100 years of amalgamation
Originally a separate community, bustling Strathcona was absorbed by city on Feb. 1, 1912
Strathcona once seemed to be a city with a future, but 100 years ago the municipality was absorbed into Edmonton and disappeared forever.
The bustling centre had benefited from its position in 1891 as the end of the rail link to the rest of Canada, becoming the site of Alberta’s first university under the influence of local leading light Premier Alexander Rutherford.
There was a real estate boom and a wave of immigrants who fanned out to farm the rich soil.
But economic opportunities were limited — the area was hemmed in by the North Saskatchewan River and the Mill Creek ravine, and people settling south of town could do business at the Leduc train station instead of Strathcona.
Edmonton, on the other hand, was on the rise, growing out of the original Hudson’s Bay Company trading forts and well located to service development throughout northern Alberta.
By the end of the first decade of the 1900s, its population was five times larger than Strathcona’s, spurred by the arrival of two transcontinental rail lines from the east and a southern track across the Low Level Bridge.
On Feb. 1, 1912, Strathcona threw in the towel and officially merged with its cross-river rival, although some residents never accepted the change.
“My grandfather (John Carmichael) was very much against amalgamation,” says Jean Mckenzie, who has lived most of her life in the house the former Strathcona town councillor built on 84th Avenue more than a century ago.
“There was a quite a bit of animosity against some of the businessmen on the north side in Edmonton. Until the day he died, he always said he would live in Strathcona, not South Edmonton.”
However, many of his neighbours disagreed, voting 518-178 in favour of a merger expected to lower taxes, create a bigger city that would benefit everyone and reduce what one Strathcona councillor called “interurban strife.”
An Edmonton Journal article at the time described Strathcona as “a thriving business and residential suburb,” with its own power plant, four slaughterhouses, a flour mill, a brewery, sawmills and other industry.
The district absorbed in the first of many Edmonton annexations stretched from approximately 91st Street west to the river, and as far south as 61st Avenue.
In the months before the two sides joined together, both municipalities passed large road contracts, but Strathcona was reputed to have done far more paving per person than its new partner, knowing the debt would be shared.
There were other benefits to the former Strathcona residents — the number of police officers increased, streetcar tracks were extended as far south as 76th Avenue and a single five-cent fare was enough to travel across the river.
Strathcona was also guaranteed at least three seats on the combined city council, a condition only eliminated following a 1960 plebiscite.
Despite amalgamation, the area’s fortunes waned, says Tom Monto, author of Old Strathcona: Edmonton’s
Southside Roots, a recent update of Old Strathcona Before the Great Depression.
“South-side businesses that had supported it found that with the High Level Bridge (in 1913) and street cars and more motorized traffic, a lot of people on the south side went downtown to better stores on Jasper Avenue,” he says. “Whyte Avenue fell into neglect.” Taxes didn’t go down as anticipated, partly because the economy crashed in 1914, at the start of the First World War, leading the population to drop so drastically it didn’t climb back to the same level until 1929.
The rivalries continued as well, although nothing like the 1902 confrontation that saw an Edmonton mob hold off Strathcona police so workers could hook up the first rail line across the river.
“There was a lot of feeling of southside loyalty. Graduates of Strathcona High School thought of themselves differently than the graduates of the north side high school,” Monto says.
“Hockey games were where the rivalry came out. You read references to women tripping other players with their umbrellas.”
The long-term economic decline turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Unlike downtown, there was no development pressure to demolish the brick commercial buildings, allowing them to survive until Old Strathcona was recognized in the 1970s as a historic gem.
Mckenzie, 81, relishes her area’s rich past. As a child, she and her friends dammed parts of Mill Creek to create a swimming hole upstream from the effluent disgorged by the Gainers meat packing plant, one of Strathcona’s big employers.
“The creek was nice and clear before you got to Gainers. Then it was red and it didn’t smell very good.”
She remembers the large German community once served by numerous German shops on Whyte Avenue, the horse-drawn wagons of the vegetable and milk men, and the chickens her grandmother kept in the backyard.
“It’s a wonderful, homey community. I love it here.”