The City of St. Albert is on the hunt for new names to add to the city’s list of possible street names.
Submissions are being accepted until June 30 for names to be considered for the annual update. The list can be used to name streets as well as other municipal infrastructure like parks or buildings.
While possible names for inclusion on the community’s potential significant names list can really be submitted anytime, Kim Hamson, a planning technician with the city, said that submissions sent before June 30 will be considered for the next update that goes to council for approval.
Council has ultimate authority to add names to a list, but a technical naming review panel, which includes city staff and the Arts and Heritage Foundation, Musée Heritage Museum and the St. Albert Historical Society, is responsible for recommending and reviewing possible names.
The approved list, which is public, currently has 16 pages of possible names, ranging from hockey players to newspaper editors to early residents to Const. David Wynn, who was killed in the line of duty in January 2015.
Hamson said many of the names submitted by the community echo the names that have come up in-house.
“We end up with lots of duplicates where we’ll have the name on the list already and then we get the letters of request,” Hamson said.
But those letters of request – which can be submitted online or by mail – help add credibility to the request.
Letters submitted online can be done by searching “municipal naming” on the city’s website and scrolling down. Some information, including a summary of the suggested individual’s contributions to the community is needed for the submission.
If possible, Hamson said that sources are helpful, like news articles or references from local history books like The Black Robe’s Vision.
But online submissions aren’t the only way to make a suggestion. Hamson noted several letters have been received from former parishioners of Father Jacques Joly, who passed away in 2014.
“We’ve probably got about 30 … handwritten letters of request,” Hamson said about Joly. Joly does have a slot on the current potential name lists.
City council passed a formal policy about municipal naming in recent years, bringing some structure to what had previously been a more informal process.
That includes a requirement that within a neighbourhood, a quarter of the roadways must use names from the list or that are otherwise St. Albert related, like references to local geography or flora and fauna.
Developers will use the list to meet that criteria when choosing names for the streets in the new neighbourhoods.
“It is very rare that they don’t pick from the list,” Hamson said. For instance, Joyal Way in Melcor’s Jensen Lakes neighbourhood honours both Eddie Joyal, a former NHL player and St. Albert resident, as well as his family. The Joyal roots in the community go back generations, all the way to 1910, when David Joyal was the town constable.
Genstar is taking a bit of a different tact in Riverside, Hamson said. They are trying to incorporate local animals and plants instead.
Names don’t always need to be human monikers, for that matter. In 2014 the new dog park in Campbell Park was named after Dodger, a police dog that had served for years in St. Albert.
Arterial roads, when possible, are to be named after former mayors of St. Albert.
Hamson said it used to be that a street couldn’t be named after someone until they had passed away, however, that trend has waned.
Mayor Nolan Crouse said he’s very happy with the potential significant names list and the policy in place to guide municipal naming and additions to the list.
“I think it’s operating very well now,” he said. “We’ve got a good long list.”
