(The following story by Keith Gerein appeared on the Edmonton Journal website on May 11, 2010.)
EDMONTON — At age 76, Art Birkholz is old enough to remember when grain elevators were the hub of western Canadian life.
When he was a young farmer, one of his duties was to bring a horse-drawn wagon full of fall harvest to an elevator in Leduc.
In those days, the wooden prairie skyscrapers dominated a town’s architectural, economic and even social landscape.
As bushels of grain were loaded onto train cars bound for the Pacific Coast, the elevators served as a place for farmers to catch up on gossip and discuss issues of the day, from politics to seed prices to the weather.
“Did you know early pilots used them to find their way around Alberta?” Birkholz says. “There’s lots of history behind these elevators. They’re what built the towns.”
Now semi-retired, Birkholz is trying to keep the Leduc elevator’s history alive.
He and a group of volunteers, known as the Alberta Legacy Development Society, have struggled for nearly a decade to turn the site into a proper interpretive centre.
After years of subsisting on bake sales and book sales to keep the project going, the group now has government grants in the bank and a fresh coat of green paint on the exterior.
They say they are nearly ready for tourists and school groups. But their dream could still be derailed by one major obstacle: a long-standing safety code issue that is proving difficult and expensive to overcome.
“It’s been a long process,” Birkholz says. “This is the year we’re hoping to get some answers. We’d like to be able to show the kids what happened to the grain.”
Of the 1,800 or so wood-frame elevators that were constructed in Alberta, fewer than 250 remain.
Twelve elevators are protected as provincial historic resources. The oldest of this group is a 1906 elevator in St. Albert, also the subject of a restoration effort.
In contrast, the facility in Leduc is young. It was built in 1978, but that’s what makes it valuable. Birkholz says it’s the last wood-frame elevator built in the province.
The society purchased the property for about $110,000 after Canadian Pacific Railway mothballed it in 2000.
Since then, the group has worked to transform it from a dilapidated industrial facility to a tourist destination.
Much of the effort concentrated on restoring the elevator to its original look, down to the smallest detail. The idea is to transport visitors back to a time when the facility first started operating.
As an example, the manager’s office has several vintage touches, from wood-panelled walls to a classic clock radio to an old Alberta Wheat Pool calendar. The group even tracked down a giant 1970sera computer that was used to keep records.
Other improvements are to come. A warehouse building to the north of the elevator is to be renovated for archives storage and a place to view antiques. As for the south warehouse, Birkholz hopes it will become home to the society’s offices, the admission booth and a summer tea house serving visitors hot and cold drinks.
But these plans may never be realized unless the society can find a way to deal with the threat of fire. There are no easy solutions.
Modern safety-code regulations require such wood-framed buildings to be a considerable distance from the next property.
This appears to be an impossible standard to meet in Leduc because the elevator is up against the property line. Even worse, on the other side of that line are train tracks forming part of CP Rail’s heavily used main route between Edmonton and Calgary. A side track that runs within a few metres of the building is often used by CP to store train cars, including some that carry propane.
The society is now resting its hopes on receiving an “order of exemption” from Municipal Affairs Minister Hector Goudreau.