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 move 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.
Most St. Albert residents don’t know that Hamilton Crescent is named after the late Keith and Patricia Hamilton, early supporters of the LoSeCa Foundation.
Neither did their kids, apparently.
Their son, Jonathan (one of LoSeCa’s earliest clients) said he was pleasantly surprised by this fact when he heard it this month. Sylvia Pelechytik, their daughter, said they never mentioned it.
“My older brother [Keith Morgan Hamilton] said he used to visit his buddy on that street, and he never knew it was named after our parents!” Pelechytik said.
Community minded
Pelechytik said her parents came to St. Albert in around 1962, having previously met and married in Vancouver in 1960.
Keith was born in Calcutta, India, and lived for many years in Australia before coming to Canada to work as an accountant for Revenue Canada. He helped organize St. Albert’s centennial celebrations in 1967 and directed a community play for Alberta’s 75th anniversary in 1980. Pelechytik remembered him as as a good role model who encouraged his kids to do well in school.
Patricia grew up in Alberta and worked for about 15 years as a librarian at St. Albert Catholic High.
“She was a great cook,” Pelechytik said of Patricia, and a fan of painting, pottery, and reading.
“My mom always had more than one book on the go.”
A History of Street Names in St. Albert credits the Hamiltons as being amongst the founders of the LoSeCa Foundation — a St. Albert non-profit that runs group homes and supports for people with disabilities. While the Gazette could not confirm this (A Bridge Over Time does not list them as one of the foundation’s founders), sources familiar with the group’s history say the Hamiltons were certainly early and significant supporters of the foundation.
LoSeCa started in 1987 when Nick Muntjewerff, Victor Douziech, Yvonne Simpson, Ada and Gaston Curial, and Ferne and Armand Carignan met in the Curial family’s kitchen over coffee, said Jocelyne Kettner, daughter of Ada and Gaston Curial.
“‘We were all seniors with disabled children, and we had begun to worry about what was going to be their future when we would not be there for them,’” Kettner said, reading an account written by Ada Curial.
These founding families formed the Grandin Residence Foundation in 1988 to address this situation, the LoSeCa website reports. They soon rebranded the group as LoSeCa, which stood for “love, service, and care.” The group opened its first group home for disabled residents in 1992. Keith and Patricia’s son, Jonathan, was one of its first residents.
St. Albert MLA Marie Renaud said Patricia and Keith were regular volunteers at the LoSeCa I’m Unique Thrift Store while she was the foundation’s executive director from 2001 to 2015, coming in for shifts every Friday afternoon.
“They were just the kindest, gentlest people ever,” she said, and very hard workers — although Keith sometimes had to take a break for a nap in his later years.
Patricia and Keith travelled to Australia a few times in their later years, and were active volunteers with the church in the Youville Home.
Patricia died in 2020 at age 81. Keith passed a year later at 92.
Lasting legacy
Today, LoSeCa supports about 150 adults with disabilities in the St. Albert region through group homes and day programs, said executive director Carmen Horpestad. None of this would have been possible without the work of the Hamiltons and the foundation’s founding families.
Pelechytik said she was proud that her parents had been recognized for their community contributions by having a street named in their honour.
“This was their home.”
