How Inglewood Got Its Name

By Joe Donnelly
July, 2006.

What does the name mean?
Wikipedia says Inglewood means wood at the corner or wood of the Angles (as in Jutes and Angles). To a North American ear, this use of wood sounds poetic; it needs an –s on the end, as in the rhetorical question about what a bear does in the woods. Since anybody can offer contributions to the online encyclopedia (Wikipedia is anticredentialist, says its creator Jimmy Wales), it is hard to determine the authority of these definitions. But both seem sensible enough.

As a separate word ingle has several meanings. Derived from the Gaelic for fire or light, ingle appears in the quaint phrase “round the ingle” and is used in words like inglenook (chimney corner) and ingleside (fireside). Does Inglewood then mean firewood? Not likely. Wood here signifies forest, grove, stand of trees, not the material. Frank McLoone, however, remembers as a youngster in Glasgow gathering “wood for the ingle.”

There are other meanings of ingle, obscure and sometimes archaic: as a verb, to caress and to persuade; as a noun, catamite. The poet John Donne wrote of a child “kist and ingled on thy father’s knee.” Middleton and Dekker in the play Roaring Girle had a character speak the line “wee must ingle with our husbands a bed.” Might Inglewood then be a lovers’ lane? Add catamite (“boy-favourite”) and Inglewood’s a specialty stroll. If to ingle is to wheedle and cajole, perhaps Inglewood means market place.

Who named the community?
The first recorded use of the name Inglewood in reference to this community was uncovered by Bill Yeo on a subdivision plan registered in 1906; it is titled “Plan of Inglewood.” The Land Titles Office confirms that this heading is part of the original document. There is no indication who placed the name Inglewood on this document but it must be from the owners of the property (Colonel Walker, his wife Euphemia, and his brother John) or from the surveyor A.P. Patrick.

Jim McDougall, in Inglewood and Ramsay: Cradle of Calgary (1975), claims that Colonel Walker named his house Inglewood when he rebuilt it in 1910. The claim is unsourced. Dave Elphinstone, in his 1990 history of the bird sanctuary, repeats this story. In his 1989 biography of the colonel, Grant Macewan makes no mention of the name Inglewood. Mary Lynas, who lived in the Walker house for 24 years, insists that the property was called the Colonel Walker Estate. Only after Euphemia’s death did Selby Walker rename the place, calling it in 1929 the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary.

The Inglewood Golf and Curling Club was established in 1919, just across the river from the Walker place. Elphinstone calls it the Colonel Walker Golf Course.

The May 19, 1932 issue of the Albertan refers to “the land across from Inglewood” but it is unclear if this Inglewood means the bird sanctuary or the east end of the present community.
In the 1940s there was an Inglewood Ratepayers Association which used to meet in the old No. 8 firehall on 17^th Street. This group was made up mostly of eastenders. Oldtimers have told Bill Yeo the name Inglewood was used for the eastern section of the community, precisely the area that Colonel Walker was subdividing in 1906 to cash in on the pre-World War One building boom. Others confirm that by the end of the Second World War the name was being used west of 15^th Street.

The Inglewood Community Association was registered on Sept. 18, 1956 though it had existed as an organization prior to this date and met regularly in the No. 3 firehall (Hose and Hound) from 1952 on.

Why was the name chosen?
Given the incidental nature of naming, why isn’t Inglewood called Brewery Flats, Burnsland, or Ceepeear—all names appearing on early Calgary maps and referring to the area’s chief employers? (The whole district, part of the flood plain, certainly is flat—Mrs. Cross always knew when to put the potatoes on the stove because from her kitchen window she could see her husband leave the brewery at the end of his work day.) Or why isn’t it called Pearce Estate, Stewart Estate, Mills Estate, Bowbend, or Walker Estate—all names that show up on some of the area’s first maps? Because the rest of the city called it something else.

For the first half of its history Inglewood was stuck with another name, the pejorative East Calgary. Inglewood kids attending classes in Crescent Heights and Western Canada high schools wouldn’t admit where they lived. Even bright Ramsay pupils, who if they lived on the west side of 8^th Street could go to Central Memorial and sit with the likes of Peter Lougheed, were subjected to the same disdain from teachers and other students. East Calgary was definitely the wrong side of the Elbow as far as the rest of Calgary was concerned. In the 1940s the community tried unsuccessfully to have East Calgary signs removed from the front of streetcars and busses.

It is probable that the ICA chose the name Inglewood for four reasons: one, to escape the bad connotations of the East Calgary name; two, to acknowledge that the name Inglewood was already in widespread use on both sides of 15^th Street; three, to differentiate the area from the other bits of East Calgary; and four, to create an identity for what was essentially a new community, running from the banks of the Elbow all the way to the bottom of the bird sanctuary.

Where did the name come from?
Inglewoods exist throughout the English-speaking world. There’s an Inglewood Forest in England, and even a Baron Inglewood, the last hereditary peer created in the realm. In the United States, there’s an Inglewood near Seattle, there’s an Inglewood as part of Los Angeles (home of the Kings and Lakers and LAX), in Nashville there’s a section called Inglewood. There are two Inglewoods in Australia, one in New Zealand.

In Clackmannanshire, Scotland, there is a hamlet named Inglewood very close to West Calder, the coalmining town from which Colonel Walker’s parents emigrated.nIn Ontario, between Orangeville and Brampton, 50 miles from Carluke where Colonel Walker was born, there is a village of 650 inhabitants called Inglewood.

There is no proof that Colonel Walker put the name Inglewood on that 1906 property plan but he would surely have been familiar with the place name. If he did name Inglewood, he could have got the name from anywhere.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Bill Yeo played Virgil in this brief trip through the inferno of toponymy, providing both information and direction.

Others consulted: Mary Lynas, Muriel MacBean, Isabel Dahl, Jim Eagleson, Elaine High, Mary Smith, June Parker, Frank McLoone

Other sources: Land Titles Office, Federation of Calgary Communities, the OED