“I would say it’s the boulevard trees, people love the trees. It’s the common area [by] the school. It’s the proximity to downtown. This used to be the suburbs. People moved here to get away. But right now, we are very close to downtown.”
Aerial view of Holyrood, [ca. 1956]. (Image courtesy of City of Edmonton Archives, EA-33-195)
Edmonton subdivisions, [ca. 1912]. (Image courtesy of City of Edmonton Archives, EAM-13)
The skaters from the Holyrood Community League participating in an ice show “Then… Now…”, held at the Edmonton Gardens on March 9, 1974. (Image courtesy of City of Edmonton Archives, EA-630-144)
Skaters from the Holyrood Community League participating in an ice show “That’s Entertainment On Ice,” held at the Edmonton Gardens in March 1978. (Image courtesy of City of Edmonton Archives, EA-630-256)
Holyrood playground, [ca. 1980]. (Image courtesy of City of Edmonton Archives, ET-28-1717)
Shelley Sabo has lived in Holyrood for 15 years and says there are lots of reasons to enjoy living in the south-central Edmonton neighbourhood:
“Great schools, great sense of community… Our playground, our parks, some great public art that was done by a local artist, Jeff Sylvester, on the west side of the community league… People have put benches in front of their houses to make the neighbourhood more walkable. This is definitely an aging neighbourhood with some turnover, and we always aspire to make this an age-friendly neighbourhood.”
And it’s a neighbourhood that has been around awhile, albeit with different names. The City of Edmonton’s neighbourhood profile says it was called both Mount Pleasant and East Edmonton Gardens back in 1912. Two decades later the area was called Balmoral, and in 1953, because of the duplication of subdivision names, the area was re-named Holyrood. Holyrood likely takes its name from Holyrood Abbey in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Holyrood really took off in the 1950s when the need for housing in Edmonton exploded. Holyrood Elementary School, now well known for its French Immersion program, opened in 1955 and the Holyrood Community League started a year later.
Sabo says there are still many houses that date back to the 1950s, but the neighbourhood has also seen a lot of infill, with big new houses, skinny houses and larger developments in the last few years. And that has meant some growing pains.
“It’s been a really tough transition for some of my neighbours to go from your single-family house to having a big highrise across the back alley,” she says. “Holyrood has a long history of fighting development, but you know, we’ve got to move ahead.“
And it’s not just the mix of housing in Holyrood that’s changing.
“We were pretty much white Anglo-Saxon for many, many years,” says Sabo, “but over the last five years I’ve definitely noticed newcomers from different parts of the world. I think that’s one of the big changes that’s going to happen to Edmonton. We’re going to be welcoming people from all over the world with all their cultural strengths, and I look for great community spaces where we can engage and share ideas.”
“It’s really hard to imagine 40 years from now,” Sabo continues. “The city plan is looking at creating a city for two million people. We hope to get people from all over the world. We’re going to have people looking for affordability. People that are used to smaller homes but great outdoor spaces.”
Sabo believes the Valley Line LRT going through Holyrood is part of making all that happen although she says it’s been an adjustment for a lot of residents.
“But it’s here. The tracks are in the ground,” Sabo says. “My dad loved railways… I took him for a drive before he passed away this year, and he was just amazed to see the train tracks. And as an older person, he would have appreciated the low floors because his mobility was reduced. People with strollers. I think all kinds of people will find these trains much more accessible.”
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