Brooke Leifso
Throughout the early 20th century, Jasper Place was home to a number of lumberyards and mills that have all closed without leaving many buildings or plaques as lasting memories. We are curious to learn more about the workers, owners, and clients involved in these businesses.
Merrill D. Muttart and Gladys Edith Muttart opened M.D. Muttart Lumber Company in 1935 at 15404 Stony Plain Road. Gladys, an advocate for Indigenous communities, was gifted a totem pole by its artist, Chief Mathius Joe Capilano of the Squamish Nation. This totem pole resided at the lumberyard until it was given to CFRN. It can now be found at the Royal Alberta Museum.
Courtesy of City of Edmonton Archives EA-160-468. Photo by Hubert A. Hollingworth
Northern Plywood, owned by P.D. Fuhr and local resident C.R. Tufford, began operations in 1946 in the building previously occupied by the Muttart Lumberyard. Northern Plywood was the only Canadian manufacturer of poplar plywood. There were two fires at the company in 1948. The first, on February 4th, destroyed the main building. It started in the insulating material of what the Edmonton Journal calls “a rambling” building with the flames spreading to the drying and dried poplar plywood. Machinery was destroyed. Four and a half months later, the second fire occurred, completely ruining the business. We know that Northern Plywood’s 30 employees comprised a mixed-gender crew, and we’d like to know who they were.
In 1953, Imperial Lumber opened at the same address. It was a flagship store for one of the largest companies in Canada at the time. The building, a block-long, sold appliances, heating equipment, tools, and china as well as lumber. Its Jasper Place location boasted natural light and “easy to get at counters.”
Courtesy of Provincial Archives of Alberta, RP81.5,
We’ve also heard there was a lumber mill on the site of New West Hotel before it was built, and that Burton’s Lumber, Westlawn Lumber, Direct Lumber Co., and City Lumber Co. were also present to serve the Town of Jasper Place’s needs in the mid-1950s during the boom in construction that took place in that period.
We are certain there are local houses with foundation beams that came from Muttart, Northern Plywood, or Imperial Lumber, or from the other yards, and that there are remnants of mid-century wood panelling in a local bungalow. Without us knowing, the lumberyards hold up our buildings and frame our lives (pun intended).
Brooke Leifso is an Edmontonian community-based artist and researcher for the Jasper Place Community History Project
[This is an expanded version of an article that originally appeared in SPANN Summer 2021].
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