catholic school board office now is, which was torn down around 1960 because it didn't meet code and was too drafty to effectively heat in the winter.
"We suffered from regulations; we suffered from the mentality of progress," he said.
Likewise, St. Albert's downtown, which now has only a few buildings with a long history to them, has seen buildings like the historic Bruin Inn lost to redevelopment.
"Any individual coming from out of town and driving into downtown St. Albert would never know this is one of the oldest communities on the prairies," Pinco said. "What is there that shows that this is a community that has been around longer than Canada?"
Arts & Heritage Foundation director Ann Ramsden echoed Pinco's sentiments about the city's downtown.
"We've lost a lot of heritage in St. Albert over the years. The downtown is very much a downtown from the 1950s," she said. "The Banque d'Hochelaga and the community hall are the only older buildings on that street."
She contrasted downtown with the site of the old Catholic mission, including the Vital Grandin Centre, the Father Lacombe Chapel and the graveyard.
"You can walk up there and feel the heritage," Ramsden said.
While the foundation oversees much of St. Albert's publicly owned heritage, it has little role in preserving private property – simply that of an interested third party that can offer advice and connect property owners with other resources and grants that might be able to help them.
"We've lost a lot of our heritage, but we still have some key buildings left and we have to make sure that those buildings are preserved," she said.
