About Didsbury

Canadian History Ehx recently spotlighted the Town of Didsbury on their Historical Information podcast! Travel back in time and listen to the history of our community, researched and told by Craig Baird. Click here to have a listen!

The Town is named after the township of Didsbury, now a suburban area of Manchester, England. The first settlers were Dutch Mennonites who left their homes in Pennsylvania and emigrated as United Empire Loyalists to Waterloo County, Ontario. They were granted the area around Didsbury in 1894 by the government of Sir John A. Macdonald.

The original settlement in the area was sparse, and this, in part, explains the initial slow development of the town-site as a service centre. The first concern of the Mennonite settlers was to build a church, and the primary task of the settlers was to create farmsteads. Settlement prior to the post-1900 land rush was limited to the small group who came West in 1894.

1897 saw the arrival of the Canadian Pacific Railway, which pushed forward the town's development. The CPR constructed a station in the town in 1904. Didsbury was incorporated as a village in 1905 and as a town on September 6, 1906.

Fires in 1914 and 1924 destroyed the early "boomtown" commercial streetscape and led to the passing by Town Council of a bylaw which required masonry construction for all new downtown commercial buildings. Many of these brick buildings stand today.

Visit the Didsbury Museum website to learn more.