Popular food truck event returns

A great community picnic was how Shari Strachan with the Musée Héritage Museum described last year's wildly successful food truck jamboree at the St. Albert Grain Elevator Park.

It was so popular, that food truck owners and residents continuously asked for the event to be held again, she said. Now, the Arts and Heritage Foundation is fulfilling the community’s wish.

Eleven food trucks will set up outside the St. Albert Grain Elevator Park between 1 p.m. and 7 p.m. on Sunday, serving a range of comfort food from around the world. Museum staff hope for a good turnout, and good weather.

“This one, because it’s on Father’s Day, it has a special emphasis on the kids,” said Strachan. “It’s a place to bring dad and for doing something local.”

Attendance rates for the grain elevators are always on the rise, she said. They are a popular destination for weddings, office parties and photography sessions, and on a regular day 20 to 50 visitors will stop by the historic site.

But when the food trucks arrived for the first time last year, it got really busy. More than 2,300 people attended the one-day event. Strachan hopes numbers will be up again this year.

While most of this day is about enjoying a good meal in good company, there is also an educational element to the event. Staff will be available all day to give tours, answer questions and share the history of the site. The tours are free, though the museum appreciates donations, which help keep the site open.

“It is an educational event in that we are sharing these buildings with the community because they belong to the community,” she said. “They belong to the people of the community and so to have a site like this to enjoy, it’s important.”

The event will also feature a penny carnival, face painting, beer gardens (from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m.) and live music. The food bank will be at the event to collect donations, so Strachan would like to remind people to bring some non-perishable items.

To honour National Aboriginal Day, the museum is also setting up its canvas teepee on the grounds and is hosting an information session about the city’s new healing garden.

Last fall, former Nechi Institute CEO Maggie Hodgson and United Church Rev. James Ravenscroft teamed up to propose the creation of the garden to serve as a healing place and reminder of the city’s history with Indian residential schools. St. Albert was once host to two such schools.

The garden is expected to open across from St. Albert Place along the Sturgeon River and east of the Children’s Bridge. On Sunday, children can make heart flowers at the grain elevators. The flowers will later be placed in the healing garden.

“It’s the perfect day to launch that initiative,” said Strachan. “Now that they designated a spot for (the healing garden) we need to start talking about it.”

But mostly, the food truck event wants to encourage people to meet and hang out. Strachan recalls hearing a lot of ‘Oh, I haven’t seen you in ages’ at least year’s jamboree. She thinks the nostalgic feel that comes with the old buildings helps to make the event the perfect communal gathering.

“I takes you back to a time when there was not a lot of electronic stuff around and it takes you back to those old times where it was really just about sitting and talking and eating and laughing and sharing, I guess,” she said.

For those who will miss Sunday’s event, the food trucks will return to the grain elevators once more this year, on August 28. Whether it will ever become a monthly event, though, remains to be seen. People have asked for the event to happen more often but Strachan remains vague about making promises.

“It will be interesting to see because the food truck kind of phenomena, it will be interesting to see how that goes and we will definitely be a part of it when we can,” she said.