Delaney Place is a small cul-de-sac in Deer Ridge that looks just like many other streets in St. Albert.
But unlike most streets, it's named after a living family in the city: The Delaneys. An active member of the St. Albert Road Runners and St. Albert Track Club, Basil Delaney has poured many hours into coaching young athletes and helped start St. Albert's 10 Mile Road Race, which is now in its 27th year. He's married to Roseanne, who was head of circulation at the public library for years.
Don't feel bad if you didn't know – Basil says the street sign was up for a year before he learned about it.
"I had very little to do with it," he says. "It was very low key." He didn't even know his family had received the honour until a friend told him about it.
"It probably reflects who you are," the friend joked. "They put your name on a street that's a dead end!"
There's a lot of history behind the street names of St. Albert, but unless you're a historian, there's a good chance you won't know it.
Mayor Nolan Crouse finds that frustrating. The city did a good job of commemorating former mayor John LeClair with LeClair Way, for example, "but we could do more … there's pride there."
About six months ago, he asked the city to revamp the policy it uses to name its streets. That revision is set to reach council by the end of the year.
St. Albert should honour those who contribute to its development, Crouse says. "What I want to do is continue to capture history."
The signs, they are a changing
A History of the Street Names in St. Albert (available on the city's website) lists about 133 streets named after people, places or organizations significant to the city's history. St. Albert has about 470 streets.
Relatively few of the street names in St. Albert have a historic connection, according to Ray Pinco, chair of the St. Albert Historical Society. "There are a lot of them that are just names that happened to fit in the subdivision."
Danbridge Place is named after a town in Connecticut, for example (according to documents provided by Crouse), while Delbrook Boulevard takes its name from a street in North Vancouver.
"Is that really what we want to be doing?" Crouse asks. "Naming a street after a street in [North] Vancouver for the next 100 years? How about naming it after people who built this community?"
Even those streets that do have historic names don't get much recognition, Pinco continues. Long-time residents might recognize family names like Akins or Arcand, but newcomers would be hard-pressed to realize there's a story behind streets named Wakefield, Fraser or Perrault.
Ann Ramsden, director of heritage at the Musée Héritage Museum pulls out a map of St. Albert from 1914. "The early maps show very different names," she notes. Mission Ave. is known as Emery on this one, for example – a reference to Zoë LeBlanc Emery, one of St. Albert's first Grey Nuns – while almost every other street in Mission is named after a saint or religious figure. Streets starting with "M" are few and far between.
St. Albert didn't have a formal naming policy until 1986, according to city documents. Prior to then, recalls former city arbourist John Beedle, city planners would sometimes draw on a list of historic names, but would also use ones that were just easy to spell. They even asked him to come up with a bunch of names once.
John Bocock, whose family has farmed in and around St. Albert for about a century, says Bocock Place got its name after a brief chat between his dad, Geoff, and then-city engineer Jan Maandag in the 1960s.
"After church one day, he just asked Dad if we'd mind if he named a street after us," he says, "so he said, 'Sure.' That's how it happened."
Stories behind the names
The 1986 naming policy says that the city should have the name of each of its neighbourhoods begin with a different letter of the alphabet, and that each street in those neighbourhoods should start with that letter. Names with historical or community importance to St. Albert would be used when possible, and arterials would be named for former mayors.
Many of the city's streets reflect its religious roots. There are four named after Vital Grandin, for example, the city's first bishop, a bunch for former Oblates, and one for founding father Albert Lacombe. Others, such as Gate Avenue, refer to long-time city employees such as parks planner Andre Gate.
Burns Street is named for Pat Burns, Pinco says, a Calgary businessman and a good friend of Father Lacombe. When Father Alphonse Jan needed cash for the statue of Lacombe atop Mission Hill, Burns chipped in thousands of dollars for it – a tidy sum in the 1920s.
Atkinson Place takes its name from Susie Atkinson, operator of St. Albert's first public library. "Before there was a library," says Pinco, "she would drive her personal vehicle with apple boxes to the University of Alberta Extension library," bringing back books for residents to borrow.
Initially based out of her car, the library bounced between several buildings before getting its first permanent home on what is now the site of the provincial building. "She was a mover and a shaker," Pinco says, and was heavily involved with the Red Cross and Woman's Institute.
One of the stranger street name stories concerns Perron, or, as it was once known, Piron Street.
René Alexandre Piron was a canon in France from a well-to-do family, Pinco says, and donated a large church bell to St. Albert in 1874. That bell still hangs atop Mission Hill. Archival maps suggest that St. Albert had named a street after him as early as 1914.
Council voted to change Piron St. to Perron in 1967. According to the July 26 issue of that year's Gazette, council justified the change by saying that the street was supposed to have been named after former mayor Fleuri Perron during St. Albert's original 1885 survey, but was dubbed "Piron" due to a spelling mistake.
That's doubtful, says Ramsden, as Perron was just 19 at that time and not even in St. Albert. "It would have been unusual to name it after a 19-year-old," she says, but typical to name it after a prominent religious figure like Piron.
Since the Perrons were influential figures in the city, Beedle suspects that council let this explanation stand for political reasons. "I think they all knew perfectly well who the priest was — Piron, and not Perron."
Not that Perron wasn't a good person to recognize, of course. According to the St. Albert Historical Society's archives, Perron not only served as city councillor and mayor, but he also built the city's first brick factory and flour mill. He even ran a paddle-wheel boat named the St. Theresa in 1912, one that would travel up the Sturgeon River to Big Lake.
Bringing history to life
Ramsden says she gets occasional visits from residents interested in the history behind street names, and says it would be nice if the city did more to highlight it. "It does help keep the history alive."
The city could create a system of markers to highlight streets whose names have history behind them, Pinco suggests. "If people knew that their streets had a history connected to St. Albert, they might be interested in looking it up."
Having a street named after you makes you feel like you've made a contribution to the city, Delaney says. "You feel like you've had the opportunity to help kids become great people."
And, of course, whenever he has family over, he always makes sure to take them to the sign for a picture so he can say, "Look! This is my street, here!"
