As reported on CBC News, a judge has ordered a group of Edmonton homeowners to change their roof shingles to fit within the rules dictated by a covenant in their south-Edmonton neighbourhood.

After six years and thousands of dollars spent on court fees, Joanne and Doug Britton have lost their fight to put rubber shingles on the roof of their home in Blackburne Creek, a neighbourhood just south of the Anthony Henday.

Doug Britton, a firefighter who works in Leduc, said Edmonton neighbourhoods should learn from the wildfire that tore through Fort McMurray three years ago and reconsider directives that order homeowners to use wood shingles.

“It’s simply the esthetics of a wood roof over the common sense and safety of burning the whole community to the ground,” Doug Britton said in an interview on Edmonton AM on Friday.

The Brittons purchased their two-storey home in 2006. By 2013, their pine-shake roof needed to be replaced. The couple researched the options and decided wood shingles were not a safe material.

“We back onto a ravine,” Doug Britton said.

“We have what’s called a wildland-urban interface problem where, behind our home, is a ravine. It’s full of trees and a lot of highly combustible dead leaves, dead trees. The potential for fire is so high that I wanted to replace our roof with material that would prevent our home from burning down.”

When they decided to replace the roof, the Brittons understood their home was subject to a restrictive covenant caveat. It stipulates that “all roofs are to be wood shakes or shingles only.”

The president of the neighbourhood homeowners association immediately noticed the delivery of synthetic rubber roofing materials to the Brittons’ house, and notified the couple that the materials did not comply with the covenant.

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