Remembering John Paul II's 1984 historic visit to Edmonton
CBC
When Pope Francis's plane touches down in Edmonton on Sunday, he will be the second head of the Roman Catholic Church to visit Alberta.
Pope John Paul II famously visited the province in 1984 and then briefly again in 1987. The first visit was part of a 12-day tour across Canada that began in Quebec City and went as far west as Vancouver.
Monsignor Jack Hamilton, a retired priest with the Edmonton Archdiocese, was involved in the planning for the 1984 visit. He said the latest visit will have a different tone.
"It's going to be a lot more serious than it was in 1984, which was very jubilant," he said during a news availability earlier this month.
"It was a pastoral visit to everybody, there was no problem that we knew about that he was coming for."
Pope Francis is expected to deliver an apology for the Catholic Church's role in residential schools during his visit to Canada that starts Sunday.
Hamilton said there were weekly planning meetings up to a year before the pope's arrival to Edmonton nearly 40 years ago.
"I don't envy the people who are organizing the [latest] visit because they only have a few months to do it," he said.
On Sept. 16, 1984, John Paul II flew into CFB Edmonton, near Namao, Alta.
He rode in his Popemobile down 97th Street — crowds greeting him along the way — before attending a meeting of religious leaders at St. Joseph's Basilica downtown.
The next morning was the main event of this leg of the journey: mass for an expected crowd of more than 100,000 in a farmer's field adjacent to the base.
RCMP and emergency services were at the site to keep everything running smoothly. Ted Suranyi, Namao's fire chief at the time, was part of the planning.
"Traffic was a big problem for us," he said during an interview last week. Highway 28 to the CFB Edmonton airport was a narrow road at the time. RCMP controlled traffic and people were bused in, Suranyi said.
Suranyi himself had little chance to hear the pope actually speak — he spent the day riding around in a vehicle with his deputy chief, checking in and liaising between police and fire departments.
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