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.
It’s a very new street with a very old name.
St. Anne Promenade first opened to the public in 2016, sporting a fancy new roundabout, custom metal fences, and a $4.45 million price tag. It also carried the same namesake as its parent, St. Anne Street, of which it was an extension.
St. Albert has had a St. Anne St. since at least 1887, historic maps show. The street didn’t have that wriggly bit in front of St. Albert Place back then, and was one of 11 downtown streets named after saints (specifically saints Alphonse, Hippolyte, Joachim, John the Baptist, Joseph, Louis, Michael, Thomas, Rock, and Vital).
There’s no concrete reason as to why planners chose to name so many downtown streets after Catholic saints, said Musée Héritage Museum archivist Vino Vipulanantharajah — this entire region was once owned by the Catholic church, so church officials presumably stuck with the names they knew.
St. Anne herself, however, does have some indirect ties to this community’s history.
Jesus’s grandma
St. Anne St. is named for Lac Ste. Anne and St. Anne, who is the grandmother of Jesus under Catholic tradition, Musée Héritage Museum curator Martin Bierens said in an email.
St. Anne isn’t mentioned in the Bible, the Catholic Encyclopedia and Britannica report; everything we know about her comes from apocryphal writings such as the Protoevangelium of James.
Those accounts tell of an Anne (“Hannah” in Hebrew) and a Joachim — a rich, devout, but childless couple in Nazareth. Their inability to conceive a child caused them much grief when Joachim was denied entry to a temple because of it. Joachim and Anne prayed to God for a child, and were answered by an angel, who told Anne that “the fruit of thy womb shall be blessed by all the world.”
Anne gave birth to a daughter named Miriam/Mary, who went on to become the mother of Jesus. (The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that this tale was suspiciously similar to the account of the birth of the prophet Samuel, whose mother was also called Hannah.) Some accounts say Anna remarried after Joachim died and became the grandmother of one or more of the Twelve Apostles.
St. Anne is now known as the patron saint of Quebec (home to the Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré Shrine), women in labour, and miners (since Jesus is associated with gold and Mary with silver).
Black Robe’s Vision reports that Father Thibault established a mission at what was originally Manito-Sakahigan Lake in 1843. He renamed the lake Lac. Ste. Anne in honour of St. Anne, his patron saint. When Thibault called it quits and headed back to St. Boniface, Man., in 1852, Bishop Alexandre Taché needed to find a replacement for him. Father Albert Lacombe had also just returned to St. Boniface, so Taché gave him the gig.
Lacombe soon determined that the mission needed to move to better farmland. He picked a hill near the Sturgeon River, and in December 1860 convinced Taché to establish a new community there. Lacombe brought settlers to the hill on April 8, 1861, to start building what is now St. Albert.
Veterans Way?
St. Anne Promenade made headlines this summer when Coun. Mike Killick proposed to redesignate it as Veterans Way.
“Many veterans have given their lives for the freedom and all other good things we residents across Canada enjoy,” he said, and this change would be a permanent way to honour them.
Killick said the promenade was significant to members of the Royal Canadian Legion, as they marched down it from the Legion hall during Remembrance Day parades. He emphasized that this change would not apply to St. Anne St. so as to preserve its history.
Council was expected to debate Killick’s proposal this September.
