No Room for the Inn

Mar 1, 2009

The Bruin Centre, St. Albert

by Scott Messenger

When progress came calling in 2000 for St. Albert’s venerable Bruin Inn, even retired NHL centre Mark Messier, a former resident of the suburban city, felt the loss. “I remember when I got the news it had burned down,” he later said, somewhat murky on the details. “It was like I was punched in the stomach.” It didn’t burn (though it did get singed when a preteen Messier was honing skills that would win him five Oilers Stanley Cups he’d later show off in the Bruin’s barroom). Instead, after degenerating for 70 years from luxury accommodation to the unsalvageable state owners described to local preservationists, it was demolished. But the Bruin goes unforgotten. The Bruin Centre, now home to restaurants and retailers, reproduces its predecessor’s Spanish colonial architecture, making amends for any gut-punching with a shot in the arm for St. Albert’s downtown revitalization efforts.

March 2009 Contents

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