John Walter

John Walter was Edmonton’s first millionaire. He was born in Stenness in 1849 and joined the Hudson Bay Company as a boatbuilder at Fort Edmonton in 1870. He saved enough to buy River Lot Nine and the house he built there in 1875 was the first house south of the river. It housed a general store and Edmonton’s first telegraph terminal.

His boat building business prospered and he diversified into saw mills, timber cutting, coal mining and real estate. His lumber mill could produce 20,000,000 board feet of timber every year. He built a paddle steamer, The City of Edmonton, which had a hinged funnel to get under the Low Level Bridge at high water.

He married Annie Elizabeth Newby and, in 1886, built a family home and, finally, in 1901 he built what was then the largest house in Edmonton. All three of his houses now form the John Walter Museum.

A disastrous flood in 1915, when the water rose more than forty-five feet, embezzlement and recession led to his bankruptcy and he died in 1920.

Walterdale Bridge and Walterdale Road in Edmonton are named after him.