roadside
The Making of a Monument
Story and photo by Frans Erickson
Wetaskiwin's water tower was never intended to be a landmark. In fact, it took threat of demolition to bring attention to the 43-metre-tall, half-million-litre vessel that had been sitting above residents' noses for close to a century. For decades, water towers were integral
to Alberta municipal life. As settlers spilled west in the early 1900s, communities built elevated cisterns, the simplest means of creating water pressure to quench thirst and fi res. Wetaskiwin's went up in 1910. However, with the advent of effi cient and
affordable pumps in the 1970s, water towers began to lose favour. Municipalities began dis- mantling them, salvaging the steel, but little history, in the process. In 1999, Wetaskiwin's ailing sentinel faced such a fate. But a group of citizens lobbied city hall to rescue the tower. After several years, much debate and a $1.6-million restoration, it was back in working order – making it the oldest functioning struc- ture of its kind in Canada. A few Alberta communities have saved
their water towers through reinvention – places such as Lethbridge, with its tower- restaurant conversion. But Wetaskiwin's is one of a declining few that still fulfi l their original roles. Yet the tower represents more than just the pull of gravity on water. For many, it also stands as a visible connec- tion to the past – a force that helps keep the community as fi rmly rooted as the tower that waters it.
58 WESTWORLD >> NOVEMBER 2011
