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Research dossier · History & Society

1904 Edmonton municipal election

municipal election in Alberta, Canada

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 25, 2026
Entity authorityQ5339132 ↗
Source-derived summary

The 1904 municipal election was held December 12, 1904 for the purpose of electing a mayor and eight aldermen to sit on the Edmonton City Council, as well as five public school trustees and five separate school trustees. It was Edmonton's first election as a city, and the first in which there were eight aldermanic positions instead of six. Because of this new composition of city council, all aldermanic positions were elected instead of only half as had been the case in previous elections and would again be the case in subsequent elections. Accordingly, even though Edmund Grierson, Charles May, and Joseph Henri Picard had been elected to two-year terms in the 1903 election, their terms were truncated. May and Picard decided to stand for re-election, while Grierson did not.

In order to re-establish staggered aldermanic terms, the top four finishers were elected to two-year terms ending in December 1906, while the next four were elected to one-year terms that ended in December 1905.

Voter turnout

There were 743 ballots cast in the 1904 election. Information on the number of eligible voters is no longer available.

Results

(bold indicates elected, italics indicate incumbent)

Mayor

Kenneth W. MacKenzie was acclaimed as mayor.

Aldermen

Charles May - 471

John Boyle - 349

Kenneth McLeod - 330

Thomas Bellamy - 310

William Clark - 277

Joseph Henri Picard - 262

Daniel Fraser - 257

William Antrobus Griesbach - 239

Thomas Grindley - 231

Gustave Koerman

Peter Butchart - 204

Donald MacDonald - 171

William Deyl - 170

Herbert Charles Wilson - 162

Frank Haldane - 161

Samuel Paton - 143

W S Weeks - 80

Public school trustees

Arthur Cushing, H A Gray, Kenneth McLeod, Alex Taylor, and Hedley C. Taylor were elected.

Editorial summary

This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “1904 Edmonton municipal election” as municipal election in Alberta, Canada. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.

Editorial reviewA strong contextual entry point for chronology, institutions and public events when official records are distinguished from later interpretation. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1904, 1903, 1906, 1905—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. The account is most persuasive where Edmonton, municipal and election can be independently traced.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as municipal election in Alberta, Canada. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5339132. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1904, 1903, 1906 and 1905.

Critical limits

Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “1904 Edmonton municipal election”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow 1904 Edmonton municipal election primary sources, 1904 Edmonton municipal election archive and Edmonton research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “1904 Edmonton municipal election”?
  2. Which voices are present, absent or mediated by the institution?
  3. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “1904 Edmonton municipal election” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.