Riding the rails of Bonnie Doon’s past

Bonnie Doon was gradually settled from the 1870s onwards. The western part became a part of the City of Strathcona in 1907 and then became a part of Edmonton when Strathcona and Edmonton merged in 1912. The rest of the neighbourhood was annexed by Edmonton the following year. Edmonton had been going through a huge economic boom, but by the end of 1913, the boom had turned into a crash and development in Bonnie Doon stopped. 

Nonetheless, the City of Edmonton kept a promise made by the City of Strathcona to build a streetcar into Bonnie Doon. 

Edmonton historian Shirley Lowe says trains and streetcars have been a big part of Bonnie Doon’s history:

“[It’s still bounded at 83 Street, where the LRT is], in the same way that it was 91 Street for the streetcar, and, of course, the eastern boundary was the Edmonton, Yukon and Pacific. So there’s a train that winds its way through the history of Bonnie Doon almost regularly.” 

And Lowe says there is an interesting vestige of the old streetcar line today in Bonnie Doon: “The terminus was 88 Avenue and 91 Street, so that weird little triangle where the Bulgogi House restaurant is, is a remnant of the streetcar.”

Speaking of Bonnie Doon history, let’s not forget the Silver Heights Peony Garden, although technically it was located in what is now Strathearn. It was a major tourist attraction and the source of most of Alberta’s peonies from 1923 until the 1940s when the land became needed for housing after World War II.  

“They had a very successful business,” Lowe says. “There was also a market garden there for years. That all went with the housing boom.”

Bonnie Doon had been pretty much dormant from the 1913 crash until the end of World War II. “There was this huge demand. And developers were building and subdividing all kinds of new communities,” Lowe continues. “People were buying either two- or three-bedroom bungalows. The infill in Bonnie Doon was huge, and then there was another level of infill where they were taking down the older houses and building multiple-housing units. In the late 1960s and 1970s, the baby boom was… here and they needed… housing for students and young families. But Bonnie Doon was mostly a 1950s build.”

Another catalyst in the evolution of Bonnie Doon was the building of Bonnie Doon Mall in 1958. 

Before that, the downtown was the centre of everyone’s universe. “Now [the mall] had everything they needed,” Lowe says. “It was a community meeting place, there was a grocery store, there was a clothing store, small mom and pop stores were in there. And it was covered so you could go there in winter and spend your afternoon. It was sort of idyllic.” 

So Bonnie Doon changed, and it also became the heart of Edmonton’s Franco-Albertan community. It is the home of the only francophone university west of Manitoba, the University of Alberta’s Campus St.Jean, and the only Francophone high school west of Winnipeg, École Maurice-Lavallée.

Daniel Cournoyer is Executive Director of La Cité Francophone. He says 10,000 Francophones live within ten minutes of the facility. He himself has lived in Bonnie Doon for close to three decades and has seen change firsthand.

“I would say in the last 10 or 15 years we have seen a real resurgence…” he says, “…densification, splitting lots, gentrification of the neighbourhood where we’re getting a younger generation moving in. When you’ve got the young families moving in, it creates an energy.”

As Edmonton has grown exponentially in the last 25 years, what people considered their centre core has expanded from Jasper Avenue to other areas like Old Strathcona, Forest Heights, Ritchie and Bonnie Doon. “There is this sense of wanting to build local businesses, local connections to the community, and I think this speaks well to this central hub,” Cournoyer says.

Lowe agrees Bonnie Doon has come a long way. And it continues to evolve, with again, the mall and a train playing a big part.

“Bonnie Doon is [no longer] the community you move to because you’re willing to put up with no water or sewage because of the low land prices and housing costs,’’ she says. “Now you’re buying into the centre of the city, you’re buying into amenities, you’re buying into the new transit. I don’t think you can underestimate what that is going to do.”

“The fact that [Valley Line] stops at [Bonnie Doon] mall and that it creates transit opportunities to get to the university, to go downtown and do all those things. The streetcar did that,” Lowe continues. “So we’ve learned from the past that if you put in good transit connections, you will get good development and you will get a community that will build resources around it.”