“I call it home. I keep coming back. Coming back because of family but also because I really appreciate the neighbourhood.”
Krista Leddy has lived most of her life in Mill Woods. Her parents bought a home there in the early days of the community, 1974. She was born in 1977 and grew up in Mill Woods. She moved away for a while, but when her mother died, she moved back into the family home to raise her own kids there. Krista says it has been a great experience. “To have these really wide open spaces… When my kids were little, we could go to all these different playgrounds that were actually a short walk from where we lived,” Leddy says. “We could explore somewhat still natural areas. We could go to the Mill Creek Ravine. We could walk along the berm, we could do all of these wonderful things we could not do in other parts of the city. And while it’s more difficult to walk to the grocery store and more difficult to get to a doctor’s office, there is still something wonderful and magical about living in Mill Woods.”
Krista Leddy and her father Gordon Gray, 2023.
Krista at around age three in the backyard of her Mill Woods home. (Image courtesy of Leddy family photo archives)
Late 1970s, pre-Whitemud Freeway construction, with downtown Edmonton skyline in the distance. (Image courtesy of Leddy family photo archives)
1974 view from northwest edge of Mill Woods towards downtown Edmonton. (Image courtesy of Leddy family photo archives)
Early 1980s construction of berm along Whitemud Freeway. (Image courtesy of Leddy family photo archives)
And she feels a strong bond with nature: “I don’t know how many times we see deer walking through the neighbourhood, coyotes all the time… A couple of years ago, there was a moose walking behind our house. Birds, things you don’t normally see in other parts of the city, just because there is so much green space.”
As a Métis, Leddy knows things were tough for her people, in what is now Edmonton, for a long time. It was a dark past. “When you look at the story around river lots, Métis people were literally chased off their land,’’ she says. “There was also economic manipulation done to remove Métis off the river lots. And so, while Métis were really important in helping to build this place, Edmonton, even the highways and roads were based on Red River cart trails, we kind of got pushed aside. For a long time, it wasn’t safe to be openly Métis.“
But now, for Leddy, Mill Woods is a welcoming place. “I like to make the joke that since my dad bought the land it’s like ‘land back,’ ’’ she says. “There’s a huge, hidden Indigenous population in contemporary Mill Woods. There’s a lot of First Nations, Inuit, Métis people that live in Mill Woods.”
And she feels connected to them:
“I am part of a group called Wahkohtowin. It is a Cree word meaning ‘we are all related, all connected.’ It’s more than just how we are related, it’s literally how everything around us is connected. Not just as people but as places, plants, animals, air, water… everything is connected. And I think that’s a really wonderful way to describe my growing up in Mill Woods, how everything and everyone is connected.”
Even the names of the neighbourhoods in Mill Woods help Leddy’s sense of connection. “The names of some of the neighbourhoods were taken from Cree words,” she says. Especially for Indigenous youth, feeling represented in the space you are in is really important, because there’s a really dark history there. It was pretty neat to know as a kid that those neighbourhoods were named with Cree words and as an adult, it’s still pretty cool.”
Leddy was raised in Mill Woods, left and made the choice to come back—just as many of her people have. “It’s like a homecoming, coming back to a place that our ancestors have been and our ancestors thrived in. Now we’re here and we’re doing our best to thrive as well.”
Related Stories
Mill Woods
