Prism glass: the stained glass used in storefront windows historically found in commercial buildings on main street. The shimmering, textured surfaces of original prism glass transom windows — running the width of a historic storefront above the main display windows — can be a rare treat when they’re intact.
Sometimes referred to as clerestory windows, traditional transom windows on main street were sometimes equipped with special prism glass: sheets of glass composed of small panels, each roughly 15 cm square, featuring a distinctive prismatic or wedge-like pattern cast into the interior-facing surface (see photograph below). Some panels also featured patterns cast into the outer face too. Assembled into panels using cames, or narrow bars of lead or zinc, prism glass transom windows were popular in pre-World War I commercial buildings when interior electric lighting was relatively weak and inefficient. With sunlight free and plentiful, especially in Alberta, the prismatic panels were oriented in such a way as to capture incoming light and refract or deflect it deep into the store within.
A close-up of a piece of prism glass from the Renwick Building, a Provincial Historic Resource on Fort Macleod’s main street (Courtesy of Fraser Shaw, Historic Resources Management Branch).
Given their relative rarity, the analogy to stained glass windows of churches and other buildings isn’t entirely out of place. Like stained glass, the glass itself is often coloured: manganese added during the manufacturing process to make the naturally green glass clearer often turned a purplish colour after decades of exposure to ultraviolet radiation in sunlight. (The colour also appears in some old telegraph line insulators and the now almost-vanished sidewalk “skylights” — which are a story of their own). You can spot prism glass in certain parts of Calgary and Edmonton and on some of Alberta’s historic main streets, although it is easily mistaken with so-called “reeded” glass, similar glass panels impressed with narrow ridges rather than the unique prismatic profile specially oriented to pull sunlight into store interiors. Sometimes only close inspection can distinguish the two.
Why is prism glass so rare now? Like many features of historic buildings, particularly in the commercial district, these components were subject to changing fashion, retailing trends and, of course, the rigours of our climate. The benefit of prism glass and transom windows declined as electric lighting improved in efficiency and affordability, particularly with the mid-century introduction of fluorescent lighting. Prism glass transom windows were traditionally paired with retractable awnings, which allowed the store’s proprietor to regulate the amount of light coming into the store. As awnings went out of fashion and were removed, the transom windows often pulled in so much sunlight that stores were often too brightly lit, hot and stuffy. The unrelenting sunlight would also fade display items.
An original prism (or possibly reeded) glass transom window on the Bell Block, a large late commercial style building on Macleod Trail in Calgary (Courtesy of Fraser Shaw, Historic Resources Management Branch).
Physical deterioration of course also played a part: decades of thermal expansion and contraction, exposure to moisture, and wind loading took its toll on the delicate assemblies, causing cames and soldered joints to fatigue or break, with the eventual result that many transom windows were removed or covered with painted plywood sheets. Changing retail fashion assisted the process: as automobile use increased throughout the twentieth century, so did the need for larger, illuminated signs. Prism glass and transom windows, having outlived their original purpose, were covered over or removed with “slip cover” remodeling of main street storefronts in the 1930s onward.
Today, historic transom windows, and especially those of rare prism glass, are coveted historic building elements that many building owners want to restore. Sometimes intact original windows are preserved behind later materials; often, however, they need extensive repairs. Where that’s the case, there are excellent resources to assist in restoration.
For information on conservation prism glass or other elements of a historic resource, contact your heritage conservation advisor.
Written by: Fraser Shaw, Heritage Conservation Advisor.
Visitors to the Town of Drumheller can now learn more about the history, geology and natural resources of the community with the installation of a new Alberta Historical Resources Foundation Heritage Marker. Combining text with contemporary and archival photographs, the marker describes how the forces of nature shaped the area’s striking landscape and left the region rich in the two resources that would define Drumheller’s future – coal and dinosaur fossils.
The Drumheller Heritage Marker up-close (Courtesy of Stefan Cieslik, Historic Resources Management Branch).
It was coal that first attracted the attention of railway and mining investors, who established a townsite to support the booming coal industry. By the end of World War One, the Drumheller region was one of Canada’s leading coal producers. The area also caught the imagination of fossil hunters, who flocked to the region from 1910 onward in search of fossils like the massive Albertosaurus skull unearthed by Joseph B. Tyrrell in 1884. The abundance of dinosaur bones made Drumheller a natural home for the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology, one of the world’s leading facilities for the research and presentation of prehistoric life.
The marker was installed on November 20, 2014, along Highway 9, one-and-a-half kilometers north of the Town of Drumheller. The Town of Drumheller applied for the development of the heritage marker through the Alberta Heritage Markers Program. The program was established in 1955 to promote greater awareness of the historic people, places, events and themes that have defined the character of our province. The program brings Alberta’s dynamic history alive through heritage markers placed at roadside pullouts, within parks and in other community locales.
Written by: Allan Rowe, Historic Places Research Officer.
I came this close to writing this post in the third person. I then returned to my senses, and decided to just go for it and write a brief personal message here to you terrific RETROactive readers. I’ll be moving on from my much-loved role of Manager, Municipal Heritage Services. In early February, I’ll be returning to my hometown of Chilliwack, B.C., where I’ll be serving as Executive Director of that historic community’s Museum and Archives.
Matthew Francis led the Municipal Heritage Partnership Program and the Alberta Main Street Program from 2007-2015
My long-time colleague Michael Thome, who will be serving as Acting Manager, asked me to share a few fun memories. So here goes:
Spending more than 100 days ‘on the road’ in 2006, when we were launching the Municipal Heritage Partnership Program, conducting “MHPP Roadshows” in Edmonton, Fort McMurray, Grande Prairie, Red Deer, Calgary, Lethbridge, and Medicine Hat, as well as presenting to over 75 municipal councils! You don’t realize the sheer scale, breadth, and beauty of Alberta until you get out driving its highways and backroads. Most people don’t realize that a municipality like Mackenzie County or Wood Buffalo are larger than Switzerland!
Getting to know all of the best burgers and fries places across Alberta. (You’ll have to get in touch with me if you want access to this top-secret list!)
Launching the Municipal Heritage Forum as a “Summit for Stakeholders” in 2006. Back then, there were lots of people doing great local heritage conservation work across Alberta, but most of them didn’t know each other well. That first Forum, which we put on at the World Trade Centre in Edmonton – gave people a chance to get to know each other, and put a face to a name. After that, people doing heritage in Smoky Lake County or Yellowhead County felt free to call other people they had met, ask questions, and share what had worked for them. Since then the Forum has of course grown, and I am thrilled to see how delegates have really taken ownership of it and made it their own dynamic, learning community.
We saw a new way forward for the Alberta Main Street Program, and built a flexible and sustainable paradigm of doing a fantastic program, that needed a new approach. Now, we have a tremendous, creative network of historic communities (Lethbridge, Olds, Old Strathcona, Camrose, and Wainwright), animating their heritage commercial districts with energy, conservation, and high-quality urbanism.
I remember attending one Council meeting (at a municipality which shall remain nameless), where the delegation presenting before me was a zealous farmer who came in coveralls, straight from the harvest fields – and slammed a heavy rock down on the Council table – THUD! He was irate and relayed the story that the County staff must have knocked this rock into his field during Winter snow removal, as he insisted he “hadn’t had a rock like that in his field for three generations!” The rock had been kicked up and shattered the window of his combine. He requested compensation for half the cost of replacing the damaged window. I thought the man’s claim was reasonable. Before you knew it – there was a motion passed to provide the compensation. Now that’s democracy in action! (That same County did then proceed to do some tremendous heritage planning work over the next few years, legally protecting a number of its significant historic places through Municipal Historic Resources designation).
We saw the number of designated Municipal Historic Resources (legally protected by local governments) grow exponentially, from under 70 in 2006 to well over 300 in 2015, with 240 already listed on the Alberta Register of Historic Places!
Of all the memories of projects – from Pincher Creek down south to Fort Vermilion up north – I still have to say the greatest memories are the people. Working with local Heritage Advisory Boards was so enjoyable because the “why” is so compelling. The people who do it are there for a reason – they love their historic places! It was also great to work collaboratively with the municipal staff and heritage planners across the province. I know that I have learned a lot from their knowledge and experience – and there is still so much to learn! And, of course, I had the privilege of working as colleagues day in, day out with the best team of heritage professionals in Canada here at Historic Resources Management.
Thanks – to all of you – for the memories! Let’s keep on creating a future for our historic places.
Written by: Matthew Francis, former Manager, Municipal Heritage Services.
Canadian National Railways Steam Locomotive 6060 in Stettler (2009). A unique Provincial Historic Resource.
As Manager of the Historic Places Research and Designation Program, one of Brenda Manweiler’s primary responsibilities is the Provincial Historic Resources Designation Program. The goal of the Provincial Historic Resources Designation Program is to identify, evaluate, and designate those historic resources that are most significant to the province as a whole. Currently there are some 360 sites protected as Provincial Historic Resources in Alberta, with several more added every year.
The designation program is almost entirely driven by citizen input. Applications for provincial designation come from the public, usually the property owner but sometimes also from other individuals or groups concerned about the long-term future of a resource.
Once a resource is designated, its owner cannot destroy, disturb, alter, restore, or repair it without written approval from the provincial government. But the owner gains tangible benefits, including access to conservation grants and technical advice, and the intangible benefit of knowing that a valued property will be preserved and protected into the future.
Brenda feels these citizen advocates could take even greater advantage of the Provincial Historic Resources Designation Program if they better understood the designation criteria. Here are some key things she’d like people to know:
A property doesn’t have to be grand or architecturally detailed, nor associated with some famous person to be designated. It doesn’t even have to be a building.
“I would love to see more of these unique historic places,” she says. “One of the gaps that we have in our family of historic resources is sports and leisure sites,” she continues. “Canada is such a hockey country; Alberta is such a hockey province. Where’s an ice rink? Where’s the baseball field? I’d love to designate some sites that help to celebrate Alberta’s strong history in athletic pursuits.”
Provincial designation isn’t better than municipal designation, just different.
Northern Defence Radar Station, Cold Lake
Brenda explains: “Provincial significance is determined by looking through a pretty big lens. Is this site significant to all Albertans? Has the site helped shape the province into what it is today? Municipal designations have a narrower scope, a local lens to look through to determine significance.” But a municipally designated site can be just as significant as a provincial one—often even more so—within its own community context. Both levels of designation offer the same form of protection: the resources cannot be altered without approval from the designating authority.
She continues: “We have a variety of sites throughout the province that have been designated as both Municipal and Provincial Historic Resources. People might think that’s just duplication, so why bother? But I think it’s important to note the perspective that we come at it from. A provincial point of view is going to be lot different than a local perspective, so a site could end up being designated under both categories for different reasons.”
An example is Calgary City Hall, which is designated by the federal, provincial, and municipal governments. Both the provincial and municipal designations recognize the building’s significance as Calgary’s seat of government, and as an excellent example of Richardsonian Romanesque architecture. But the municipal designation also notes that it is “the earliest known example of steel-frame construction in Calgary” and that it was designed by a prominent Calgary-based architect.
Designation is not just about the sites and structures; it’s also about people and how they’ve used these places.
Looking down into the Whitecourt / Woodlands Meteorite Impact Crater (2007)
The most modest or ordinary place could be where a remarkable person lived or worked, or where some once-crucial, unusual, or game-changing human activity took place—and that’s what makes the site historically significant.
One of Brenda’s favourite examples is the Owen Residence/Dominion Meteorological Station in Edmonton. Inside this ordinary American four-square dwelling was “arguably the most significant meteorological post outside of Toronto” (according to the Statement of Significance). Even more remarkable, it was operated by “Weather Lady” Eda Owen, one of the few female meteorologists in the world working at a major station.
Another very modest but significant place is the Community Rest Room in Ponoka. When farm families came into town to conduct business, men could congregate in their choice of hotels, bars, and pool halls. This facility provided a much-needed retreat for women and children, offering not only toilets and showers but also a safe and social meeting place—and even a venue for political organizing.
“So much of the significance associated with Provincial Historic Resources comes down to the unique stories—the events, people, and places that have helped to make Alberta what it is today,” Brenda says.
Miners using a universal coal cutter at Lethbridge Collieries, ca. 1950 Source: Provincial Archives of Alberta, A9908
Alberta Culture has developed a comprehensive website that explores and promotes a deeper appreciation for the rich history of energy resources in our province and their role in shaping Alberta’s past, present, and future. The Energy Resources Heritage website explores the Alberta history of coal, conventional oil, oil sands, natural gas, electricity and alternative energy. It also profiles Bitumount, the pioneering industrial facility north of Fort McMurray that laid the foundations for Alberta’s modern oil sands industry.
The coal section of the Energy Resource Heritage Website examines the history of coal from the earliest times through the Industrial Revolution and the development of the coal industry in Alberta. It explores how the science and technology associated with coal mining has evolved, and how the industry responded to the sharp decline in demand for coal with the rise of oil and natural gas use after World War Two. It also explores topics relevant to the social history of the coal industry in Alberta, such as the evolution of coal towns; the roles played by women and children in coal communities; and the emergence of organized labour, which fought for better wages and safer working conditions in one of the world’s most dangerous industries.
Two women stand in a cookhouse at Newcastle Mine in Drumheller Valley, ca. 1912; Newcastle was one of the first mine operations in Drumheller Valley to establish a cookhouse, which fed up to 100 miners three times a day. Source: Courtesy of Atlas Coal Mine National Historic Site
The history of coal use by humans stretches back thousands of years, as coal’s ready availability and different properties have long made it a valuable resource in many parts of the world. In addition to burning it for heat, ancient peoples used coal for cultural and artistic expression. Bronze Age people in Wales, for example, incorporated coal into their burial customs, while ancient artisans in China carved coal into jewelry and other ornamental items. Similarly, First Nations people in Alberta used coal for decoration and carving, such as the extraordinary bison sculptures unearthed in a farmer’s field near Barrhead in 1949 (now housed at the Royal Alberta Museum).
An Alberta coal company advertises in Ontario, n.d. Source: Provincial Archives of Alberta, A3975
The key turning point in the history of coal was the Industrial Revolution. As the primary fuel that drove steam engines in factories and railroads, coal became extremely valuable and was mined on an enormous scale. Railways quickly took over from watercraft as the most important means of commercial transportation, which in turn had a decisive impact on the history of Alberta. In 1881, the Canadian Pacific Railway was contracted to build a railway line across Canada and the company turned to the rich coal seams of Alberta as a crucial source of fuel. The province’s early coal industry was centred in southern Alberta (primarily near Lethbridge and in the Crowsnest Pass) but as rail lines spread throughout the province other centres of coal production emerged, including Drumheller and the communities of the Coal Branch. The rise of major cities like Calgary and Edmonton further drove the demand for coal, both for heating and for the generation of electricity at the province’s earliest coal-fired power plants. Coal thus played a crucial role in the growth of Alberta in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries – it attracted investment and immigration and led to the development of some of Alberta’s earliest communities.
From the earliest use of coal to the challenges faced by the industry today, the coal section of the website offers visitors an introduction to the fascinating history of one of Alberta’s most important natural resources.
Lethbridge, an early coal producing centre, as it looked by November of 1886 Source: Galt Museum & Archives, P19770171000GP
Written by: Allan Rowe, Historic Places Research Officer
Gary Chen, Heritage Conservation Adviser for Northern Alberta
Gary Chen’s first job, after earning a diploma in Architectural Technology from the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, was for the Government of Alberta providing technical advice on the conservation of heritage buildings. That was back in 1976; he’s never left. “If you don’t love the job, you probably won’t be there that long,” he says.
Originally, he worked on both privately owned and crown-owned properties. When the Historic Places Stewardship Section was established in 1999, Gary became one of the advisers working in its Conservation Advisory Services, which provides help to private owners of older buildings, especially those that are designated as Provincial Historic Resources or that have the potential to be designated.
Originally just two advisers covered the entire province. “So we’d be traveling all over, but mind you, in those days, we didn’t have that many sites designated,” Gary recalls. “One day I could be way up north in Fort Vermilion and then the next day I might be down in Medicine Hat.” Fortunately, Gary has always enjoyed the travel that is a big part of his job. He says, “I’ve been to almost all four corners of the province…I learned a lot about Alberta history and the local history while doing the work.” Today there are five advisers, and Gary covers the northern part of the province.
The kinds of projects he advises on vary widely. His latest involvement with a major restoration project required attending biweekly meetings with the conservation architect and others responsible for a multiyear restoration of the Alberta Grain Company and Alberta Wheat Pool grain elevators in St. Albert: “We would discuss and explore anything, and sometimes even climb up the scaffolding and help look at it, and if they had some specific technical question we would try to find a way to get the work done.” He is now making frequent trips to Athabasca to discuss the conservation and continued use of a vacant school building and an old train station that are landmarks in the community.
St. Albert Grain Elevators, before and after restoration
Much of what he does is respond to requests for help from owners or stewards of individual properties—mainly homes but also churches, community buildings, and commercial structures.
“My job is partly just to help people to conserve their old buildings,” whether or not they are able to meet the criteria of being designated as historic, Gary says. Sometimes he discovers that a building has hidden potential. For example, it might have been covered by modern siding, but if that can be peeled back to expose the original facing, “the building will go back to its old charm,” he explains.
Even if an older building has been too greatly altered over time to meet the “integrity” criteria for heritage designation, Gary is still happy to visit and advise the owners: “The building may be carried down from their ancestors. I always regard those as their own history. I can still help them, give them advice so that they can be able to preserve their own history.”
The Heritage Conservation Advisers will get involved in a project at several stages. Sometimes owners of older buildings just want advice on how to solve a specific problem, such as a leaky roof. Often owners want to find out if their property might qualify for historic resource designation, which would allow them to apply for conservation grants from the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation. If the buildings are already designated, any changes to them must adhere to the Historical Resources Act and the Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada, so the advisers will provide pre-project guidance, monitor the work, and verify that it has been carried out appropriately. (The introduction of the Standards and Guidelines in 2003 greatly helped in explaining conservation principles and practices to the public, Gary notes.)
Requests for advice on repairs will almost always require a site visit for a “hands-on” look at the problem—climbing up ladders, crawling under floor joists, whatever it takes. Gary continues: “A lot of times we just use our trained eyes to catch the problem… Just based on my education, what I’ve learned, I could tell the owner ‘This beam is overloaded.’” He might send the owner a useful technical report. Sometimes the advisers will recommend that the owners hire a restoration architect, structural engineer, or other specialist. In that case, “our major job is to monitor… to make sure the work will be done properly even if they hire a professional.”
Back in the 1970s, when Gary started out in this field, there was little professional training available in the technical aspects of heritage conservation, so he learned on the job and through review of professional publications. “And in fact even today, I’m still learning because all these building technologies and materials change,” he says.
There have been many new tools for documenting and analyzing the buildings, notably digital photography. There are new materials available to replace or repair original historic fabric, and changing understanding about what methods and materials work best. For example, it was once considered a good idea to cover sandstone with sealant to stop it from weathering. But over time it was seen that this trapped moisture in the stone, leading to spalling (chipping or flaking) and other kinds of deterioration.
“Sometimes the challenge is to find new technology to help the old buildings continue to survive,” Gary says.
An even bigger challenge—and a fairly common one—is persuading owners to make the effort to undertake appropriate conservation of their historic buildings. Owners will wonder, for example, why they should try to retain their original wood windows, instead of just buying vinyl replacements from a hardware store. Or they’ll want to tear down walls to make rooms bigger. Or they’ll assume that it will be easier and cheaper to just demolish an existing building and design something new.
“If you’re willing to spend the time, you should be able to preserve what is there,” Gary says. And it’s important to try, he points out, “because, after all, it was a pioneer who came up with the idea, the design…and we have to respect their design…Sometimes you have to look at it almost like an antique…The rooms are maybe smaller and you prefer bigger, but you still respect how it was built.”
“You try to convince them, a lot of times, by slowly using different examples,” he says. “Sometimes I have to be flexible too. Basically, you allow them to make certain changes but maybe, with my advice, the change that they make is still sympathetic to the historic building.”
One of Gary’s favourite, but most challenging, projects was the restoration of the Grande Prairie High School—one that called for much consultation and compromise.
The two-storey brick Collegiate Gothic school was built in 1929 and converted to an art gallery in 1975. In 2007 a heavy snow storm caused the roof and a portion of the building to collapse. At that point, the City (the building’s owner) considered tearing it down and replacing it with a purpose-built gallery, with appropriate climate controls and other modern features.
Grande Prairie High School, with collapsed roof
But “because a portion of the roof has collapsed it doesn’t mean the building is totalled,” Gary says. “So we hired an architect” to show that the building could be repaired and retained. “Because of the [building’s provincial heritage] designation, we had to stand firm and say, ‘Preserve whatever is possible. It’s your history. If it’s gone, it’s gone. People can only remember by pictures.’” Many local citizens agreed. “After all, they don’t really have that many historic buildings in the city of Grande Prairie.”
The architect hired by the City proposed building a new structure that would enclose the old school building. “I look at it and I say, well, why don’t we do it the reverse way?”
And that’s what happened. “At the end, this building was preserved, but only the building shell….They designed a steel-frame building inside the brick building. Now they do have a [modern] art gallery, and I think they’re proud that the people can still be able to see what the old high school looked like.”
“It might not be the kind [of project] that we really like,” Gary concedes, since historic interior features were not retained, but it did succeed in saving and giving continued life to a significant community building.
Grande Prairie High School, with building shell preserved
This is what has kept Gary engaged in this work for nearly four decades. “We’re not only preserving a building, we’re preserving the history,” he says. And one learns about history “not just by reading a book, [or] looking at pictures. Sometimes we have the physical evidence right there, that really helps for future generations.”
As a social historian, I am fascinated by the history of holidays and public celebrations. Holidays are one way that political authority and popular culture influence each other: governments decide which holidays to recognise, but the people decide how to celebrate them. Records of these celebrations offer a unique window into the past, yielding insight into how our culture and society has (or has not) changed. In honour of this year’s September long weekend, I took the opportunity to look back at how Albertans celebrated Labor Day in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
The Calgary Lathers’ Union, Local 221, participating in an early twentieth-century Labour Day parade (ca. 1908). Courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Alberta, IR231
The Parliament of Canada passed legislation in 1894 setting aside the first Monday in September as a statutory holiday. The proclamation of this new holiday was one of the many recommendations in the final report of the Royal Commission on the Relations of Labour and Capital (1889), which had investigated conditions in factories and industrial worksites across Canada. Given the range of problems exposed by the Commission – including low wages, unsafe working conditions, and the widespread use of child labour – a new holiday was perhaps less urgently needed than other reforms. Nonetheless, the idea of a new holiday received widespread support, and Canada celebrated its first Labour Day on September 3, 1894.
In the heavily-industrialised cities of eastern Canada, this legislation merely caught up with what was already happening in many urban communities, where organised labour had started to take root in the late nineteenth century. Skilled workers such as carpenters, printers, stonemasons and pipefitters organised into craft unions to protect their particular interests. Leaders of these craft unions began to push hard for a holiday that recognised the importance of their labour, and many cities responded by declaring Labour Day a civic holiday in the 1880s. By the time Labour Day was declared a national holiday in 1894, workers in cities like Toronto, Hamilton and Montreal had already been celebrating it for many years.
By contrast, in the relatively new and lightly-industrialised cities of Alberta, the first Labour Day passed with little fanfare. “To-day is Labor day, or rather, no labor day,” the Edmonton Bulletin dryly commented in September 1894, “and as a consequence, the stores in town are closed.” Within a few years, however, each Labour Day was met with greater enthusiasm, and Albertans enjoyed the holiday in ways that would be familiar to us over a century later.
From the outset, sports were an important part of Labour Day celebrations. These miners pose with their trophy after winning the Labour Day Tug-of-War in Drumheller (ca. 1920). Courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Alberta, A15048.
Outdoor recreation soon became an important feature of the day, as sportsmen took advantage of the newly-created long weekend for hunting and fishing excursions. Organised sports were soon an important part of Labour Day as well, with bicycle races, track and field competitions, and team sports organised in different parts of the province by the late 1890s. In 1899, the Edmonton Cricket Club invited their rivals from Calgary for a tournament on the Labour Day weekend – an early example of the Calgary-Edmonton sports rivalry that remains such a feature of Labour Day in present-day Alberta.
Early Labour Day celebrations in Alberta were marked by sports, leisure and recreation, but had little to do with recognising the working class.
This changed after 1900 with the rise of organised labour in Alberta, particularly in its largest cities. Between 1900 and 1910, roughly one-third of the skilled tradesmen in Calgary and Edmonton organised into craft unions. As a result, Labour Day celebrations in Calgary and Edmonton began to resemble the much larger events held in eastern Canada, with parades, speeches, and labour-organised leisure events. In 1904, for example, the Edmonton Trades and Labour Council organised a “monster parade” of the city’s craft unions down Jasper Avenue. The men (and they were all men – early twentieth-century craft unions were exclusively male organisations) marched in orderly procession behind banners, flags and brass bands, wearing find clothes to emphasise their respectability to the general public. The parade included a number of floats where tradesmen demonstrated their craft to the audience. The day ended with organised sports, pitting one union against another in good-natured competition, and speeches where union leaders spoke about the contributions of labour to social and economic prosperity. In Calgary in 1907, an estimated two thousand people marched down Stephen Avenue, followed by an afternoon of sports and family entertainment in Victoria Park. Similar scenes played out on a smaller scale in Alberta’s coal mining centres such as Drumheller and the Crowsnest Pass.
Local 488 of the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters, Edmonton (1904). This portrait illustrates the images that craft unions wanted to project to the public during Labour Day parades – well dressed, respectable and dignified. Courtesy of the Provincial Archives of Alberta, A19670.
These events, of course, did not represent Alberta’s entire working class. Early Labour Day celebrations were driven by craft unions – unskilled workers had little official presence at the events. The labour contributions of women were not generally recognised at these events, though women certainly took part in the leisure and recreation activities after the parade. Further, the exclusive focus on organised labour was soon diluted by the participation of other community groups and organizations in the annual parade. Nonetheless, these parades represent a colourful and important part of Alberta’s labour history, when craft unions sought to use a holiday to claim public space and promote an image of respectability and dignity. Such events were very uncommon after World War Two, as Labour Day celebrations returned to the pattern established in the 1890s – informal recreation, family leisure, and of course, sports rivalries.
Written by: Allan Rowe, Historic Places Research Officer.
Sources
Bright, David. Limits of Labour: Class Formation and the Labour Movement in Calgary, 1883-1929. Vancouver: UBC Press, 1998.
Finkel, Alvin. Working People in Alberta: A History. Edmonton: Athabasca University Press, 2012.
Herron, Craig and Steve Penhold. The Workers’ Festival: A History of Labour Day in Canada. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.
Leaders in the Alberta Main Street Program met in Lethbridge this week for their quarterly network meeting and some strategic training. The Main Street Program is a dynamic network of communities engaged in community regeneration through heritage conservation.
Alberta Main Street Program Leaders during their Lethbridge meeting, August 276, 2104
As frequent RETROactive readers will remember, the network met earlier this year in Olds, and then also in May at the U.S. National Trust Main Street Conference in Detroit, Michigan. This meeting was the first for Old Strathcona since joining the program in May, and also the first for Camrose’s new Main Street Coordinator, Janet Hatch.
Each community presented a brief update on the work of their program, including organizational work in Camrose and Old Strathcona, and streetscape initiatives and adaptive re-use projects in Olds and Wainwright.
A walking tour was co-led by Ted Stilson, Executive Director of the Downtown Lethbridge BRZ and Main Street Coordinator, and Belinda Crowson, President of the Historical Society of Alberta. As we strolled through the historic downtown area, on a warm Farmer’s Market morning, Main Street leaders were able to see first-hand some of the significant heritage conservation work that has taken place in Lethbridge under the auspices of the Main Street Program.
Main Street leaders take notes on how Lethbridge’s historic downtown has thrived.
The group especially appreciated getting a tour of the work in progress on the Bow On Tong Building, which has also been featured on RETROactive.
After the walking tour and lunch at Mocha Cabana, one of the City of Lethbridge’s Municipal Historic Resources, historically known as Bell’s Welding, the group participated in a lively training workshop led by Jim Mountain, Director of Regeneration Projects for Heritage Canada the National Trust.
Jim Mountain, Director of Regeneration Projects for the Heritage Canada Foundation.
Jim facilitated a very informative, interactive session on “The Role of the Main Street Coordinator.” His insights, gleaned from years of experience as a practitioner in heritage-led regeneration – both in Fort Macleod and across Canada – were beneficial for both our seasoned veteran Coordinators and also our newer leaders.
Alberta’s Main Street leaders are already looking forward to the next network meeting and training session, to be held in Old Strathcona at the end of November.
Grier Block after rehabilitation was complete (July 2014).
The Grier Block, built in 1902, was one of the first and largest commercial buildings in Fort MacLeod. It has one of the only pressed-metal facades in western Canada, highly decorated with an elaborate cornice and pilasters (columns between the window bays). Peter Maas recalls that by the early 2000s, when he and his brother Hans purchased it, the once-distinguished building was “pretty dilapidated.” The brothers spent seven years on a major rehabilitation (working full time, without pay, living on the premises) that brought the building back as a prominent and attractive contributor to Fort Macleod’s historic downtown. They recently added some long-missing and key elements, returning the building to its full glory.
The rehabilitation work included adding insulation and making other upgrades to the building envelope (the outer shell separating the interior from the exterior), accurately replacing the historic windows and frames, and preserving the original pressed-metal facade still present on the upper floor. (For a detailed account of the rehabilitation of the Grier Block, see pages 6 to 9 of the Standards and Guidelines for the Conservation of Historic Places in Canada.)
Unfortunately, the first-storey cast-iron pilasters had been missing since the 1960s, so the brothers only restored what was there at the time. It was fairly common to remove decorative facades from commercial buildings during the 1950s, ’60s, and early ’70s, says Fraser Shaw, the Heritage Conservation Advisor for Southern Alberta. Ground-level elements corrode more readily. Also, at mid-century, out-of-fashion ornamented facades were often modernized at street level, as this one was, with expanses of plate glass windows with plain surrounds.
The brothers were never satisfied with what they considered an incomplete restoration: “That was the only piece to the puzzle that was missing,” Peter says. “We’ve gone 100 percent on everything else, and that was the only thing that was left to attend to, so it was important to us to have that finished.”
The Grier Block in 2001, many years before the restoration began (November 2001).
Now—thanks to their perseverance, resourcefulness, and the lucky confluence of the right people at the right time and place—those first-storey pilasters have been replicated and are back in place. It’s “the crowning touch…the icing on the cake,” says Fraser. The building is designated as a Provincial Historic Resource, so his role during both the original rehabilitation and this project was to verify the historical accuracy of the proposed changes and monitor the work.
During the rehabilitation project, the architect in charge, Robert Hirano, made an important discovery: the building has a Mesker Brothers facade. In the late 1800s and early 1900s manufacturers introduced mass-produced prefabricated building components made from sheet-metal panels stamped with decorative motifs and iron elements cast in moulds. These processes provided an easy and inexpensive way to imitate elaborate decorations that historically had been created by craftsmen in more expensive materials such as carved stone. The products were sold through mail-order catalogues and shipped by rail throughout North America. Mesker Brothers Iron Works of St. Louis, Missouri, was one of several companies that created and shipped entire building facade and storefront assemblies. (One competitor was the George L. Mesker Company of Evansville, Ind., owned by another brother.)
A close-up of the rehabilitated metal detailing (July 2014)
Buildings with Mesker Brother facades are plentiful in the U.S. East and Midwest, with numerous Western examples as well, especially in Colorado, Wyoming, Montana, and Washington. The Grier Block has one of only a handful of Mesker facades known to have existed in Canada, with two other Mesker facades installed in nearby Lethbridge—the Metcalfe Block (“Club Cigar”) and Lethbridge Hotel—no longer surviving. Fraser speculates that the developer of the Grier Block might have had U.S. connections, and benefitted from convenient cross-border rail service between southern Alberta and the U.S.
Over the years, Peter Maas had been hunting for Mesker storefronts with pilasters identical to those that once graced the Grier Block, hoping to replicate them. Specifically, he needed to find models for pilasters that are six inches and thirteen inches wide, each with a lower, a middle, and an upper component. All together, 33 individual elements needed to be produced to complete the lower facade.
The original structural steel pilasters of the Grier Block were still intact. Outlines of old paint showed where the ornamental cast-iron pilasters had been, and there were even tool marks showing where they had been hacked off. The owners had historic photographs of the building and the Mesker Brothers catalogue to show how the missing elements should look, and Hirano had produced drawings. “But at the end of the day, you need something that’s full scale and more tangible” to create the accurate, full-sized building elements, Fraser says.
During the rehabilitation work, the Maas brothers hired a carver to create the pilasters out of wood, but the result was disappointing. Later they located a Mesker Brothers building with one of the two needed sizes of pilasters while vacationing in New York State, and used those to create rubber moulds. But because those pilasters had decades of encrusted paint, the resulting moulds lacked definition.
One of the clay model prepared for the casting process (February 2013).
Then everything came together last year when Peter was on vacation in Colorado.
Always on the lookout for Mesker Brothers buildings, he tracked one down in the small town of Mancos, in southwestern Colorado near Durango. It had the six-inch pilasters he needed! While gazing at them, he struck up a fortuitous conversation with a passer-by. That was Collette Webster, a professional potter. She considered how to replicate the pilasters, then came up with a solution.
Remarkably, the building owner allowed them to temporarily remove the pilasters. Collette was able to make plaster moulds of the three sections, and from those make clay templates that could be used for casting the elements in metal through the lost wax process.
On the same trip, Peter found a Mesker Brothers building with the thirteen-inch pilasters on the main street of Telluride, Colorado. In that case, the pilasters couldn’t be removed, so he took lots of photographs. Collette referred to those and to the moulds for the six-inch pilasters to create scaled-up models in wood of the thirteen-inch pilasters. These could then be used to make the necessary plaster moulds and wax models.
Some decorative detailing was still needed. As a potter, Collette was able to craft the missing roundels, florets, and other flourishes out of clay and then attach those shapes to the templates used to create the wax models.
The sections were cast in bronze by craftsman Dimitry Domani at his foundry in Cortez, Colorado, then shipped to Sweetgrass, Montana, for Peter to collect at the border. Domani recommended using bronze rather than the original iron because it has the potential to develop an attractive natural patina over time, whereas the iron would need to be painted.
The Grier Block’s new pilasters are now bolted into place, as they would have been historically, and also welded on “as an extra safeguard,” Fraser says.
“In all, the project seems to have been a lucky convergence of passionate owners, Mesker buildings in Colorado to serve as templates, and a network of local (in southern Colorado) artisans to perform the work where the buildings were,” Fraser concludes. The project was assisted by a matching conservation grant from the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation.
Today the Grier Block is fully occupied. On the first-storey are an insurance and a real estate agency, a stained-glass artisan, a visitor display and offices for Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, and one residential suite; the second storey contains seven residential suites.
“There’s no question that it’s an anchor within the historic commercial district,” Fraser says. And “now the building just resonates with character in a way that it didn’t before.”
“It’s a nice piece of history for the town,” Peter agrees.
Hans Maas, a chef by training, had completed the historic rehabilitation of a smaller Fort MacLeod building as a “hobby,” Peter says, before tackling the Grier Block. Peter had experience constructing new buildings, but this was his first historic rehabilitation project. “I’m addicted to historic buildings now,” he says. “I find the historical projects are way more rewarding…You’ve got to go back to good material and quality workmanship.” He has since purchased and is now hard at work restoring Fort MacLeod’s Reach Block.
Scaffolding around the Alberta Legislature Building’s dome (2012).
When Tom Ward stated doing heritage conservation work some 35 years ago, he had no idea if it would lead to long-term employment. But he was hired early in his career to be part of the design team developing the Ukrainian Cultural Heritage Village east of Edmonton (a great learning opportunity, he recalls), and has been involved in heritage projects across the country ever since. Currently Ward is Manager of Heritage Conservation Advisory Services for the Historic Resources Management Branch, supervising five Heritage Conservation Advisers.
The Heritage Conservation Advisers are not the preservation police! In fact, Ward says that the vast majority people who own designated historic resources appreciate the historic character of their properties and are eager to maintain them in an appropriate way. “We take a partnership approach,” he continues. “Even though in the back of our minds we are trying to make sure that the work meets the Standards and Guidelines, our approach is that we are there to help.”
More than half of the advisers’ time is spent in onsite, face-to-face meetings with individual owners, groups, or developers. “Meeting people and seeing the historic places is really the great part of the job,” Ward says. The advisers provide technical guidance on the best ways to accomplish needed work; may recommend qualified architects, engineers, and contractors if needed; and also determine if the property owner might qualify for cost-sharing grant assistance from the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation. They ultimately produce a ministerial approval document package which satisfies Section 20 of the Historical ResourcesAct and allows the work to proceed.
For example, if a heritage property needs a new roof, the adviser would steer the owner toward the historically appropriate choice of replacing original cedar shingles in kind rather than using cheaper asphalt shingles. “We would specify the kind of shingles the homeowner should use, the exposure, the underlay, the flashing, that sort of thing. Then we can say, this is going to cost you a little more, but it will last you longer and better meet the Standards and Guidelines. You are also eligible to submit an application to the Alberta Historical Resources Foundation to cost-share on that roof so that it brings down your cost to about that of an asphalt shingle roof.”
A historic barn in east-central Alberta being re-shingled (2005).
The result is satisfying for all: “You get very positive, immediate feedback from people when you’re having a conversation over their kitchen table. They really appreciate the technical advice we can give them. And you see the job ultimately done well, ensuring that good conservation happens in Alberta.”
The Heritage Conservation Advisers address the needs of privately owned properties as well as Alberta Culture’s historic sites which are also designated as Provincial Historic Resources. Ward also consults with Alberta Infrastructure when work is needed on Provincially owned heritage buildings administered by that ministry. Recently he was involved in planning conservation measures for the Alberta Legislature Building, especially repair and reconstruction of portions of its dome. Ward and his team also provide technical consultation to other programs of the Historic Resources Management Branch, such as the Municipal Heritage Partnership Program, and meet with property owners considering pursing heritage designation.
The announcement of provincial funding to assist owners of historic properties affected by the 2013 flooding in Southern Alberta will almost certainly mean more “house calls” to owners now undertaking or planning repairs. “It’s going to be an additional workload, but everybody is keen to do it,” Ward says.
He also sees this as a great opportunity to study the effects of flooding on sandstone and fieldstone foundations that are so prevalent in older buildings here, and determine best practices for restoration. The team holds occasional “retreats” to explore a technical issue in depth, through review of professional literature and discussion of their own onsite experiences. The next retreat will, of course, be about addressing flood damage.
The Alberta Legislature Building’s dome being restored (2013).
Ward says it’s typical of his team members responsible for the flooded areas that all were willing to work overtime, going to flooded areas as soon as they were allowed in, to advise owners on urgent matters, especially the best ways to dry out foundations.
“I’m really proud of the team we have,” Ward concludes. “They are passionate about what they do, and they are passionate about public service.”
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