Editor’s note: Alberta’s heritage sector and the Heritage Division of Arts Culture and Status of Women recently lost two dedicated and long-serving colleagues – former Historic Conservation Advisor Rino Basso and former historian and provincial archivist David Leonard.
Written by: Ronald Kelland, Geographical Names Program Coordinator and Fraser Shaw, Heritage Conservation Advisor
Rino Basso
Rino Basso was born at Nordegg, Alberta on July 22, 1946, to Pietro “Pete” Basso, a coal miner with significant carpentry skills and Barbara Basso (nee Sieben), who was a notable volunteer in her community and church and had some nursing training. The Basso family moved to Red Deer in 1947 where Pete Basso started Basso Construction and built houses. Being born in the historic mining community of Nordegg and having a carpenter and a homebuilder as a father may have set Rino on a career path in historic resources management from an early age.
Rino attended Red Deer Catholic Separate Schools, graduating from St. Thomas Aquinas High School in 1965 then enrolling in the Architectural Technology Program at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology. In the early-1970s, Rino began working with the Government of Alberta as Senior Preservation Advisor in the Historic Sites Service and, as it is known today, Historic Resources Management. There is probably not a single Provincial Historic Resource designated between the 1970s and 2010s that has not seen his involvement. It seems like his name can be found on every file in Historic Resources Management’s records. Rino used to jovially remark that he had probably driven on every byway, stayed in every motel, eaten at every bakery and visited every city, town and village in the province from Edmonton and Calgary to the proverbial “Cucumber Corner,” his shorthand, all-inclusive term for the small communities and rural areas across the province whose history and heritage he dedicated so much of his career to preserving.
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