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Downtown parkade to be named after transportation pioneer Gordon Sorensen

Red Deer’s new three-storey parkade will officially be called Sorensen Station. City council approved on Monday the name of the parkade at 4830-48t St. in recognition of Gordon Sorensen, considered the transportation pioneer for Red Deer and surrounding area.
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Shunda Construction labourers install signs on the southside facade of new downtown parkade Monday.

Red Deer’s new three-storey parkade will officially be called Sorensen Station.

City council approved on Monday the name of the parkade at 4830-48t St. in recognition of Gordon Sorensen, considered the transportation pioneer for Red Deer and surrounding area.

Sorensen launched transit service in Red Deer in 1957 and also developed school bussing and all highway buses into Central Alberta. Sorensen died in 1981 at the age of 77.

Six members of Sorensen’s family, made up of three generations, attending council’s meeting where they received gifts from the mayor and congratulatory handshakes from all of council.

Saskatoon resident Cecil Sorensen, son of Gordon, said he’ll feel very proud when he travels by the parkade one day and see the words “Sorensen Station” on the building. He described his father as a man of vision who was “very forceful in his ways.”

“I know my parents would have been very pleased,” said Sorensen. “He (Gordon) would have been flabbergasted, very honoured.”

Sorensen said the bus line was his father’s life. He started it, first with one bus in Red Deer, when Cecil was small.

“I can remember the first bus —it had a flat nose,” Sorensen said. “We lived in Rocky Mountain House and drove back and forth.”

The bus service eventually grew to 14 buses before Gordon Sorensen sold it to the City of Red Deer in 1966.

ltester@www.reddeeradvocate.com