MISS CONGENIALITY Walking With Our Sisters Art installation commemorates missing women
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Potato salad is an alwayswelcome-at-aparty side dish
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Red Deer Advocate TUESDAY, JUNE 2, 2015
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THE SPRAY’S THE THING, WHEREIN I’LL CATCH A GOOD SOAKING
ARTHUR ELLIS AWARD
Author lauded for youth mystery BY LANA MICHELIN ADVOCATE STAFF Red Deer author Sigmund Brouwer won Canada’s top crime fiction award for his youth novel Dead Man’s Switch. Getting the Arthur Ellis Award for best juvenile novel is “very, very thrilling,” said Brouwer. “Believe me, I was surprised when they called my name — and delighted!” Since the prize is named for a historic Canadian hangman, a trophy resembling a hanged man was presented to him last week at a ceremony at Toronto’s Arts and Letters Club. Brouwer said the “unique” Sigmund Brouwer piece of hardware has a place of honour on top of his bookshelf. While the prolific author has four million copies of his books in print, so far he’s written only three titles in the youth mystery genre. His Dead Man’s Switch, published by the American firm Harvest House, is about a teenage boy who becomes endangered when he sets out to unravel a dark conspiracy. It’s a case of the hunter becoming the hunted on a remote island in a plot inspired by Brouwer’s own adolescent reading of The Most Dangerous Game, a short story by Richard Connell. “I thought it was a fascinating concept,” said Brouwer, whose novel includes the use of modern devices to solve various dilemmas. “The protagonist uses some new technology to defeat the bad guy.” He added Dead Man’s Switch was written carefully and seriously, as “young readers are smart. I wanted to write this as well as if I was writing a grown-up novel.”
Please see AUTHOR on Page A2
Photo by JEFF STOKOE/Advocate staff
Ayla McRae, 5, of Red Deer aims a steady stream of water at another child playing at the spray park located just north of the Recreation Centre in Red Deer on Monday. Both the spray park and the outdoor pool at the Recreation Centre opened for the summer season on Monday.
Central Alberta losing two outdoor music festivals BY LANA MICHELIN ADVOCATE STAFF You win some, you lose some, when it comes to outdoor music festivals in Central Alberta. Although a splashy new music event was recently announced for our area — the Summer Sensation Beach Music Festival that will bring Hedley, Our Lady Peace, Dragonette and other groups to Sylvan Lake on July 10 and 11 — two other festivals are now not happening in the region. The Tail Creek Mud and Music Festival and the
Central Music Festival are not going ahead as expected this summer in Central Alberta. Instead, Tail Creek’s organizers are moving what was supposed to be an outdoor event in Alix, indoors to Edmonton after running out of time for site improvements. The festival that will feature Billy Talent, Limp Bizkit, Bad Religion and other rock and punk groups will now take place at Edmonton’s Shaw Conference Centre from June 25 to 27.
Please see FESTIVALS on Page A2
Sylvan Lake artists hoping to protect pioneer’s labour of love BY PAUL COWLEY ADVOCATE STAFF
Photo by PAUL COWLEY/Advocate staff
Sylvan Lake artists Marian Jacoba Shilka (left) and Mary Grace Toth want to see the town’s historic Stone Castle preserved. Built around 1905 by one of the town’s earliest residents, it was a labour of love for Raymond Archambault, who created it to remind his wife, Eugenie, of her family castle back in France.
WEATHER Sun and cloud. High 19. Low 8.
FORECAST ON A2
INDEX Four sections Alberta . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A3 Business. . . . . . . . . . . . . B5,B6 Canada . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A5 Classified . . . . . . . . . . . . D1-D3 Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . D4 Entertainment . . . . . . . . C5,C6 Sports. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . B1-B4
SYLVAN LAKE — Almost hidden by runaway greenery, its stonework crumbling, the Stone Castle has lost much of its romance. But make no mistake, a love story lies behind the Lilliputian castle on 50A Avenue just a couple of blocks west of the main street. The building that locals call the Stone Castle once boasted distinctive gap-toothed walls, a tower, stained glass windows and grand arched entrance. It was built in 1905 by Raymond Archambault, his stone mason brother Charles and Andre Ballu, who were part of a small French community that settled around Sylvan Lake at the turn of the last century. The castle was the dream of Raymond, who wanted to build a home for his wife, who came with the impressive name of Eugenie Marie Marguerite Henriettie Thomi. Eugenie came from an aristocratic family (her father was a famous French composer of the day) and this modest Canadian castle was modelled on the ancestral fortress on their lands in southern France. “When (Eugenie) married Raymond, she married out of class,” says local artist Marian Jacoba Shilka. “He built this castle to make her feel at home.
THE STONE CASTLE “It’s a love story.” Shilka and artist and friend Mary Grace Toth are determined to ensure the story of the Archambaults, and this testament to their fairy-tale romance, is not lost. The castle was a labour of love in the truest, handblistering, back-breaking and sweat-stained sense. Stones were gathered from the shores of Sylvan Lake, dragged on a deerskin to a raft, which was then floated to town to be off-loaded. No doubt bemused neighbours would offer a wheelbarrow and later a team of horses and a wagon to speed up the short uphill trip to the building site. How long Raymond and his wife lived in their cosy castle keep isn’t clear. In 1913, he started the town’s first newspaper, but by the start of the First World War he and his wife had moved to Montreal, where Raymond became French consul. The Stone Castle changed hands many times over the years, becoming a shop at one point. It has now sat empty for a decade, and time has worked its slow erosion and vandals their much-faster destruction.
Please see CASTLE on Page A2
Judge awards $15B to Quebec smokers In a historic ruling, a Quebec judge has ordered three cigarette companies to pay $15 billion to smokers. Story on PAGE B5
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