The St. Albert Cenotaph has been updated and relocated multiple times since its creation. The original cenotaph was erected sometime after the end of the Second World War, most likely coinciding with the founding of the Royal Canadian Legion St. Albert Branch in 1957. It was a cement cross approximately four feet high, located on the front lawn of the St. Albert Community Hall. In the mid-1960s, a new cenotaph was constructed on the corner of Sir Winston Churchill Avenue and Green Grove Drive.
Due to noise from passing traffic, especially during each November’s moment of silence, the legion decided to relocate the cenotaph to its present location on St. Anne Street. This site was consecrated in the summer of 1987, with representatives present from the federal, provincial, and municipal governments, as well as dignitaries from the Royal Canadian Legion.
Of the approximately 625 local residents, 61 of them took up the call to arms. The town lent 10 per cent of its population to a fight half a world away. Locally there were 10 killed in action, only five of which had their names inscribed on the cenotaph. For nearly a decade, the names of Privates Moise Beausoleil, Wilfred Chevigny, Hector Duroche, Daniel Flynn, and William Laurence were missing.
In 2012, the Musée Heritage Museum began preparation for an exhibit that it would host two years later to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the beginning of the Great War. Their research determined that the names of five men from St. Albert were missing from the cenotaph. How these men were missed when the cenotaph was first built is still a mystery. Individual names of fallen soldiers were not added to the St. Albert Cenotaph until 2009, nearly a century after the end of the war.
On September 11, 2016, a public ceremony was held at the cenotaph recognizing the names of all 10 fallen heroes.
