Whitemud Equine Learning Centre Association (WELCA) offers unique education and recreation at a beautiful pastoral horse farm in the heart of the city. For a century it has been a favourite year-round destination, inspiring generations of artists, athletes and visitors with friendly horses, historic log cabin, stone fence and stone house, indoor and outdoor riding arenas, barns and show grounds.
The Farm that Dr. Keillor Built
by Lawrence Herzog, Edmonton Real Estate Magazine, January 17, 2007
The stone and wood house and log cabin that nestle in the belly of the North Saskatchewan River valley near Fox Drive are intriguing remnants of a fascinating story of an early Edmonton doctor, Frederick Anson Keillor. Today the house and cabin at what is now 12505 Keillor Road are part of the Whitemud Equine Centre, one of only a handful of cities with a horseback riding facility right in the city limits. Keillor's steadfast vision to keep the land unspoiled, and his repeated refusal to sell it for development, is a rich legacy of preservation. Now, as much for much of the last century, the property is enjoyed by thousands of citizens every year.
Extensive research by Sheila Edmonds has pieced together the story of Keillor and the farm he operated in the 1920s, and the path the land and the dwellings have taken through time. Keillor was born September 1, 1883 in Glencoe, Ontario, and raised in Wallacetown, Ontario. He graduated from medical school at the University of Western Ontario in 1908, and moved to Raymond, Alberta. That's where he married Martha Lillian Lyons, and the couple then moved to South Edmonton, where Keillor opened a medical practice on Whyte Avenue.
How Keillor Farm Became an Equine Centre
by Lawrence Herzog, Edmonton Real Estate Magazine, January 24, 2007
For more than 50 years, the piece of land in the belly of the North Saskatchewan River valley east of Whitemud Creek has been a horse farm and riding school. It's one of the only places on the continent where citizens can enjoy riding horses in a major urban park. Today it is called the Whitemud Equine Learning Centre. It was the site of Canada's first indoor rodeos, and hosted such television luminaries as the Bonanza stars, Lorne Greene and Michael Landon and their horses, and Chuck Connors, The Rifleman.
The story of how it became a place of horsemanship began in the days after the Second World War. When oil was discovered south of modern day Devon in February 1947, it set in motion a boom that quickly intensified the need for land that could be turned into housing and business services. One of the places developers came calling was the river valley flat next to modern day Fox Drive, 61-acres of farmland owned by Frederick Anson Keillor, an Edmonton physician.
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The WECLA Circa 1951
