Fire topped the list of 2023 news stories, whether it be the wildfires in the spring or residential and structure fires.
However, at the top of the list has to be the fires of two historic churches, St. Aidan's Church and the Pioneer Memorial Church, over a century old in the County of Barrhead.
At about 7:58 p.m. on Dec. 7, Barrhead Regional Fire Services (BRFS) responded to the first report that St. Aidan's in Glenreagh was a blaze. Less than an hour later, the Pioneer Memorial Church outside of the Hamlet of Thunder Lake was on fire.
St. Aidan's suffered significant damage, while the Pioneer Memorial Church was destroyed. The suspected cause of both fires is arson.
BRFS fire chief Gary Hove noted that the fire at St. Aidan's started on the porch while the fire at the Pioneer Memorial Church started inside.
He added that there was no electrical work at either church and nothing to start a fire.
Police suspect the fires are connected and that an older two-tone pickup was spotted parked near St. Aidan's at the time of the fire.
Barrhead opens its doors for displaced Swan Hill residents
On May 16, Barrhead and District Family Support Services (FCSS) opened a reception centre at the Agrena to help the more than 1,300 Town of Swan Hills residents after the entire municipality was placed under a mandatory evacuation order.
Barrhead FCSS opened the centre at the behest of the Swan Hills counterparts. The centre was closed on May 24 once the mandatory evacuation order was lifted.
Town of Swan Hills mayor Craig Wilson had nothing but praise for the work of Barrhead FCSS volunteers and the greater community.
"It was a big ask. It is one thing when you have to open up your community to 1,000 plus new residents and try to help find accommodations for one night. But seven, eight, or nine nights is another. All the feedback from my family, friends and residents that left here said they were all treated amazingly, and I did not hear one bad report about the reception centre, the hotels, restaurants, or grocery stores," he said.
Camrose woman attempts to set Barrhead Catholic Church on fire
Shortly after 8 a.m., on May 1, a 57-year-old Camrose woman was seen dousing the 52nd Avenue side of the church with gasoline (or another fuel from a jerry can) and attempted to light the building on fire. The woman was then seen getting into a black Jeep Grand Cherokee with Alberta plates.
Damage to the church was minimal, and the RCMP found the woman the next day.
Barrhead wildfires
From April to May, Barrhead firefighters were busy responding to several wildfires in the region.
The more notable wildfires included a large April 22 wildfire between Township Road 590 and Township Road 592, near Highway 33, and involved close to 30 firefighters from three different departments, including Barrhead, Fort Assinboinie and Rich Valley, to get under control.
BRFS fire chief Gary Hove said the fire started when a homeowner on a property near Township 590 put some branches and other prunings in their burn pit on top of the remnants of a fire from a few weeks prior.
Unfortunately, unbeknownst to them, the fire wasn't ultimately out; it re-ignited and quickly spread due to strong north winds.
"It was a great effort by everyone to stop it at the road or before it spread to any nearby farms and lost any buildings," he said, adding it took roughly an hour and a half to get the blaze under control.
On May 2, Barrhead firefighters, along with those from Lac Ste. Anne, Fort Assiniboine, and Alberta Wildfire responded to a wildfire near Clear Lake.
Hove noted that Alberta Wildfire was already on the scene working the fire with its heavy equipment, building a guard around it and hitting it from the air with as many as three water bombers and two helicopters when BRFS arrived.
He said it could have been a different story if they had not, noting the area was heavily treed and several residences were nearby.
Hove added a discarded cigarette likely started the fire.
Barrhead Composite High School right-sizing
For a couple of years now, the modernization of Barrhead Composite High School (BCHS) has been a top priority in Pembina Hills' capital plan, which the school division must send into the province each year.
Originally constructed in 1958 and added on throughout the years, BCHS is badly under-utilized in terms of space and quite outdated in parts.
At one point, Pembina Hills looked at replacing the entire school. However, this idea was set aside when administration realized that a replacement school would be much smaller than the current building and lose some integral features, such as the drama theatre.
In March 2023, the province finally made the announcement the division had been waiting for: funding had been designated for the design of a modernized BCHS.
Pembina Hills began working with Alberta Infrastructure over the summer on the modernization project, though the design is far from being completed, and the construction likely won't happen for a couple of years.
Nevertheless, this modernization project will entail the demolition of some older parts of the school and a complete makeover of the remainder into a more modern facility.
At the most recent Pembina Hills board meeting on Dec. 13, trustees approved the withdrawal of $1.5 million from reserves to expand the school's east gym, which was originally intended to be a little bigger when it was built.
This project would not be part of the overall modernization, and thus Pembina Hills has to pay for the work out of reserves instead of relying on provincial dollars.
One more wrinkle in this storm emerged in the last few weeks of the year when a number of Barrhead parents and community members expressed concern over what the modernized school will look like, fearing that too much would be lost in terms of space. To that end, they started a petition asking Pembina Hills for a full disclosure of the final design.
Most recently, a group of those parents and community members attended the Dec. 13 meeting to ask some questions about the project, which administration tried to provide during a short Q&A session.
Fort Assiniboine turns 200
According to information available at the local museum, the hamlet of Fort Assiniboine was originally established as a trading post by the Hudson's Bay Company in 1823.
Notably, it was built with the aim of drawing fur hunters down the Athabasca River to give the over-trapped Lesser Slave Lake district a chance to recover.
Unfortunately, game was scarce at Fort Assiniboine, so it was not a popular spot for First Nations people. But even when the fur trade went into decline, the Hudson's Bay Company maintained Fort Assiniboine as a communication and transportation point.
Though the company abandoned the post in 1870, Fort Assiniboine survived, and two hundred years later, residents began planning a huge celebration to mark its bicentennial.
The celebrations began in June with "Pioneer Days" at the Fort Assiniboine Museum. These showcases of pioneer life and First Nations culture were attended by hundreds of school children.
The main event occurred over the July 7-9 weekend, with hundreds of former residents and others with connections to the hamlet converging on Fort Assiniboine.
On July 8, a group of paddlers riding in 15 canoes — the Athabasca River Brigade — stopped over in Fort Assiniboine on their journey from Whitecourt to Athabasca. They stuck around in the hamlet for a full day to give people canoe rides.
Also on the evening of July 8, there was a huge community supper inside the Fort Assiniboine hockey area that was attended by an estimated 1,400 people.
Incidentally, Town of Barrhead councillor Rod Klumph also helped mark the occasion by walking from the Alberta Legislature out to the hamlet. This journey of roughly 160 kiometres began on July 1 and ended on July 6 with his arrival in Fort Assiniboine.
In recent weeks, the Barrhead Leader has also reported on the efforts of the bicentennial committee to utilize the remaining funds they were provided to put on the event. The plan currently is to create an online archive with photos and videos of the bicentennial celebrations.
Fort Assiniboine Bridge issues
The province had to make emergency repairs to the Athabasca River Bridge about two minutes outside the hamlet on Highway 33 after a large piece of the 68-year-old bridge's drive lane fell into the river below.
Long-time Fort Assiniboine resident, a volunteer firefighter with the hamlet's fire department and former Woodlands County councillor Dale Kluin said he received a phone call at about 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 10 from a driver with one of the local gravel companies informing him of the hole.
He immediately went to investigate, saying the driver did not exaggerate. Kluin estimated the hole to be about three-and-a-half or four feet wide and six feet long in the middle of the driving lane, about a third way on the west end of the bridge.
"You see the water underneath," he said.
Not long after Kluin had arrived, he watched a driver hit the hole, destroying their rear tire.
Fortunately, the driver made it safely across, but Kluin and another bystander took it as their cue to provide traffic control until they were relieved by the RCMP, who arrived 30 to 45 minutes later.
It took the repair crews less than a week to repair the damage.
Kluin said it wasn't the only time that emergency repairs had to be made on the bridge and that Woodlands County and area residents have expressed their concerns to the province.
"In my opinion, [Alberta Transportation and Economic Corridors] do not think it is a big deal," he said.
Housing concerns
Barrhead and District Family Community Support Services executive director Karen Gariepy is sounding the alarm about the lack of affordable housing in the area.
In June, during a presentation to Town of Barrhead councillors, she suggested that council may want to look at its land-use bylaw and other mechanisms to increase the amount of affordable rental units available.
Gariepy noted that the Barrhead municipalities enrolled in the Rural Renewal Stream (RRS) to help local employers fill job vacancies.
The RRS enables rural communities with less than 100,000 people to attract and retain immigrants by working with local employers and settlement-providing organizations to offer employment and support services, including housing, language training, health care, and education.
The stream requires that communities apply for designation through the province and have it for two years, with the option to extend for a third.
However, she said, even if an employer successfully attracts an employee through the program, they may not be able to retain them due to the lack of affordable housing in the region.
Schoolbus flybys
School bus "flybys" are a problem that will never completely go away as long as there are roads and impatient drivers travelling along them, but the increased frequency of such incidents prompted some extra attention in 2023.
Generally speaking, a flyby occurs when a school bus is parked to allow school children to either get on or off the bus. An approaching motorist then flies by the bus despite the fact it is illegal to do so when the overhead alternating red lights are flashing.
In December 2022, a Barrhead area parent, Hielke Vandermeulen, called on the division to install extended stop arms and cameras on all buses to prevent fly-bys.
A couple months later, the Leader reported that Athabasca-Barrhead-Westlock MLA Glenn van Dijken was seeking a meeting with Pembina Hills trustees to discuss the problem, prompted by an increase in complaints he had received.
In the spring, acting director of transportation David Sharpe reported to trustees that there had been 44 such incidents reported by the division's bus drivers between September 2022 and May 2023.
Installing cameras on buses had been of somewhat limited usefulness, as sometimes the footage didn't allow for proper identification of the offenders.
In August, we further reported that after piloting the use of three extended-arm stop signs on buses, along with the installation of high-definition cameras, the division would be purchasing more of these extended stop arms.
Hopefully, the division's added safety measures will cause the frequency of fly-bys to finally lessen.
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