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Celebrate a bridge to history |
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Written by Lethbridge Herald
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Sunday, August 02 2009, 11:19 PM |
In most other provinces, Heritage Day is a February celebration, if it’s celebrated at all.
But here in Wildrose Country, it’s a summer tradition, and today, hundreds of people will be enjoying the 33rd annual Heritage Day celebration in Lethbridge — this year at the South Pavilion of Exhibition Park.
The venue may have changed (due to renovations at the Enmax Centre) but you can count on fabulous food, festive music and dance to still rule the day.
Southern Alberta is blessed with a tremendous diversity of cultures living in relative harmony — from our Aboriginal First Nations people to our European settlers to our Mormon homesteaders to more recent immigrants from all parts of Asia and South America.
It’s a diversity worth celebrating. But the day isn’t just about food and music and dance. It’s an annual reminder for each of us to stay in touch with our own cultural heritage that is uniquely individual.
It’s about the story of people, whether they’re fourth- or fifth-generation Albertans still living on the family farm or newcomers who bring to the city their own language and tradition.
Heritage Day itself — the one celebrated elsewhere in February when Alberta is in Family Day mode — is promoted by the Heritage Canada Foundation as an opportunity to encourage preservation of Canada’s historic, architectural, natural and scenic heritage.
This year marks the 100th anniversary of Lethbridge’s iconic historic structure — the Lethbridge viaduct, more commonly known as the High Level Bridge.
Towering nearly 96 metres above the Oldman River, this more than 1,600-metre span is a well-known marvel of early 1900s engineering and construction.
For Canadian Pacific Railway, it’s a vital piece of infrastructure. For visitors unfamiliar with the city, it’s a pretty stunning first view of a place. And for long-time southern Albertans, it may well stir deeply personal memories of a bygone era of passenger rail travel across that massive span.
The bridge isn’t just a great place to take a picture. It is a link to our collective past.
In honour of its anniversary, this piece of our heritage will be commemorated with a keepsake special section of The Herald coming out Sept. 3, just in advance of the In The Shadow of the Bridge festival.
The story of the bridge is about more than a major construction undertaking that stands the test of time.
History is most fascinating when viewed through the eyes of individual men and women, and the same is true of 100 years of this bridge that spans a century of southern Alberta life.
If you have a personal story to share about travels over the bridge or life around it, please submit it for possible publication in this commemorative edition by email to
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(subject line: Bridge Memories) or by mail to Bridge Memories, Lethbridge Herald, 504 7 St. S., Lethbridge T1J 2H1. Please include your name, regular mailing address and daytime phone number with all submissions.
Your stories are part of the fabric of our history, and those stories are always worth celebrating.
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