April 1970 boiled with bad blood at city hall as council faced a strike vote from all 21 of its civic workers, represented by the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). Employees sought an eight per cent raise for 1970, a five per cent hike in 1971 and a standard 40-hour work week. “We feel that the time as come for St. Albert to catch up with the times a little bit,” Leo Lancaster of CUPE said. The strike notice was served one week after the vote, but the dispute was settled before the workers walked off the job. They agreed to a seven per cent increase for 1970, a 42-hour workweek, an hour instead of 30 minutes for lunch, eligibility for workers’ compensation and the removal of a clause stating all public employees had to live in St. Albert. The outstanding issue of coffee breaks — 10 minutes each, one in the morning and one in the afternoon — was sent for further study.
The council chamber grew especially heated following a letter to the editor published in the St. Albert Gazette from Ald. Bob Russell, who had said council was making poor decisions because of pressure from developers and also accused Mayor Ray Gibbon of not promptly sharing information about St. Albert’s proposed university site. At the subsequent council meeting, Gibbon demanded an apology from Russell, explaining the developers, BACM, had told him of the university site in confidence. When Russell refused, Gibbon filed a notice of motion to censure Russell. At the following meeting, the mayor amended his motion of censure instead to express council’s regret Russell had chosen to use the Gazette to criticize the mayor and council. The motion passed 4-2.
Despite his local popularity, former mayor Richard Fowler wasn’t popular enough to unseat Keith Everitt as the Social Credit nominee for the provincial constituency, under the presidency of Jack Flaherty in April 1971.
Two Aprils later, CUPE was back in the news as it announced it would represent a Sturgeon General Hospital employee who had been fired for refusing to get a haircut, which was reputedly part of the terms of employment. It wasn’t the only problem at the hospital. Under new guidelines issued by the Sturgeon’s fire marshal, staff, patients and visitors were no longer allowed to smoke in patient rooms due to a recent fire and rising costs of replacing cigarette-burned bedding and patient clothing.
Council approved new salaries for itself in April 1975, bumping the mayor’s wage to $16,500 annually and $4,200 for councillors. Over the next few years, council earned that money. First, in 1976, it shredded a report calling for a professional, 24-hour, nine-person professional paramedic-staffed ambulance because it would cost $136,000 per year. By April 1977, council was defending its ambitious annexation of 5,700 acres of land to the south, belonging to the County of Parkland, over Edmonton’s objections. The province was also investigating allegations brought forward by former alderman John Bakker, who alleged the city had already handed over cash for 160 acres of land in Campbell Park despite the fact, as per provincial law, the purchase first had to be approved by the Local Authorities Board.
While Mayor Richard Plain was pleased to announce construction on a $50-million shopping centre on the banks of the Sturgeon River, the decision to reject a full-time ambulance came back to bite council. An angry group of St. Albert’s firefighters unburdened themselves to the Gazette about the department’s deplorable state. Despite a report submitted in 1974 calling for a professional firefighting force of 40 full-time staff, two new pumpers with double the capacity of existing trucks, an aerial ladder truck and a Vandura to be used as an emergency vehicle, none of the recommendations had come to pass. The town had a 16-year-old pumper, a 10-year-old pumper, access to a pumper in Sturgeon County during emergencies, and a Vandura that was not equipped for anything. The full-time staff numbered 11 firefighters, a chief and a deputy, with a half-dozen volunteers. Further, there were no concrete evacuation plans for structures like the Youville Home or Sturgeon General Hospital. With rescuing people being the department’s first goal when responding to a fire, one firefighter said he worried the majority of the force could easily be wiped out by a substantial blaze.
Yet by April 1978 residents were tuning out St. Albert’s problems and were ready to tune in to St. Albert’s newest addition. After five years of hearings with the CRTC, St. Albert Broadcasting Ltd. was finally granted a broadcasting licence for the city’s first radio station. With construction on a new shopping centre almost under way, plans for redevelopment of Grandin mall were approved by council, calling for a hotel to be built on the site, as well as tennis courts and an underground parking garage to accommodate staff and shoppers.
