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Local 1 Alberta — Proud to Be 100!

Local 1 AB Business Manager Alan Ramsay (right) presents an Appreciation Award to member Wally Shaw.

On May 24 2003, Local 1 Alberta proudly celebrated its 100th year as a Local of the International Union of Bricklayers and Allied Craftworkers at a dinner dance held in Edmonton.

Business Manager Alan Ramsay, with the help of Local 1 officers and members, organized the gala salute to their Local’s rich history and its many contributions to the Edmonton community, the IU, and the Canadian labour movement. In attendance were BAC representatives from Local 1’s sister Unions in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, and Ontario. Ramsay said, “We had a great showing not only from our membership but from BAC Locals across Canada. It was a memorable evening for everyone.” BAC Secretary-Treasurer James Boland and Region 9 Director David Sheppard were en route to the dinner when bad weather caused their flight to be cancelled at the last minute.

In preparation for the festivities, Ramsay published a special centennial program, which chronicles Locali1’s earnest beginnings to the present. The Local was founded in May 1903, several years after a group of “elite stonemasons began to organize in Edmonton.” The Local flourished as Edmonton’s population grew, and commercial and residential construction along with it. The Local weathered two world wars, with the “Dirty Thirties” in between, and roared back with the discovery of oil in Leduc in the late 1940s and the introduction of refractory work to the area. The right-wing provisional government of the 1980s produced a reversal of fortune for all the trades, but by the mid-1990s oil companies began to re-emerge, and it wasn’t long before the Local, able to rebuild once more, purchased its first building in 1999.

One hundred years later, Local 1 Alberta continues to represent the “elite” stonemasons and bricklayers of Edmonton.