Progressive history of Mill Woods - the coops, the radicals, the thinkers, the gardeners (Millwoods Mosaic, June 2025)

A look at the prominent buildings and locations in Millwoods hint at some incidents of personal advancement and progressive politics that make up the history of Alberta. Sites just in the Richfield and Lee Ridge areas hint at progressive advances achieved in the past. The striving for equality for women and workers, for pleasant surroundings for children, youth and their parents, for the ability of humans of all ages to have the health and spare time to pursue their personal interests can all be seen in locations in those neighbourhoods. 

Those two neighbourhoods are served by the Leefield community league, based in its community hall on 36th Avenue. It is a part of the Edmonton Community League Federation. This is hailed as one of the largest volunteer organizations in North America, currently with 163 separate community leagues. The community leagues provide open, or at least inexpensive, access to a wide variety of programs of sports, educational opportunities and personal diversion. 

Back when Millwoods first started in the early 1970s, Lee Ridge and Richfield were served by what was called the Millwoods Community League. As Millwoods  extended past those two neighbourhoods, the name began to look odd and was changed to Leefield. 

The "Lee" in Lee Ridge honours Robert Lee, who served as mayor of Edmonton in 1909. He was said to be a Liberal in politics and was popular enough to be re-elected for another year. Elections were held every year back then.

The origin of the name Richfield is a little obscure. The book Naming Edmonton has it that it refers to the prosperity of area farms when it was used as farmland.

Near the Leefield community hall, the Grace Martin School honours the memory of one of Alberta's first female teachers. Grace Martin was born in 1879, not too long after the country of Canada itself was established in 1867.  As a young adult, her family moved from North Dakota to Canada and settled on a farm back when the site of present-day Southgate mall was farmland. After finishing her training as a teacher, she was the first teacher at the Oliver School, a one-room schoolhouse at today's Ellerslie. That  school district was named after Liberal MP Frank Oliver, at the time Alberta's only Member of Parliament. This took place even before Alberta was a province, when what is now Alberta was a section of the North-West Territories of Canada. After a couple years at Oliver School, she got a teaching job at Leduc, and then married a teacher working there. Those two teachers began a dynasty of teachers - their son taught, as did his son in turn. 

At the time, laws forbade married women from teaching. But during WWI, due to a shortage of teachers, she was called back to teach. The marriage bar against married women teachers was not dropped in Edmonton until 1943. Grace Martin lived to see  this. She also lived to see the Grace Martin School built and teaching its first group of children. This was in 1972, 70 years after Grace had taught her first class at old Oliver school. 

Grace saw these things come to pass. She lived right into the 1980s, passing away at the respectable age of 108! 

The Edith Rogers elementary school also is located in Richfield. It is named after one of Alberta's first female legislators. Rogers was elected in 1935 when Alberta elected the world's first Social Credit government. The idea that governments, not private business, had the right to manage the money system was revolutionary back then, and still is today. But Rogers, Premier William Aberhart and the other 54 Social Credit MLAs elected in 1935 believed that tight money policies was holding up economic progress and causing “poverty amidst plenty” - stores were bulging with goods but families were too poor to buy what they needed. 

Others, including the previous United Farmers government, held to conventional wisdom that the provincial government could do nothing to loosen the Depression-era scarcity of cash in circulation. But the Social Credit government not only printed its own money but also established its own banks. They survive today as the ATB -"Alberta Treasury Branches", the only government-owned banks in North America that serve the public. 

Rogers was not re-elected in 1940, when many turned against the SC government. When the Social Credit government stopped its radical monetary reforms in the 1940s, she became active in the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation party, a forerunner of the NDP. 

In 1959 she joined a municipal political party, the left-leaning Civic Reform Association (CRA), and won a seat on the public school board. She served on the school board until 1974, which was just a couple years before the Edith Rogers Junior High School graduated its first class of ninth-graders.

When the first homes were built in Millwoods in the early 1970s, space was given to housing co-operatives. Housing co-ops are intentional communities, in that the group chooses who lives there. It can also be thought of as intentional in that rules have to be set by the members themselves - there are no landlords or bosses saying how things are. The concept of intentional communities goes back centuries, with many great thinkers imagining utopian societies based on gender equality and alternative means of taxation and a new kind of work-leisure balance in lives. Housing co-ops share a bit of that, but mostly strive just to provide affordable housing among kindred spirits.

The Keegano Housing Co-op is located on Richfield Road. Back in the 1970s it provided housing for labour lawyer Barrie Chivers and free-thinking UofA sociology professor Arthur Davies, and also for working-class families and struggling single-parent families. 

In 1975, the just-opened complex did not yet have proper fire roads, access ways for fire trucks if needed. A co-op member suggested surfacing the alleys with short lengths of treated logs. Co-op members worked countless hours chainsawing logs and dipping the pieces in treatment. When it was done, a rain came and the whole “road” lifted up and floated. It was unavoidable at that point to order a paving company to come and pave it the usual way. 

The Briar Rose Housing Co-operative is also located in Millwoods, in the Menisa neighbourhood near the Henday.

And what is a community without parks? Take for instance the Lee Ridge Park adjacent to the Lee Ridge School. It shows the care and attention that modern Edmonton now gives to the safety of its children. While those of older generations recall climbing bars and “jungle gyms” set on grass or sand, the playground equipment at Lee Ridge Park is built on beds of soft rubber. A sign explains that material from old tires was used to make the soft bedding around the climbing bars and slides. Falling down onto such a surface is much less painful than in the old days! 

The park also offers a contoured toboggan hill and large fields and playing areas. When I was there the other day, a pair of Canada geese were enjoying the grass and open area. They walked around the school and finally settled down for a nap near the road, obviously not too worried about people and cars moving past them.

Millwoods also has community gardens where urban residents can enjoy hard work and the fesh air while raising their own food. They were featured in a walking lecture that Christina Gray, the MLA for Edmonton-Millwoods, organized on May 9. Gray, an NDP-er, has held the Millwoods seat since 2015. Perhaps she, like Grace Martin and Edith Rogers, will one day have a school named after her too. Alberta’s progressive history is still being made even today. 

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