Summer 2015
Parkallen News In this issue… • 109 Street Update • Cool Summer Activities • Classified
Doreen McLarty, whose 63 years in Parkallen make her one of the neighbourhood’s oldest residents, is worried about the push to increase density.
Neighbourhood Watch—Inception to Infill Elderly Resident Recalls Parkallen’s Past While Pondering Its Future Prospects By Niall Mckenna Doreen McLarty watched the birth of a neighbourhood through her sprawling living room window. Then—she stayed put.
arrival in 1952. Her words evoke a scene few who live in today’s treesoaked Parkallen could imagine: no greenery.
“I never dreamed I would ever move out of Parkallen,” the energetic 94-year-old says with a smile and flourish of her hand.
The strong fellowship among residents, on the other hand, seems to have been here from the very beginning. “Everybody helped each other out,” she says, “whether it was building a fence or picking up quack grass so you could seed your lawn.”
McLarty is sharing memories in the living room of her two-storey home on 112A Street, where she has lived for 63 years. She is one of the oldest continuous residents of Parkallen, a fixture for waving schoolchildren on their way to classes. “There were no sidewalks, no trees, and the lawns were full of gumbo [sticky mud],” McLarty recalls of her
Neighbours helping neighbours was part of the ethos of the expanding city as Edmonton settled into its post-war prosperity—the good times spurred on by the discovery of oil in nearby Leduc in 1947—
and people started flocking to the region. One of them was the Harvard and Yale-educated Noel Dant who was hired as the first head of the City of Edmonton Planning Department. Dant was a proponent of the “English Garden Model” of urban design: circular streets with green space that promoting walking and had community buildings rooted at its centre. An acreage at what was then the southernmost edge of the city was to become Dant’s first testing ground. His plan for the new neighbourhood called Parkallen was approved in 1951. A year later,