As St. Albert tipped into April in 1980, residents could be forgiven for feeling a little crusty. The city announced water rationing was in effect. Edmonton had reduced flow to St. Albert during a reservoir changeover. Then a water line ruptured. That meant St. Albert couldn’t stockpile its reserves. As a result, water pressure for residential use was limited to two hours in the morning, a half-hour for lunch, two hours over supper and a half-hour before midnight. Anyone caught washing cars, watering the lawn or filling a swimming pool faced a $100 fine. Nurses at the Sturgeon General Hospital were on strike in defiance of a back-to-work order. The United Nurses Association (UNA) protested the order in court. Despite the double-whammy, there was good news — the city had selected Douglas Cardinal to design the new downtown city hall and civic centre and was looking for a $6.6-million loan.
The annexation debate was top of mind the following April, with the issue finally going to the provincial cabinet for a decision on whether or not Edmonton could annex municipalities like St. Albert and Sherwood Park. The Gazette, meanwhile, was adding to its coverage. During the Easter season, the paper ran a series of religious perspectives from “The family in Judaism” and “The family in Christianity” to “The family in Zoroastrianism.” The paper also opened up its content to city students, featuring The Kidz Gazette, which saw the city’s youth contribute all content to a small section of the paper, including hand-drawn cartoons, art and even ads.
The St. Albert Saints won the provincial title in 1981 and in April 1982 repeated as Alberta champions. One former Saint was particularly happy — Troy Murray had signed a deal with the Chicago Blackhawks. Elsewhere in the city there was a showdown on Grandin Pond. A couple with land near the pond hired a landscaping company to start knocking down trees and move dirt into the water. With city offices closed for Easter, it took several hours before staff were able to secure a stop-work order, which the company twice defied. The RCMP were eventually called in and the homeowners handed a court summons. This coincided with a major change at the Gazette. Under the headline “We’re having a baby!,” the paper announced the publication of a second issue per week on Fridays, focused exclusively on St. Albert news and events.
April 1983 saw the Catholic school board install its first computer featuring three terminals, a line printer and an almost five-foot-tall processor that had to be kept in a specially sealed room as one particle of dust or static zap could erase its memory. Local students didn’t much care — they were busy racking up big phone bills making calls to a New York-based phone sex line. The RCMP received several complaints, with one woman saying, “[My son] can kiss his allowance goodbye until the bill is paid.” The local detachment was also the subject of a complaint — after Edmonton mosquito sprayers found a body in a pond at 137 Avenue and 184 Street, the RCMP blockaded the area. Yet only the media were kept at bay; residents were allowed to come and go as they pleased.
The next April, the body of 23-year-old Charmayne Manke, a cab driver, was found 60 metres from her cab in a field north of St. Albert. Her last known communication indicated she was picking up a fare at a bar in Edmonton. An autopsy revealed she had been stabbed in the back of the neck. A 21-year-old man named Robert Nelson Luxton of no fixed address was later arrested and charged with her murder.
The case would go to trial in April 1985, where the Crown would make its case that hair and blood found in the cab matched Luxton, while his fingerprints had been found on a hairdryer and jar of cold cream. But April 1985 would become synonymous with disaster for the area, especially the Canadian Forces Base at Namao. During a flypast to honour the RCAF’s 61st anniversary, two C-130 Hercules transports collided in mid-air, killing nine Canadian airmen and one American. With a photographer on hand for the anniversary, the Gazette carried shocking photos of the aftermath of the crash, the first and worst of its kind in the country.
Peter Boer is an editor at the Gazette.
