W O R D S
heritage
More than 750 features on Edmonton buildings, people and places now available for purchase. Please email for a complete listing. |
[1] Alberta's Government House
[2] Edmonton's Natural Spring Brewery
[3] Blanchett Neon: An Illuminating Story
[5] Edmonton's Grand Courthouse
Alberta's Government House
Excerpt from 2,000 word feature
Government House has stood for 90 years at what is now the heart of the city on the grounds of the Provincial Archives of Alberta at 12845 102nd Avenue. But when the impressive sandstone building was being considered shortly after Alberta became a province in 1905, the area was out past the western edge of Edmonton proper, in a new district called Glenora. Situated on a high promontory overlooking the North Saskatchewan River, the site, purchased from businessman James Carruthers for $33,571, afforded a grand view of the river valley and the city of Edmonton to the east.
A newspaper story published in mid September 1910 gushed about the new project and its location. “The site for the new building comprises twenty-nine acres in what is admittedly the most attractive section of a city which, in the beauty of its situation, has been more highly favored by Mother Nature than any of the cities of the West. The Government House, which will be a structure not unworthy of its surroundings, will be set in spacious grounds on the brow of the hill commanding a wide-stretching view of the beautiful Saskatchewan valley with its lofty treeclad banks, providing a scene of unequalled loveliness.
At a time that most Edmonton buildings were wood framed or clad with locally fired bricks, the choice of sandstone set it building apart – then and now. The massive house, along with the new sandstone Alberta Legislature Building, were intended to evoke a sense of European permanence in contrast to the ephemeral shacks, relatively speaking, that were so typical of the province’s early trading, farming and mining economy. So elaborate was the detailing and the stonework that skilled stonemasons were brought from Scotland to complete the project.
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Edmonton's Natural Spring Brewery
Excerpt from 2,000 word feature
To the unsuspecting eye, it might be just another brick building hunkered in the trees of the North Saskatchewan River valley. But the vintage structure at 10542 Fort Hill, just below Saskatchewan Drive, has a connection to Edmonton history as one of the birthplaces of the city's brewing industry.
The origin reaches back to 1894, when a German man named Robert Ochsner arrived in Edmonton. Ochsner had left Germany when he was just 18 and travelled to Chicago during the time men of European extraction like Budweiser, Schlitz, Pabst and Busch were making names for themselves in the American brewing trade.
Shortly after his arrival in Edmonton, he discovered a beautiful clear spring burbling from the wooded hillside just below today's Saskatchewan Drive on the western edge of Queen Elizabeth Park. Ochsner and his wife (whose first and maiden names seem to have been obscured by time) built a brewery from lumber ferryman and lumber baron John Walter gave them on credit and went to work converting the bubbling spring into Ochsner's beer beginning in March 1894.
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Blanchett Neon: An Illuminating Story
Excerpt from 800 word feature
You've probably seen the name "Blanchett Neon" on signs all over Edmonton. The company has been part of the city's sign industry for more than half a century.
But what you might not know is how it all got started. Blanchett Neon was an offshoot of Blanchett Decorators, originated by George Richard Blanchett shortly after his arrival here in 1912. But it wasn't anything quite so elaborate then.
Blanchett was a painter and decorator who was born and raised in England and emigrated to Canada with his wife, Edith Rose (Burridge) and young son, George William. His business, at 10312 – 115th Street offered painting and paperhanging services.
A second son, Edward Raymond Blanchett (Ted) was born here and, as the business grew, so did the children. The influence of his artistic and business savvy father apparently paid off and in 1924, George William, just 15, went to work for Clyde Hook, the founder of Hook Signs.
Clyde began teaching him how to produce commercial signs, bulletins and pictorials. The time with Hook was to shape and illuminate the rest of George Blanchett's life.
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Edmonton's Town Crier
Excerpt from 800 word feature
Pete Jamieson was one of Edmonton's most colourful characters. For more than 50 years, he strode the streets of downtown, barking out all manner of vital (and not so vital!) information. The weather forecast, sports scores, the latest specials and whatever else tickled his fancy, was broadcast via his loud voice and sometimes through a megaphone plastered with Edmonton Eskimos stickers.
Proudly erect, shoulders back, head up, eyes looking straight ahead as he strode briskly and purposefully. "The weather is continuing clear," he would bellow. "Big sale at Kresge's. Eskimos play tonight. Present time is 12:08. Winds are from the northwest and the high today is forecast to be . . . "
Always adorned with a flamboyant hat and sometimes wearing a sandwich board and sneakers and outfits ranging from the outrageous to the traditional, Pete Jamieson became a fixture in downtown Edmonton. He came to be known as Sandwich Board Pete, Pitchman Pete and Edmonton's unofficial town crier.
His life as Edmonton pitchmen began in 1935 when, as Pete told it, he was given his start by Nelson Eddy. "I was working at an usher at the Dreamland Theatre and the manager was despairing because of the empty seats," Pete was quoted as telling an Edmonton Journal reporter in 1978. "He asked me to walk up and down Jasper Avenue to drum up some business. I jumped at the chance."
The manager was pleasantly surprised when "Naughty Marietta" starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald began playing to full houses. Soon, Pete was wearing sandwich boards and barking advertisements for other ventures, too.
My father tells the story of the time he and my mother arrived in Edmonton in 1957 and mom encountered Pete for the first time. "She just stood there, mouth open," Dad chuckles. "She couldn't get over this guy, walking down the street, yelling. We'd never seen anything quite like that."
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Edmonton's Grand Courthouse
Excerpt from 800 word feature
With due respect to Edmonton's modern court house, erected in the early 1970s, our city's most glorious courthouse was a grand structure that held court - literally! - for 60 years. It was a Classically influenced structure that occupied 122 feet of 100th Street just north of 102nd Avenue and proclaimed its significance in the community through architecture that was, at once, imposing and elegant.
Distinguished by six massive columns, the building was constructed between the autumn of 1908 and the summer of 1912 and a cost of somewhat more than $250,000. It answered the growing city's dire need for a judicial hall and replaced the Sheriff Robertson Hall on Jasper Avenue, which had served as Edmonton's place of court proceedings since 1892.
Tenders for construction of the building were requested on May 8th, 1908, while Building Permit #360 was issued July 10th, 1908 for a structure which the Alberta government estimated would cost $230,000. Early design work was completed by Department of Public Works architect (whose name has been obscured in the shifting sands of time) while final details were overseen by Allan Merrick Jeffers, the provincial government architect who is credited with the design of the Alberta Legislature.
The Edmonton Daily Capital, reporting on the opening of the building in its July 26th, 1912 edition, waxed poetic about the architecture. At least I think that's what the following passage means. "The edifice, which is two storeys in height, and the large entrances on McDougall (100th Street) and Elizabeth (102nd Avenue), both in the Ionic order, produce an effect which is purely classic. The entrances are approached by steps in British Columbia granite, and at the top of the steps are six massive columns, each three feet in diameter and 28 feet in height, surmounted with a stone pediment, the tympanum of which has a seal of the province executed in carved stone."
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The Railway Made Calder
Excerpt from 800 word feature
It was the railway that gave birth to the town of Calder and, more than 90 years later, the railway remains its lifeblood. As they have since 1909, the sound of trains echoes around the community and, even as the city has grown around and beyond it, Calder has retained its working class roots.
Back at the beginning Calder was known as West Edmonton Village but the name never really stuck. People didn't much like the new moniker and continued to call it Calder, as the district was known, apparently named for an early area landowner or a borough in England.
The Hudson's Bay Company also played a part in the establishment of the community. The firm, hoping to benefit from rising real estate prices in pre World War I Edmonton, delayed the sale and development of about 1,600 acres of its reserve lands. This block of empty land extended from 107th Avenue north to 122nd Avenue and from 101st Street west to 122nd Street.
With no development permitted in that zone, a number of small subdivisions were established near its boundaries and just outside the city limits. That's why the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway located its round house, repair shop and shunting yards near 127th Avenue, west of 118th Street. The facility was built on land purchased by the McRoberts Brothers in 1900 for $4.50 and sold to the railway for an undisclosed sum.
Much of the 160-acres of the village was put on the market by a firm called the Calder Land Company Limited and its principal agent, J.R. McIntosh. "A FUTURE HIVE OF INDUSTRY," trumpeted a 1911 newspaper ad. "45 DWELLINGS, 3 STORES, 3 CHURCHES, 1 SCHOOL and a modern and complete TELEPHONE SERVICE."
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