Managing Lacombe’s Heritage

I had the pleasure of attending the City of Lacombe’s Heritage Open House on February 28^th. The city presented a draft of their heritage management plan for community perusal and input. The event was hosted by Lacombe’s Heritage Preservation Program at the beautiful St. Andrew’s United Church hall. People started arriving from the moment the doors opened and kept coming until the end, asking great questions about Lacombe’s Heritage Preservation Program. The turnout was wonderful. You can read a bit more about the event itself at the City of Lacombe’s blog.

Lacombe’s Heritage Management Plan will ensure that locally significant historic resources are identified, protected and systematically conserved. Under the plan, the Lacombe Heritage Steering Committee will continue to revise and update the municipal heritage inventory begun in spring of 2011. The city will soon be able to protect locally significant historic places using new policies governing the designation of Municipal Historic Resources. The final elements will be the plan to evaluate changes to designated resources to insure they retain their heritage value.

The plan will be complete and finalized in the coming months. We’ll bring you more information on the plan when it’s complete. The City of Lacombe can soon begin designating its first Municipal Historic Resources. Stay tuned.

For those who are interested in Lacombe’s heritage, you may wish to check out their facebook page: I ♥ Lacombe Heritage.

Written by: Michael Thome, Municipal Heritage Services Officer

Heritage Open House in Lacombe

I attended the City of Lacombe’s Heritage Inventory Open House a few weeks ago. Over the past year, Lacombe has been busily evaluating several properties in its historic residential areas for significance and integrity. Thirty properties were selected for evaluation and at the open house draft statements of significance were presented to the community for review. The event was a smashing success. I’d tell you more, but I think you might prefer to head over to the City of Lacombe’s blog and hear about it in their own words.

Flatiron Building, Provincial Historic Resource, City of Lacombe

The Municipal Heritage Partnership Program has worked with the City of Lacombe for three years now, helping them identify and evaluate locally significant historic places. You can also learn more about the City of Lacombe’s Heritage Preservation Program from Lacombe’s website.

Written by: Michael Thome, Municipal Heritage Services Officer

Rediscovering a Lost Art – “Take 2”

A previous RETROactive blog post featured the recent designation of the Lacombe Blacksmith Shop as a Provincial Historic Resource. Do you want to do more than simply read about the Blacksmith Shop? Click here to watch some of the designation ceremony AND to watch the two blacksmiths practice their craft. Enjoy!

Check out the Lacombe & District Historical Society blog to learn more about visiting the Blacksmith Shop Museum.

Written by: Brenda Manweiler, Municipal Heritage Services Officer

Lacombe: An Evening of Heritage

Back L-R: Donald Luxton, Peter Bouwsema (Councillor), Jason Haggkvist. Front L-R: Kelsey Van Grinsven, Laura Pasacreta, Marie Péron, Andrea Becker, Sean Stroud, Kirstin Bouwsema

It’s been a busy few weeks for friends of heritage in the City of Lacombe. On Friday October 14^th, I led a workshop on values-based management for members of the city’s Heritage Steering Committee. The City of Lacombe, with the advice of the committee, will soon begin evaluating several historic places for heritage value.

Then, on Thursday October 20^th, the City of Lacombe hosted an “Evening of Heritage”. About 80 residents listened to several presentations and afterwards had many great questions. Over the course of the evening:

• Laura Pasacreta, of Donald Luxton and Associates, updated the community on the progress of the ongoing heritage inventory;
• Donald Luxton, Principal of Donald Luxton and Associates, showed the audience how to maintain and repair a historic wood-frame window; and
• David Holdsworth, a Heritage Planner with the City of Edmonton, spoke about Edmonton’s municipal heritage conservation program.

The City of Lacombe began working with MHPP in 2008. Since that time, the entire community has been surveyed and the heritage steering committee has identified well over 100 places that deserve further study. Since 2009, Lacombe has been steadily evaluating these sites to determine which have sufficient value to the community to warrant Municipal Historic Resource designation.

Not content to simply evaluate historic places, the “Evening of Heritage” marks the first step in Lacombe’s efforts to develop municipal polices to protect and conserve locally significant historic places. The event was a great way to introduce the community to the idea of heritage conservation.

We congratulate Lacombe’s ongoing efforts to conserve locally significant historic places, or at least we plan to just as soon as we catch our breath …

Written by: Michael Thome, Municipal Heritage Services Officer

Rediscovering a Lost Art

On September 24, 2011, the Lacombe and District Historical Society hosted an event celebrating the designation of the Lacombe Blacksmith Shop as a Provincial Historic Resource.  Situated just off the City of Lacombe’s historic downtown, the blacksmith shop opened more than a century ago and is a tangible reminder of an essential craft during Alberta’s early settlement period. Present at the celebration was a veteran blacksmith and his young apprentice. Using traditional tools to shape modern creations, these two men embody the remarkable continuity between the historic identity of blacksmithing as a utilitarian settlement craft and its emerging face as a specialized form of artistry serving both ornamental and functional needs.

Read more about this event and the Lacombe Blacksmith Shop Museum by clicking here.

Learn more about this Provincial Historic Resource by visiting the Alberta Register of Historic Places.

Written by: Matthew Wangler, Manager of Historic Places Research and Designation Program