By May 2001, the city had made the leap into the future of speed enforcement and new revenue streams when St. Albert’s first photo radar vehicle became operational. Council was also busy preparing for the future of commerce as it quickly rushed through an annexation of a 48-acre site from Sturgeon County to house a new, expanded Walmart. Council argued that if it hadn’t proceeded St. Albert would have lost the retail cornerstone to a site on 137 Avenue. The move also paved the way for the development of other big-box stores along Highway 2.
The Walmart site wasn’t the only new building going up in town. In May 2002, the RCMP officially moved into their new detachment on Boudreau Road, vacating its former headquarters on Sir Winston Churchill Avenue. Featuring more space for officers and jail cells, the new building cost $4.43 million.
And what would a May in St. Albert be without a coaching change for the Saints? The team introduced Mark Holick, a Royal Bank Cup-winning bench boss with the Surrey South Eagles. Holick took over from Gord Thibodeau, who had left the club to take a position with the Fort McMurray Oil Barons. Holick was the 19th coach in the 27-year history of the franchise. The RCMP were also busy in Deer Ridge courtesy of a shoplifter caught at Zellers. Evidence found on the man led police to the Deer Ridge Drive home, which turned out to house a meth lab, equipment for a marijuana grow-op and a substantial quantity of the rape drug GHB. A total of 60 charges were laid as a result.
Marijuana also made headlines in May 2004 but in a unique way. The hustle and bustle of docket court at the St. Albert Provincial Court house was briefly interrupted when a police officer found a suspicious package affixed to the building’s exterior, next to the entrance to the prisoners’ entry. The police called in the Explosive Disposal Unit from K Division headquarters, including a robot, to investigate. There was nothing explosive about the package, which was found to contain 28 grams of dry marijuana. Elsewhere, city council took a stand against lighting up a cigarette in a public place. Council passed its sweeping smoking ban that took effect July 1 of that year for all restaurants and other public buildings. Casinos, bingos and bars had to be smoke-free by July 1, 2005. Council also decided to put another one of its controversial decisions to a public vote and supported a plebiscite on the construction of a multi-purpose leisure centre in Campbell Business Park. The vote was held in conjunction with the October municipal election.
May 2006 saw a surprise in St. Albert’s courts as Lisa Anne McKay, charged with the second-degree murder of local realtor William Maloney, 63, entered an unexpected guilty plea to the lesser charge of manslaughter. Maloney’s body had been found on Feb. 10. He had been stabbed to death. Sentencing was put over to a later date. In an attempt to battle vandalism, the city’s Task Force on Vandalism and Youth came forward with a proposal for a curfew, similar to one enacted in Sherwood Park. While Mayor Paul Chalifoux publicly stated he didn’t support a youth curfew, council promised to study the issue.
May 2007 brought change to the city’s hockey landscape. Four years after the Saints left town, the Fort Saskatchewan Traders were moving into Performance Arena at Servus Credit Union Place and the new team needed a new name and a coach. After a two-week contest, the team was officially christened the St. Albert Steel. And its first head coach was none other than former Edmonton Oiler Norm Lacombe. It was a rare piece of good news for a facility that was beginning to show some warning signs in its first year of operations — a quarterly report from the city noted the potential for a $900,000 operational deficit after the first year due to slower-than-expected membership sales. But whatever came out of it would be someone else’s problem as Chalifoux announced he would not seek another term, instead running for the local Progressive Conservative nomination to replace Mary O’Neill, who had been voted out of office during the last provincial election.
The quarterly report to city council was partially correct — Servus Place did post a deficit in its first year, but the total, according to May 2008 figures, added up to about $2.2 million. Shortly after that news was announced, the city sent out its tax notices and received a collective earful in response. Due to substantial increases in the assessment of homes in the previous year, some residents found themselves paying as much as 40 per cent more in property taxes. But there was growing cause to celebrate in St. Albert with the city’s 150th anniversary coming up in 2011. Former alderman Margaret Plain was selected as chair of the anniversary celebration committee.
The court house was the sight of an unusual and horrific ongoing case in May 2009 as Anton Paul Rapati, already jailed two years for committing several sexual assaults on local children in the 1970s after which he fled the country, had another four months tacked onto his sentence for another series of assaults between 1974 and 1978. Elsewhere, it was a good month for the city, which was able to unveil three new projects. First was a bronze statue of Lois Hole, entitled A Legacy of Love and Learning. Following that, the city finally announced the start of curbside recycling as well as investing in speed-on-green technology, which would allow red-light cameras to photograph speeding drivers passing through green lights.
The following May, crews were out on Riel Pond, pumping the pesticide Rotenone into the water to kill off the invasive threespine stickleback. The move allowed the city to remove the screens separating the pond from the Sturgeon River. But at the courthouse, in what was a bizarre first, a former postal carrier pleaded guilty to stealing more than a metric tonne of mail — 160,000 pieces in total — dating back to 2001, which he kept in his residence and a storage locker. While most of it was advertising material, some addressed mail was included. Canada Post promised to do everything it could to deliver the stolen mail.
Peter Boer is an editor at the Gazette.
