The Martel Block
12424 66th Street
Originally: “25 Norton Street”
Architect: Unknown
Constructed: 1913
The Martel brothers, Joseph, Timothé and Fortunat, left Ste. Brigide d’Iberville, Quebec in 1897. Not a year before, prospectors had discovered gold in the Klondike, and the brothers wanted to stake their claim. Across Canada the Martels travelled, through backwoods and prairie, until reaching Edmonton. From there it was onto Peace River and Whitehorse, then Dawson City, Yukon. By the time they arrived, some 30,000 hopefuls had been through and the rush was all but over. Disappointed, the Martels returned to Edmonton and eventually Ste. Brigide.
“They spent ten years there [in Quebec],” remembered their nephew, Ludger Martel. “In 1910, they were all back in Edmonton. Uncle Joe and Uncle Fortunat bought property in North Edmonton. Joe started a hotel and went into the business. Fortunat got into the store business. In about 1914… both Joe and Fortunat built — Joe built a hotel, the North Edmonton Hotel; Fortunat a large store.”
It wasn’t the brothers’ first attempt. On January 13th, 1913, the two announced they would “build a new hotel at North Edmonton and a store and residence block” — flames engulfed their wooden handiwork four months later. According to the Edmonton Bulletin, “The fire started in the kitchen of the hotel, from some unknown cause, about five o’clock [May 24th, 1913], and was observed by the night clerk, who at once gave alarm.” The entire street burnt in less than two hours, causing $250,000 in damages. Three pigs died, two men suffered burns and eighty more, mostly labourers from the neighbouring Swift Canadian packing plant, were out of house and home.
From the ash the brothers rebuilt — this time with brick — and by September 1913, both Joseph’s North Edmonton Hotel and Fortunat’s Martel Block neared completion. In the words of the Bulletin, the two fireproof structures “on Norton Street, opposite Swift’s… present a marked improvement over the old frame buildings” and represented North Edmonton’s most modern commercial developments. Fortunat’s building in particular featured sixteen well-appointed flats and two storefronts: Fortunat’s grocery occupied one unit; a cafe, the Mangant, occupied the other. Residential tenants included the likes of John Bezborotko and Alex Litwin, Swift’s packers, and A.S. Smith and Samuel L. Johnson, Edmonton Stock Yards labourers.
Fortunat died in 1926, and in the following years his building fell into a managed decline. Tenants rarely stuck and efforts to increase the block’s financial viability backfired. One notable example, implemented during the Depression’s height, subdivided the building’s sixteen apartments into fifty-six micro-units. According to the Edmonton Journal, “more than 300 persons were housed on one-fifth of an acre.” Crime rose significantly and for a decade, stories of robberies, assaults, and suspicious fires punctuated the news almost monthly.
The Journal reported about one notable instance on February 8th, 1933:
“O.S. Richards, Martel block, North Edmonton, who is blind and an old pensioner, has reported that a man whom he befriended and for whom he bough a meal stole $7, three shirts and a pair of socks from him.
Mr. Richards said he took the man to his room after buying him a meal at a cafe.”
Clara Troger, another tenant, reported $85.00 being stolen from her apartment the following December.
In June 1942, the Bulletin regaled readers of a near-deadly assault:
“Victim of an attack from the rear by an irate neighbour wielding a milk bottle, Nick Lukinuk, of the Martel block, 124 avenue and 66 Street, was admitted to the Royal Alexandra hospital suffering from a severe injury to the base of his skull.
Lukinuk was found at the foot of the stairway at the block at 11:15 p.m. bleeding profusely and in a state of unconsciousness.
City detectives investigated and found that Philip Balla who resides in the rear of the block, admitted to the assault. Balla told police that Lukinuk had been quarrelling with Balla’s son, and gave that as the reason for his assault.”
Police charged Balla $20.00 for “assault causing actual bodily harm.”
Another attack followed in July 1943. Per the Journal:
“City police stated… a summons has been issued against a Martel block resident after he allegedly struck a 17-year-old boy on the shoulder with the blunt end of an axe and then threw the axe at the fleeing juvenile. He will face an assault charge.
Mrs. J. Moore, Martel block, reported to police her son came home stating that a man had hit him with an axe. The boy started to run and ‘ducked’ as the axe was thrown.”
I once spoke to my grandfather, Danny Checknita, about the Martel. The long-time Northsider knew it all too well. He had vivid memories visiting at some-point in the 1950s — a neighbourhood friend, a Journal newsboy, had convinced him to help deliver papers there. A storyteller at heart, he described it as a sickly place of pustulous wallpaper and radiators that wheezed pathetic coughs, of floors that sagged and paint that scabbed. Above everything else it was the smell, a rotting odour of sweat, piled trash, and human waste, which Danny remembered most — he claimed he "could still smell it" after all these years.
If you were to look at the Martel today, you might walk away with a similar conclusion. The building looks ill, and successive renovations haven't been kind. Yet the odd vestige of its regal self lingers on for those who care to look — most don’t, least of all the City.
Like everything old in Edmonton, the Martel Block’s days are numbered. Expansions to the Yellowhead Highway will necessitate its removal. When that time comes, North Edmonton will lose one of its oldest commercial and residential buildings. It will also lose a troubled piece of history, pockmarked by theft, violence, and tenement-living. Whether that's a silver-lining or not is up to you.
Image Gallery:
Sources:
“New Buildings Announced For Coming Season,” Edmonton Bulletin, January 13, 1913.
“Fire Is Cause Of Loss Estimated At $135,000; Guests Flee In Nighties,” Edmonton Journal, May 24, 1913.
“Two Men in Hospital as Result of Fire in North Edmonton,” Edmonton Bulletin, May 26, 1913.
“North Edmonton: Brick Buildings Improve,” Edmonton Bulletin, July 31, 1913.
“Robs Blind Pensioner,” Edmonton Journal, February 8, 1933.
“Reports $85 Stolen,” Edmonton Journal, December 17, 1934.
“Bottle as Club Inflicts Injury,” Edmonton Journal, June 16, 1942.
“Bottle Attack Causes Injury Base of Skull,” Edmonton Bulletin, June 16, 1942.
“Guilty Of Assault, Man Is Fined $20,” Edmonton Bulletin, June 23, 1942.
“Assault Charged After Axe Blow,” Edmonton Journal, July 20, 1943.
“Trendell Raps Poor Housing: Lack of Religious Teaching Chief Factor In Delinquency,” Edmonton Journal, September 23, 1948.
Henderson’s Edmonton City Directory, (1916) s.v. “12426 66,”
Marie-Louise Brugeyroux, Friars and Friends: A History of St. Francis of Assisi Parish: 1909 - 1984: Edmonton (Edmonton: St. Francis of Assisi Parish, 1984), 65.
