Initially Mill Woods lots were being sold primarily to young families from Edmonton and migrant workers from Eastern Canada who relocated to Edmonton for work. But Edmonton’s economy boomed in the 1970s and the city’s population grew from 429,750 to 521,000. The cultural diversity of the neighbourhood developed due to a combination of changes in Canadian immigration policy and events in distant corners of the world. In 1967 Canada had adopted a merit-based system for determining immigration that led to increasing numbers of immigrants from all over the world being able to come to Canada to take advantage of the economic opportunities and freedoms here or to escape events in other countries that dictated where these immigrants originated: The 1972 expulsion of Ugandans of Indian origin, the 1973 coup in Chile, the emigration of Sikhs from Punjab, and of other South Asians from Pakistan in the early 1970s, and the arrival of ethnic Chinese ’boat people‘ from Vietnam in 1979-1980 combined to shape the neighbourhood. Some landed in Mill Woods because of the affordable housing available; others followed friends and countrymen. By 1989, the population of Mill Woods was 30% people from visible minorities and was referred to as a ‘cultural rainbow’ or ‘global village’. Mill Woods now has a population that if it were a city would make it the third largest in Alberta, if it was not part of Edmonton and any generalizations that are made about Mill Woods are inaccurate given its scale.
When conducting the oral history interviews we asked people about the continuity of cultural traditions in Mill Woods, whether they taught their children to speak their mother tongue, whether they ate traditional foods, and maintained traditional activities. We asked about cultural diversity in the local schools and the strength of the Mill Woods soccer program and its relationship to culture and its ability to facilitate integration. We also asked about the importance of celebrations in the home and in the community of Mill Woods, and the participation of Mill Woods residents in larger festivals in Edmonton, events such as the Canada Day, Cariwest, the Sikh parade and Diwali.