Place names in Mill Woods show us who we were in days gone by and also show us how we are today. Some place names date back to the Indigenous names that once were dominant. Others give us hints of the settlers that have moved in. European-style names - British, eastern Canadian and U.S. identity - are most prominent but some names harken to other ethnicities as well.
Currently there are moves to remove names of settler leaders who are seen to be connected to Native residential schools or the Ku Klux Klan, while names of others who got great wealth from exploitative business practices still grace schools and other prominent locations in Edmonton. It is all part of our history.
Mill Woods is built on land once earmarked for the Papaschase Indian reserve. That Cree band had moved to live near Fort Edmonton in the 1850s. Settlers began to set up pioneer farms in what is now Edmonton in 1870s. There was of course earlier occupation and settlement but it is mostly lost in the mists of time.
Mill Woods takes its name from Mill Creek, which flows through it. The creek’s name stems from a flour mill established by Fort Edmonton handyman William Bird in the 1870s. He is said to be one of the first persons to live on the southside of the river but oddly enough when he set up the mill, he moved into an abandoned log cabin already on the site. The name of the original occupant is not known.
The Papaschase reserve was surrendered under shadowy circumstances in 1889. As a sop to the once-rightful owners of the land where Mill Woods sits, many places in Mill Woods bear Cree names. The Satoo neighbourhood is named for Cree leader Chief Satoo. Nothing seems to be known about this person - just his name.
Tawa, the name of a neighbourhood in Mill Woods, is Cree for “you are welcome.” These names were dredged up from old-time records when Mill Woods was built in the 1970s. Long before that time, the area had been farmed and settled, and each portion of land marked down as owned by someone. Some early settlers are remembered by names that are still in use today.
The name “Ellerslie” was chosen by two Scotsmen who settled there in 1894. The McLaggan brothers - James and John - ran a store and post office at the present-day intersection of Ellerslie Road and Calgary Trail. Ellerslie may have been chosen because it was a beloved character in their favourite books, the Waverly novels by Walter Scott.
Near the McLaggans’ store, many Volhynians of German stock settled on Papaschase land sold at auction. Such names as Minchau and Werner made their appearance in the 1890s and are carried on to this day. Many of these immigrants from Poland and Ukraine were Moravian, and the area near Ellerslie Road was given the name Bruderfeld, brother’s field. Today’s Mill Woods Cemetery is a carry-over from the old Bruderfeld Moravian Cemetery.
It is likely many immigrants bought their land from the local Edmonton firm McDougall and Secord. Historical evidence and even newspaper ads of the old days show that that firm dealt extensively with Indian and Metis land scrip. Historians have found evidence that the firm and its “agents” obtained much scrip, each entitling them to 160 acres of land, from beguiled Natives and sold the land for massive return not long after. Despite this unsavoury background, the Secord name was given to a neighbourhood at Stony Plain Road and 231 Street. John A. McDougall name is used for a school at 107 Street and 109 Avenue.
Meanwhile, others without their business credentials are having their names stripped from schools. Dan Knott, Labour leader and mayor during the Great Depression, is besmirched by the KKK claiming credit for his 1931 ascent to the mayor’s chair. But there is no evidence that he himself applauded the actions of this nefarious organization. No newspaper accounts ever quote the mayor as supporting that group’s activities. Yet the school that bears his name, located at 14th Avenue and 80th Street in Mill Woods’s Meynohk area, is to be renamed.
Bishop Grandin was an advocate of the Indian residential schools. Until recently this endorsement was not questioned, at least not by anyone with clout. But the crimes committed in those schools are now known to be a blot on our heritage. His name, once so prominently displayed, even on the name of an LRT station, has been removed from sight.
Frank Oliver, a pioneer Edmonton newspaperman and elected politician, is the man mostly blamed for the stripping of the Papaschase reserve. His name is to be taken off Edmonton landmarks or such is being discussed. Unfair as the dismantling of the reserve was, there is much about this man to respect. When others were carving up the West for quick profit, he defended the small pioneer farmer and immigrant families.
As federal Minister of the Interior, he worked to keep the country’s borders open to Eastern and Central Europeans, at the time fleeing from dictatorial and oppressive governments there. A leading Liberal, his party was known for its ties to Canada’s French, a besieged minority in the West.
A Liberal MP, Oliver opposed the Conservative Party’s protectionist policies, which barred importation of cheap U.S. manufactured goods needed by farmers and ensured high profits for Ontario factory owners and other business people. Such was the Massey family and the Eatons family.
Perhaps we can picture members of the Masseys and Eatons family made rich by that protectionism, travelling by luxurious ocean liner to “the Continent,” perhaps accompanied by members of the Secord and McDougall family. Oliver meanwhile laboured at his newspaper and lost a son in WWI.
[Self-aware workers though were seldom comfortable in Oliver's Liberal Party, and workers, socialists and farmers formed their own political parties around 1919. Oliver's political career was permanently ended when the United Farmers party, a predecessor to today's NDP, came to dominate the political stage in the early 1920s.]
The Kiniski family came from Poland in 1912. This was after Oliver had lost his seat in the 1911 federal election, but the flow of Central Europeans was too strong to end with his defeat. The Kiniski’s were just one of many families who left Russia in those Czarist years. The name “Kiniski” may ring a bell due to it being the name of a neighbourhood in Mill Woods. Julia Kinisk was just 12 when her family re-settled in Alberta.
Although not attending formal school after Grade 7, “Big Julie” became a grandmother for her neighbours in Cloverdale. She ran for a seat on city council - and was unsuccessful. Her attempts were not helped at all by the old-fashioned election system that we use where proportional representation is not ensured, where rich and poor, workers and well-to-do, are not each guaranteed to have their due representation.
Not giving up after her first failure, she ran again - and again - and again, each time without success. Finally on her 11th try, she was successful. She served six years on council, dying in office at the age of 70. Hers is a story of a woman who couldn’t be stopped. She persevered to become a strong voice for the “little people” of Edmonton.
These are just a few of the many stories that make up our local heritage. This deep, confused and layered history is what made Edmonton. The city’s place names - old and new, the authentic and the artificial - reveal the thoughts held at the time and in the present time. I invite you to take up a city map and look at the names written there - the names of the parks, the streets, the neighbourhoods, the waterways.
Perhaps the very language they are written in tells you which ones are old. What do you think life was back then when they were named? What do they tell us about who once lived here in Edmonton in days gone by?
Hope you have fun.
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Information on Edmonton place names can be found in:City of Edmonton. Naming Edmonton from Ada to Zoiehttp://spacing.ca/edmonton/2014/08/27/papaschase-big-woodpecker/Tom Monto, Old Strathcona, Edmonton’s Southside Roots.
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originally published in Millwoods Mosaic April 2022
Knott school
Knottwood is the subdivision, and Satoo is the neighbourhood where it is located.
in defence of Dan Knott,
I also could have pointed out that the KKK backed Knott's opponent, Joe Clarke, in the 1932 election, but Knott was re-elected anyway. (source: my Old Strathcona book, p. 445, based on sources listed in the endnotes)
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