Notes by Tom Monto (author of Montopedia blogs; book Old Strathcona Edmonton's Southside Roots)
Riverlot 3
East boundary 116th Street (in line with 121 Street northside)
West boundary Groat Road/edge of uplands
South boundary University Avenue; North boundary the river.
Oman family
(info from Monto, Old Strathcona Edmonton's Southside Roots; Taylor, Coal Mine Working of Edmonton)
Allan and Jane Omand arrived in 1881
he was born in Orkney Islands around 1856
Allan and wife Jane arrived in poor health -- they had nearly starved to death near Winnipeg on way west.
Allan found work as riverman and boatbuilder, pioneer farmer and coalminer.
took up residence on west edge of settlement. it was surveyed as Riverlot 3 in 1882. and he was awarded squatters rights proving prior occupancy.
Riverlot 3 covered 200 acres, enough land for estimated 2400 houses.
today, Windsor Park holds about 493 buildings, housing 2900 people.
Riverlot 3 also includes Emily Murphy Park. (a brief biography is below)
Jane had two children before dying in 1884.
Allan's sister Eliza arrived from the Orkney's to care for the children.
she later married Dan Fulton of a prominent pioneer family
Allen then took his children to Scotland where he left them with relatives.
Allan returned to Edmonton.
He married Mary Hebert who was living in River lot 1 (Hawrelak Park) in 1892. they had one son Ted.
Coal Mine
some time in 1880s or 1890s he operated a sml l coal mine near the river.
There is little known about it except it was later operted by the Williams Brothers as well in 1905ish.
the mine had three openings (horizontal tunnels or drifts). They were low down to the river and two of them collapsed, making two parallel dips in the footpath est of Emily Murphy Park. The mine exploited a 1-metre-thick coal seam and perhaps extractred 3900 tons of coal.
During Yukon gold rush (1898-1899) Allan tried to go overland to the Yukon but suffered from scurvy and returned to Edmonton. He sold the land and moved away.
He later settled in Vancouver where his two children also ended up and the family spent some time together before Allan's death in 1931.
Allan's brother James and his son Alexander also came from the Islands to Edmonton, in 1890s.
Ted Omand born in 1890s also carried on the name.
The family is remembered by the name of the Omand Drive in present-day Edmonton. (along the Whitemud at 34th Avenue)
John McPhaden bought Riverlot 3 in 1904.
John Riley McPhaden (1863-1945)
arrived in Edmonton as surveyor.
once CPR was built through Calgry he made money freighting supplies north from Calgary, and then operated the John Walter's ferry at Walterdale (at the time the easiest way to cross the river during the summer - in winter people just walked over the ice). He bought a farm east of Ellerslie. in 1904 sold it to John Walter and bought Riverlot 3 from Oman.
1910 he sold it to group of British businessmen for $170,000.
McPhaden kept his own house lot at 11632 Edinboro Road. 1919 phone book lists him as "farmer Windor Park subdivision." later he got a farm near Ellerslie again.
The English development syndicate named the proposed neighbourhood Windsor Park
Name refers to royal family in Britain. Name for Edmonton's Windsor Hotel and Windsor Cafe also had same derivation.
Windsor Road was planned.
Edinboro Road planned too. name fell into disuse
nearby Edinboro Park
1912 streetcar line proposed to run from 109th through university grounds to Windsor Park then soutth to 68th Street, and east to 83rd Street (what was 21st Street East) report said these plans seem not to be warranted but with expected population growth they will be necessary. (Mirror, Nov. 30, 1912)
sale of four riverview lots to postmaster May of Edmonton (newspaper reports). it seems he bought them as speculation. (Saturday News, Feb. 24, 1912)
Edmonton Bulletin Jan 15, 1913 owners of Windsor Park and Mayfair are offering cash to the city if they pave a road through the university grounds to access the communities.
Lot 9, Block 32, Windsor Park price $2500, half cash, balance six and 12 months (Edmonton Bulletin, Jan. 22, 1913)
then came the crash of 1912/1913
syndicate lost land.
1914 most Edmonton roads given numbers
Edinboro Road name fell into disuse Iit is not used inthe 1919 phone book) in 1932 residents saw the name on old map and pushed to get 93rd Avenue formally renamed to the old name
nearby Edinboro Park
in 1915 Ted Oman was running a poultry farm on the land. (OSESSR, p. 294)
Ted lived to 1986, so we see case where a son of one of Edmonton's original pioneers lived into the computer age.
1916 reported that city has done $40,000 worth of sewer work in Windsor Park but city admitted that that money could not be recovered from property owners as the pipes did not have an outlet.
there was no running water.
No one was pressing for the sewer to be completed. (Edmonton Bulletin, April 11, 1916)
1917 April 17 newspaper reports said house lots in Windsor Park and across the southside are to be up for auction at a tax sale. This includes lots in Windsor Terrace, Mayfair, Walterdale, and Riverlots 7, 9, 11, 13, 15. (Edmonton Bulletin)
that report noted that recent tax sales on northside saw lots purchased by Richard Secord and Imperial Bank. they paid $2000 for lots.
A political activist of the 1920s - Ernest Brown - noted that the taxes imposed took the land away from the small owners and put it in the hands of speculators who then appealed for the taxes to be lowered. and still as the economy tanked, they too gave up the land, ending their dream of getting fabulously wealthy form the buying up the tax-seized land.
some of these speculators suffered bankruptcy or financial ruin, and several suicided, he said, when their speculative dreams did not pan out - Edmonton's recession that started in 1912 lasted for decades.
Eventually the city became its own largest property owner acquiring something like 75,000 of Edmonton's 110,000 lots.
Many were sold off in the mid-1940s as soon as the land price went up to close to what it had been in 1912 and people were buying again. But now in 2024 each lot sells for more than $200,000. The City lost out on way to subsidize affordable housing - keep the land and build houses and rent them out or organize housing coops to manage them - and even this year Councillor Andrew Kvack is pushing city to sell off its land.
(by 1918 very few mentions of the Windsor Park district in the local newspapers)
largely undeveloped until after WWII.
only Windsor Park residents listed in telephone book of 1924 --
Alf. Burt, professor;
Dorothy Harcourt stenographer,
Hartley family on Sask. Drive (including a clerk and two stenographers (showing need for stenographers in time before computers);
William Whitehead, employee University Hospital;
George Young, of Young and Bisset (legal firm).
Neighbourhood "in-filled' in 1940s
Windsor Park community league started in 1947
Windsor Park community league hall built in 1949
portion of neighbourhood south of 87th Avenue lies west of 117th St. why the east boundary of Windsor Park south of 87th Avenue does not coincide with old Riverlot 3's east boundary (116th St). Why is not known. seems to be of old standing as Mundy's Map of 1920s (endpapers of Naming Edmonton book) shows that setback (although placing it on west boundary of Riverlot 3).
Hawrelak was mayor 1951-1959, then later 1963 to 1965, and 1974 to his death in 1975.
He lived in Windsor Park.
Windsor Park elementary public school opened in 1955.
sinkholes in some backyards at top of river valley.
most of them have been filled in.
A coalmine operated by Joseph Hebert, a pioneer in Riverlot 1. It was dug into river valley wall under site of today's Windsor Park. maybe cause of the sinkhole.
Hebert died in late 1880s, leaving behind widow Mary, who later married Allan Oman as mentioned above.
noteworthy homes in Windsor Park
large house owned by McBain of McBain camera stores perhaps older than WWI (rumour has it) (address unknown)
Emily Murphy 1878-1933
wife of Anglican vicar
bestselling author of Janey Canuck in the West
active in social causes
helped found Victorian Order of Nurses. president of Women's Institutes and on National Council of Women
helped achieve passage of the Dower Act of 1911, whereby wife was due to a third of husband's property if he died during the marriage.
She pressed on to fight for wife's right to portion of husband's property on occasion of breakup of the marriage, but was told it was covered by alimony law. (Edmonton Bulletin, Jan. 27, 1912)
Her campaign in this and other legislative matters led to her being named police magistrate in 1916, the first woman to hold that post in the British Empire.
Alberta women got the vote in 1916 and elected the first women in the British Empire in 1917.
But Murphy found that women were not legally considered persons in all things so organized four other women to join with her to be the five appellants in the famous Person's Case of 1929.
The "Famous Five"
Irene Parlby, Louise McKinney and Nellie McClung had all previously been elected to the Alberta legislature.
Henrietta Muir Edwards, 80 years old in 1929, was a self-taught legal expert on women's affairs.
Privy Council in London ruled there was no reason why women could not legally be women if Canadian Parliament said they were. so that change was then achieved.
Murphy died only four years later, not achieving her goal of being named to the Senate.
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