What’s in a Name?
The Gazette is looking at the history behind the names of places in St. Albert in light of the city’s decision to rename the Grandin neighbourhood. Curious about a place’s name? Send it in to [email protected] so it can be examined in a future story.
Forest Drive is obviously named after the forest of towering elm trees that grow along it, right?
Wrong. According to A History of Street Names in St. Albert, it’s actually named for Jean Beatrice Forest — an Edmonton school trustee, University of Alberta chancellor, senator, and Officer of the Order of Canada.
St. Albert historian Ray Pinco was skeptical that Forest was the namesake of Forest Dr. Forest would have been just a trustee with what is now the Edmonton Catholic school board when this street was built in 1971, with no clear connections to St. Albert.
“It just does not compute,” he said, adding that he speculated the street may have been named after the subdivision, Forest Lawn.
Pinco added that Forest Lawn itself didn’t have much forest in it when it was established in around 1970 either, as it was mostly farmland. The towering elms planted along Forest Drive came later.
The Gazette was unable to determine where History of Street Names (which dates back to at least the early 1990s) got this information about Forest Dr., and shares Pinco’s skepticism. Still, Forest Dr. is hardly the only street in town named after someone unrelated to St. Albert — see Sir Winston Churchill Ave. for one of many examples. Forest also makes for a respectable namesake for a street, as we will see below.
Lifelong leader
Born in Minitonas, Man., in 1926, Forest was a teacher with the Manitoba School System before she came to Edmonton in 1946 along with her husband Joseph. She was soon very busy taking care of their seven kids.
“She was a real trooper,” said her son Dan, in that she was always willing to try anything — including water-skiing at Wabamun Lake in the 1960s.
“She had so many rope burns,” he recalled, but actually got quite good at it.
She wasn’t the greatest driver, recalled Forest’s daughter, Michelle, who delivered the eulogy at her funeral. Forest once tried to mow the grass out at the family cabin, and ended up driving the riding mower into the lake. She also once crashed the front and rear ends of the family car into the garage door in just a few weeks.
“Poor car, poor door, poor mom…lucky body shop and garage door repair companies!” Michelle said in the eulogy.
As many of her children were in Francophone schools, Forest went to night school at the U of A to learn French, Dan said. She later joined what is now the Edmonton Catholic school board, serving as trustee from 1968–1975 and chair from 1975–1977.
Forest was a noted defender of human rights, and served on Alberta’s first human rights commission in the early 1970s. Dan said she frequently lobbied schools and leaders to bring more 2SLGBTQ+ education into schools to fight bullying, reasoning that doing so would help kids understand the hurt they were causing.
Dan said Forest later took an interest in the U of A as most of her children enrolled there. Someone on the university’s board put her name forward to become the university’s chancellor — a role she held from 1978–1982. Her time as chancellor saw her meet Queen Elizabeth II, lunch with the future King Charles III, and host Mother Theresa.
Forest was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 1987. In 1996, then-prime minister Jean Chretien made her a senator — a role she stepped down from in 1998.
Forest officially stepped down due to concerns about her husband’s health, Dan said. The real reason was a clash with Chretien about Catholic school boards.
Forest had spoken out in the Senate about a move to end Catholic school boards in Newfoundland. Chretien criticized her for this a few days later, to which she replied, “Well, I thought you told me I was supposed to say what I wanted?”
“It wasn’t long after that she said, ‘Well, I’m quitting,’” Dan said.
Former senator and longtime friend Douglas Roche said Forest was a respected community leader who was highly regarded in the Catholic community.
“She was an ideal Albertan in the sense that she loved Alberta but she reached out into Canada, too.”
After serving on numerous corporate boards, Forest and her husband retired to Victoria, B.C., in 1997. The Edmonton Catholic board later named the Jean Forest All-Girls Leadership Academy after her. Forest was extremely proud of the school, and would sometimes come to Edmonton just to visit it.
Forest died Jan. 10, 2024, leaving behind seven children, 11 grandchildren, and 17 great-grandchildren.
Dan said he wasn’t aware that Forest Dr. was named after his mother, but did know that she was the namesake of Forest Lane in Edmonton. Forest had a cousin in St. Albert, and may have interacted with people there in the 1970s as a trustee.
Dan said he wasn’t sure if Forest had ever visited Forest Dr.
“If she knew about it, she would have been proud.”
