When Mill Woods was first being developed in the early 1970s, land lots were being sold mainly to young families from Edmonton and migrant workers from Eastern Canada. But that quickly changed, and Mill Woods was soon known for its great cultural diversity.
New houses being built in Mill Woods, [ca. 1980]. (Image courtesy of City of Edmonton Archives, ET-28-1384)
Mill Woods, looking north, 1980. (Image courtesy of City of Edmonton Archives, ET-28-1387)
The Grey Nuns Community Hospital under construction, looking east, [ca. 1986]. (Image courtesy of City of Edmonton Archives, ET-27-13)
Monica Chavez in an interview for the Mill Woods Living Heritage project, 2014. (Image courtesy of millwoodshistory.org)
Naresh Bhardwaj in an interview for the Mill Woods Living Heritage project, 2014. (Image courtesy of millwoodshistory.org)
Annabelle de Guzman in an interview for the Mill Woods Living Heritage project, 2015. (Image courtesy of millwoodshistory.org)
Veena Khatri in an interview for the Mill Woods Living Heritage project, 2015. (Image courtesy of millwoodshistory.org)
The Mill Woods Recreation Centre, looking east, [ca. 1986]. (Image courtesy of City of Edmonton Archives, ET-27-11)
Grant MacEwan Community College, Mill Woods Campus, [ca. 1982]. This campus was the first facility specifically designed for and built by the college. It opened at 73 Street and 29 Avenue in 1976 and has been demolished. (Image courtesy of City of Edmonton Archives, ET-28-522)
Lots of factors contributed to building that diversity. 1967 saw Canada adopt a merit-based immigration system that led to increasing numbers of newcomers from all over the world. The 1972 expulsion of Ugandans of Indian origin, the 1973 coup in Chile, the emigration of Sikhs from Punjab and of other South Asians from Pakistan in the early 1970s, and the arrival of “boat people” from Vietnam in 1979-1980 all combined to shape the neighbourhood.
The Mill Woods Living Heritage project tells the story of immigrants through their own oral histories. One of them is Monica Chavez, who arrived in Canada in 1975 as a political refugee from Chile and came to love her new home. She arrived in Mill Woods in 1984.
“Mill Woods has been beautiful for us,’’ Chavez says in an interview for the Mill Woods Living Heritage project. “The neighbours. Wonderful people. To my right side they were always the born Canadian. And then on the other side, I had Latins, then in front I had Filipinos, then from Africa, Lebanese, Korean. I mean I have the United Nations in my block. Mill Woods to me is a very diverse, harmonious place to live where people respect each other and they help each other.”
Naresh Bhardwaj, came to Mill Woods in the mid-1970s from Punjab. He went on to teach the next generation at J. Percy Page High School.
“Living in Mill Woods is like living in a mini United Nations. We’ve got kids there from eighty or ninety countries. That’s half the world,” says Bhardwaj. “When I came, I couldn’t speak the language either. I say, guys you’ve just got to drive it. You’ve got to have the desire. You learn it. In order for you to learn it, you have to create the environment for yourself. If you speak your own language all the time, you’re not going to learn.”
Anabelle de Guzman came to Mill Woods from the Philippines in 1990.
“I feel like I’m living in a very supportive environment and I feel a sense of togetherness. A sense of belonging,” says Anabelle. “It feels like it’s a home away from home. Even if I have to go to places. When I go to the mall… I see familiar faces. When I say hi to them and talk to them for a little while and you feel like you belong here. That’s how I feel, I belong here.”
It’s not all harmony and neighbourliness. There is one thing that often comes as a shock to newcomers… winter.
Veena Khatri came from India in 1981 to join her husband in Mill Woods. She well remembers her first real experience in the cold.
She was taking courses at the university and had to take the bus home one night in a blizzard. The bus was delayed and she ended up waiting for more than half an hour at the Lakewood bus stop. Up until then, she had no clue how cold it could get because her husband had been driving her places after first warming up the car.
“I was waiting there… a good forty minutes and I started feeling numbness in my hands and feet,” Khatri recalls.
Finally, she couldn’t stand it any longer. She ran home, collapsing when she got inside and then being taken to the hospital to be treated for frozen hands and feet.
“So that was my transition into the climate of cold winter here, which I am still not used to,” she says.
Cold winters or not, come July, people are ready to have some outdoor fun. Canada Day is very much a time for that and perhaps it is the immigrant experience that makes Canada Day so amazingly special in Mill Woods.
Every July 1 tens of thousands of people descend on Mill Woods Park for the largest neighbourhood Canada Day celebration in the country. There is free family entertainment with musical performances, petting zoos, hay rides and food. It ends with a fireworks display that rivals Edmonton’s main fireworks show in the river valley. People from all over the city come to Mill Woods to take it all in. And now it will be easier for them, with two nearby Valley Line LRT stations, the Mill Woods Stop and the Grey Nuns Stop.
