Malmo Plains History
How an Edmonton neighbourhood didn't end up being called Grossdale and got the city's dirtiest name instead.
Before World War I there was a real estate boom in Edmonton. Land owners and investors were bringing dozens of speculative subdivisions to market. One on the south side of the river was Grossdale.
The High Level Bridge, then under construction, was seen as dramatically improving access to the south side. In the marketer's parlance, Grossdale was where the bridge "will take the population."
Grossdale was the handiwork of B. Frank Blackburn. Frank & his wife Katherine were born in the U.S. and emigrated to Alberta in 1904. Frank got into real estate and in 1911, perhaps because of his American connections, found New Englanders willing to invest in Edmonton.
Canada was booming. There was significant British and especially American investment in Canadian manufacturing, railroads, resources (timber, pulp & paper), and also real estate.
The primary investor was George L. Gross of Providence, RI. George & his brother Harold had one of the largest real estate businesses in New England. I wasn't able to find a photo of George, but here's a profile of Harold, who later ran for Governor of RI.
Biography of Col. Harold Judson Gross — Rhode Island Genealogy
A figure of distinguished importance in the life of Rhode Island for many years, Colonel Harold Judson Gross was one of the most prominent of the State’s business men, and a public servant…
What we have on George Gross is his reported confidence in his eponymous subdivision: "Mr. Gross believes there is an urgent demand right now for popular-priced lots within easy access of the business centre for homes for the young business and professional men..."
Homes for business people on land that just over 20 years before had been part of the Papaschase Reserve. The reserve was surrendered in 1889, and its NW corner (Lot 18R on the map) is what became Grossdale.
The Grossdale subdivision was gridded and featured the east-west oriented blocks that had become the standard on the south side in contrast to the north-south blocks north of the river. The subdivision was centred on Gross Avenue.
Other street names included Carver (another of the American investors), Laurier (prime minister at the time), Connaught (newly-appointed Governor General & uncle to King George V), Perks, Hill & Woodward. Exterior roads have governmental names; interior roads have private names.
Grossdale had perhaps the best real estate advertising image in boomtime Edmonton, painted by Gibson Catlett. The rendering, which shows the subdivision's south-side context, the Legislature, U of A buildings and more, hung in Blackburn's sales office.
Like other advertisements of the day, those for Grossdale emphasized appreciating property values. The slogan "A faint heart never won a fair lady nor a fat turkey on a Christmas Day" implied a certain degree of risk, though, didn't it?
In a day before widespread car ownership, Grossdale ads in 1912 promised an extension of Edmonton's streetcar system to the northern edge of Grossdale. This didn't happen. Ads in 1913 offered prospective buyers a free car ride to the subdivision and said a bus route was imminent.
But the boom was ending. In the last newspaper ad for Grossdale, in Nov 1913, lots were listed as starting at $250. In Mar 1914, someone was trying to sell their Grossdale lot for $25. In 1917, scores of Grossdale lots reverted to the City because of unpaid property taxes.
The Blackburns remained in Edmonton until 1920 when they moved to Seattle. Frank continued working in real estate (the 1940 U.S. Census lists him as a broker). He died at age 85 in 1964, five years after Katherine.
George Gross likewise continued in business -- the real estate company he and his brother founded endured into the 1980s, selling a lot of homes in Florida after WWII -- until one day in 1927, at the Rhode Island County Club, when he died of a heart attack.
And Grossdale? It didn't go away. It became a rural community south of Edmonton. One of the vendors at the City Market in the 1930s was Grossdale Gardens.
It had long-term residents, a rural school, a women's association, and an archery club.
This is what Grossdale looked like in 1957. A few homes clustered near 111 St, farm fields, market gardens, and just outside of what had been the Papaschase reserve, the @UAlberta Soils Farm. You can see its small scientific plots east of 122 St.
Edmonton annexed Grossdale in 1959. As postwar development hurried southward, the City replotted the pre-1914 subdivisions that had only minimally been developed & whose gridiron layouts were now out of style. There were surely some design challenges but there was also the name.
George Gross's surname derived from the French "gros," meaning large. There were also many North Americans named Gross after the German "groß." The adjective "gross" came into English around 1380 meaning something of conspicuous or evident magnitude and additional meanings...
... developed from there. Shakespeare has Horatio reflect "in the gross and scope of my opinion." A skewering line from John Dryden talked about someone's finger being "more gross than the great Monarch's loins." It became respectable to be "engrossed" in something.
"Gross" meaning comprehensive or total came into statistical and economic vocabulary, as in gross domestic product or gross income. But there were also less comely meanings of this fascinating word. "Gross" also referred to things glaring, flagrant, coarse, and lacking delicacy.
And the @OED dates the American slang use of the word, meaning disgusting or repulsive, to 1959 -- the year Edmonton annexed Grossdale.
The original subdivision name continued to be used -- the City of Edmonton Archives has 1959-60 correspondence from Grossdale Properties Ltd -- but clearly, some people wanted a renaming. In Feb 1962 the City's Names Advisory Committee recommended the name Malmo Plains.
Malmö is the second largest city in Sweden. It sits across a narrow strait from Copenhagen. When Swedish immigrants settled south of Wetaskiwin, they named their farming district Malmo. This is where this thread gets dirty.
As the western prairies were being colonized, soil science was coming into its own. Pedology is the branch of soil science focused on classifying soils, and soil classification are fundamental to modern agriculture.
Pedology - Wikipedia
Canada has a soil classification system and a National Soil Database. Each soil series has a name, typically named after the place where it was first identified. One of the soils in Alberta is called Malmo after the Malmo district south of Wetaskiwin.
https://sis.agr.gc.ca/cansis/soils/ab/MMO/xt~~~/A/description.html
Malmo soil is an Eluviated Black Chernozem. Chernozem is a Russian portmanteau from "chernyi" (black) and "zemlya" (soil). Chernozems formed over thousands of years as glacial till was broken down by mineral processes, vegetation, animal activity & human activities like burning.
Chernozems historically featured the extensive root systems of grasslands and are the dominant soil type in the Canadian Prairies. https://soilsofcanada.ca/orders/chernozemic-soils.php
Chernozems "are among the most fertile soils used in current agricultural production" & Black Chernozems are the most moist & have the highest % of organic matter of all Chernozems. Their high organic % is due to colder winters that hinder decomposition. https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/earth-and-planetary-sciences/chernozem
Recently scientists have realized that soils of the Chernozemic Order are tremendous reservoirs of soil organic carbon. They are now studying how, through soil management practices, to increase soil carbon sequestration to help address climate change. https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/full/10.4141/cjss10022
But back in 1962, people were just looking for a different name than Grossdale. Dr. C. Fred Bentley, Dean of the U of A's Faculty of Agriculture and a renowned soil scientist, became aware of the issue. His Soils Farm was within the boundaries of the future urban neighbourhood.
As the book "Naming Edmonton: From Ada to Zoie" indicates, Fred suggested that Grossdale be renamed Malmo Plains after the type of soil found in the area.
In his energetic retirement after 1979 (see his AB Order of Excellence write-up), Fred was an outspoken advocate for preserving farmland from urban development. Was the naming of Malmo a proto-environmental movement protest against the loss of the farmland?
Dr. C. Fred Bentley Ph.D.
There is an old tradition of developers naming their projects after what they destroyed (Orchard Park mall in Kelowna being a memorable example). Was this an activist academic's twist on that tradition -- a way to ensure that everyone would remember the soil lost to development?
According to Fred's son Ted, no. Fred didn't know what name to suggest so he asked his wife (Ted's mom) Helen Bentley. Helen, a textile expert & fascinating person in her own right, asked her soil scientist husband, "Well, what kind of soil does it have?"
Athabasca University
"Malmo," Fred said. Helen was born to Danish immigrants and was very pro-Scandinavian. "Go with that," she told him. In other words, it was the fact that the dirt's name ultimately derived from a Swedish city that led Fred to recommend it to the Names Advisory Committee.
But the Names Advisory Committee didn't have the final say & it appears that not everyone was enamoured with the dirty name. At a time when public elementary schools were named in lockstep with the names of the neighbourhoods in which they were located, the public school board in a late-night Apr 1962 meeting named its planned school in the neighbourhood Rosedale, a change of just a few letters from Grossdale and perhaps someone's clever argument that a neighbourhood by any other name would *not* smell as sweet.
