Abandoned and adorned with only graffiti and rust, the 157,456-litre barrel now stands tall in the Alberta community and commemorates the era when it was built
About five years ago, as a Spruce Grove boy was being driven home from an Edmonton hospital, he noticed an overturned six-metre-wide barrel lying in the field off Highway 16A.
The boy turned to his mother, smiled and said, “Mom, I am home now.”
A few years later, the 157,456-litre barrel, abandoned for more than 30 years, also came home. Former Parkland County councillor George Sewell was inspired by the story of the young boy and was part of the effort to restore the iconic tower, that was dismantled in 1978 and stored on Bill Daly’s farm near the eastern boundary of the community.
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“The water tower was a vital part of the community, just like the grain elevator was,” said Sewell, a retired farmer. “I kept telling people they were mainstays for building communities all across Alberta.”
The rusting relic was a sad sight.
“There was some graffiti on it. Kids actually drew a marijuana leaf on the outside of it,” said Sewell, past volunteer chair and president of the Spruce Grove & District Agricultural Society, and now chair of its building committee.
He spearheaded the effort to preserve the town’s last country grain elevator, an Alberta Wheat Pool structure built in 1958, closed in 1995, and now a museum on Railway Avenue. For many years the society wanted to rescue the barrel but no private or public funding was available to make it happen. But in 2008 a Spruce Grove couple donated $20,000 to the museum with the notion the grain elevator might need some project money. However, there was no elevator improvement plan at the time and the society’s members decided to use the donation to rescue the water tower. A budget of $70,000 was drafted, with the additional $50,000 raised in the business community. The quest to bring the water tower home was in motion.
Spruce Grove’s preservation project is one example of the growing momentum in Alberta communities to preserve their past.
In 2012, Red Deer repainted its iconic 40-metre-tall “green onion” water tower at a cost of $750,000. That same year in Didsbury, town council agreed to spend nearly $20,000 for a facelift of its water tower. Artist Ruth Jepson repainted the 15-metre-high structure’s mural of a golfer overlooking the town’s golf course.
“Water towers occupy a special place on the Alberta landscape,” said Dorothy Field, heritage survey co-ordinator for Alberta Culture.
“Often situated on the highest ground in the vicinity, they are homing beacons on the prairie, a situation that intensifies as grain elevators disappear. Many water towers were built by municipal governments, so pride of ownership adds to their sentimental and symbolic value.”
The province has never conducted a targeted survey of water towers, although there are almost 40 in its heritage survey database and more than 60, including cylinder-shaped standpipes, known to still exist in Alberta, said Field. Only three — the municipal structure in Gleichen, the CNR water tower in Heinsburg, and Calgary’s wooden Lacombe Home structure — have received provincial historic designation status, she said.
In 2010, Spruce Grove volunteers went to work to restore their battered and weathered relic to its full glory. Howard’s Transport, hauled the 20,000-pound barrel three kilometres on a flatbed truck to the site of the preserved grain elevator, a kilometre south of the tower’s original location. It was placed on timbers and rolled into position by a tractor for sandblasting and painting by Jay-Vee Industries. Volunteers secured steel from an Edmonton scrap dealer to create new, 18-metre-high legs, and operators from Myshak Crane & Rigging hoisted the barrel into place. Stony Plain-area artist James MacKay then painted a 360-degree mural on the tank depicting Spruce Grove’s landscape from 1958. The mural features three grain elevators, the community’s former train station, a church, and the old Spruce Grove Hotel.
Its official unveiling on June 8, 2012 was a great day, said Sewell.
“It was amazing. I was blown away, in fact,” he said. “The big thing is the history. We have a number of families — and people from all over Europe and all over the States and Canada — that come by here. They are just thrilled.”
