Alberta Inventors and Inventions - Women of Aspenland

Sources checked included local histories, archival and museum records, local librarians and historians, town offices, Henderson’s directories and current telephone directories (looking for possible descendants). Lists of local inventors and their inventions had been sent out to community newspapers throughout the province. However, because women’s names usually change when they marry or remarry; family histories in local histories were written about families that remained in the community at the time that the history was written, and usually pay more attention to men than women; and because of the number of women who died young, often in childbirth, it’s more difficult to trace women than men.

The detective work yielded few results. May Florence Stewart may have been related to A.J. and W.H. Stewart family, manager and clerk of the Great West Store c1924-1929; she may not have been the inventor, per se, but have inherited the invention from her husband’s estate or have entered into a business partnership with Cole. Edith R. Thomas may have been part of the Wilbur L. Thomas family; he ran Crown Lumber Co. in Trochu in 1924 but was gone by 1928. McLeod is a common name in Hobbema, but no connection to Ida May could be found. The detective work did point out a problem with our methodology of using people’s names to identify their gender, as one of our women was, in fact, a man – Meredith being a name given to both men and women. The most successful trail led to Petrea Christine Sharp, possibly in part because her invention was the most recent, primarily because her family remained in Bashaw. A telephone call to a Donald Sharp, listed in the Bashaw directory (who turned out to be her son) led to her stepdaughter, Marjory Grier, now living in Calgary who Donald thought might know more about the embroidery kit. Petrea was born in Denmark c1900 and came to Canada c1917 at the age of 17. She had a brother in Calgary who offered to help her if she helped herself. He suggested that she not work for Danes but for English-speaking people so that she would learn the language. She moved to Bashaw c1918, where, although she had no formal training, she worked as a practical nurse during the flu epidemic. She stopped working when she married Luther Sharp, a widower. She did a tremendous amount of embroidery and, although her embroidery kit no longer exists, much of her embroidery does. Her daughter remembered the embroidery kit but did not know that it had been patented.^vi

The Albertan woman we were most successful in locating information about was Frances L. Kallal of Tofield who invented a hoe-rake combination. When the Tofield Museum received the list of inventions patented in the area, a board member contacted Margaret Dickson, Mrs. Kallal's daughter. Frances Kallal was a great gardener and with her husband and nine children, earned the designation Master Farm Family. She used a hot bed and "successfully nurtured more exotic plants such as cherries, melons, pear, celery and eggplant. Frances's diverse flower and vegetable gardens were always a delight to view." She found carrying two tools into the garden cumbersome and asked the local blacksmith to rivet together the head of a rake and a hoe. Her daughter Margaret was working in Ottawa at the time and personally took correspondence relating to the patent application into the patents' office. Frances' son Kenneth further refined the hoe, making a hoe-rake combination out of one piece of metal attached to the tapered handle of a hay fork. The implement was never produced commercially but Margaret still uses hers in her garden. In 1997, she commented that, "After fifty-five years of use, this modified tool is as good as new." She kindly donated one of the three prototypes to the Inventive Spirit project – not the one she uses. ^vii

The process of trying to find more information about the inventors and their inventions continues. It's a very large and complex project, but the database should be considered the starting point for future research, rather than an end product. Inventive Spirit also needs to find a way to move beyond the patent records to include more examples of women's ingenuity.

Catherine C. Cole, Project Curator for Inventive Spirit, is a consultant with Catherine C. Cole and Associates, heritage consultants, based in Edmonton. She was recently commissioned by the Museum of American History at the Smithsonian Institution to write an article about the historical research value of invention prototypes in museum collections. In 1997, she coauthored Many and Remarkable: the Story of the Alberta Women’s Institutes, with Judy Larmour.

Acknowledgments: This research has been funded by Regional Museums Network Grants from Museums Alberta, the Museums Assistance Program of the Department of Canadian Heritage and contributions from partner museums.

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i.Inventive Spirit: Alberta Patents from 1905-1975, published in 1999. The exhibition feasibility study was completed in the spring of 1999 by Catherine Cole and Virginia Penny, Interpret Design Ltd. See the Web site for further information about the project.

ii. The Canadian Patent Office Record includes all items patented in Canada, whether by Canadians or from inventors throughout the world. Judy Larmour and Janne Switzer systematically combed the Record, in the Edmonton Public Library, and photocopied all entries from Alberta.

iii. Report of Annual Convention of Alberta Women's Institutes and Women's Institute Girls' Clubs, 1923, PAA 74/1/228.

iv. "Real Helps for Homemakers," The Nor'-West Farmer, August 5, 1922, p. 758.

v. Brown, J.J., Ideas in Exile: A History of Canadian Invention. Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1967, p. 5.

vi. Telephone interview between Joanne White and Marjory Grier, May 1999.

vii. Kallal (b 1890, Illinois, d. 1980 Tofield) invented a hoe rake combination (#416,838); telephone interview and personal conversation with Margaret Dickson (daughter), June/August 1997; family history prepared by Rita Dickson.