Morrison’s Massey-Harris of Vulcan, Alberta
An interview with Donalda Shields Ledene, granddaughter of Maxwell Morrison
Donalda Shields Ledene had a long career as a teacher and school guidance counsellor. She attended the University of Alberta and graduated with an educational degree and a home economics major. She worked in high schools in Fairview, Brooks and Strathmore. She claims it was more fun than when she attended as a kid herself, and she taught for forty years. “I loved it, the kitchen is the core of the home,” she says. As the guidance counsellor, she never knew what a day might bring. Sometimes it started at 9.00 a.m. with someone crying in her office. Whatever else she had planned for the day was immediately on hold. “I treasure ‘re-meeting’ the kids that I taught as adults; people are a really an important part of my life,” she says.
She was perhaps uniquely suited to understand the strange bends and twists that someone’s career can throw at them. After all, it was her banker grandfather, office administrator mother and Mountie father who teamed up to run the Massey-Harris dealership in Vulcan, Alberta for seventeen years, a series of unique career paths, with no farming experience necessary!
Maxwell (“Max”) Morrison was originally from Newry, Ontario. He worked for banks in Atwood, Ontario and Melfort, Saskatchewan, and Cayley, Alberta. Max returned to Ontario in 1919 to marry Lilian Stewart. The couple and their young daughter, Iris, moved from Cayley to Calgary in 1927. In 1939 the family relocated to Lethbridge. Max was now working for Massey-Harris and in 1945, the decision was made to purchase the Massey-Harris business in Vulcan. When Max’s business partner retired, the dealership became a family affair.
In the meantime, Bill Shields was a city kid from Toronto, Ontario. He worked with Royal Canadian Mounted Police, and when he was posted to the Lethbridge subdivision, he worked at the Fort Macleod and Blairmore detachments. It was while he was at Blairmore that he met Iris Morrison; the pair were married in 1946. The couple had two daughters, Donalda and Bonnie.
Max hadn’t lived the farm life since he was kid. Growing up in Toronto, Bill had no relevant work experience whatsoever. Iris, with her secretarial background was the only one with any related qualifications, but it didn’t matter. The Morrison and Shields families teamed up and went into the farm equipment business. “Everyone but grandma and I went to work,” Donalda remembers.
The horse and plow days were almost completely over. Agriculture had been negotiating with what to do with horses for decades. The Fordson tractor, launched in 1917, had motivated farmers to say goodbye to their horses, and the Second World War had been the final nail. Mechanized farming was the future, and that technological shift changed who could do the Job. City people had a chance, particularly if they hired mechanics and parts people who had a farming background.
That was exactly what Morrison Massey-Harris did, and their mechanics had to be skilled. Farmers rushing during seeding and harvest time did not have time for mistakes. The parts person had to take their time to figure out what the customer needed and make sure that they got all the pieces so the new part would work. This wasn’t always easy. For example, farmer’s wives were often sent to get parts, and it was not uncommon for them to announce, “I need a thing-a-ma-jig that goes on a thing-a-ma-bob.”
Max ran the front counter, and he had a soothing and diplomatic manner, especially when his customers were having a tough day. Donalda remembered him bantering with a gruff, abrasive farmer but as a child the playful nuance was lost on her. She told the customer that he shouldn’t talk to her grandpa that way!
They weren’t just selling farm equipment. They also sold Chrysler, Plymouth and Fargo vehicles, and if you wanted paint, a dryer or washing machine, or discs for a Noble blade, those were for sale too. Their family-based business hired two or three mechanics and a parts person, although the argument could be made that Iris was really the parts dealer. She was the one who made the long drives into Calgary, on multiple occasions, if necessary, for the needed parts.
A typical day in the life began with Iris making breakfast; she didn’t head into the dealership until the afternoon. Donalda and Bonnie came home from school for lunch, and then Iris went into work. It wasn’t so much a commute as a five-minute drive, with childcare provided across the road from the shop by their grandmother, Lilian. Although sometimes children were put to work, too. “I remember inventory time, counting the nuts and bolts, paint cans,” Donalda says ruefully.
Donalda remembers that it was too early for cabs on the tractors they sold; their customers were black with dirt at times. She also remembered visiting relatives from Ontario who were astonished at the size of the farm equipment needed in western Canada. For them, an eighty-acre farm was a good size. The massive tractors in Alberta had wheels taller than a person! Max, no longer a city slicker, was the President of the Alberta Implement Dealers Association. Unexpected guests – farm equipment reps from Massey-Harris – were not uncommon at lunch. Donalda remembered only a few fleeting holidays as a child. The farm equipment life was “kind of twenty-four seven.”
Massey-Harris farm equipment has been explored in previous articles in this series; you can read them here, here and here. Across the street from Morrisons was the competition. The Jesse family owned the John Deere business. The rival equipment that John Deere was selling during the 1940s and early 1950s included some of that company’s greatest hits, including the Model A and the Model D.
John Deere built the Model A beginning in 1934. At the time, farmers were beginning to leave horses behind. Tractors were as cheap as horses. Or cheaper, because land was not taken out of production for pasture or hay. It was said the John Deere A could replace four horses and the big steam tractors that had been required for breaking the prairie sod were no longer necessary as much of that work had been accomplished. Smaller, lighter tractors were what farmers wanted for harrowing (the A could pull up to three plows), or farm chores. By 1950, the A was nearing the end of its run – John Deere replaced it with the 60 in 1952. By 1955, Case had also introduced a diesel engine tractor and other competitors such as Minneapolis Moline were running on propane, which was a very inexpensive fuel. Today, John Deere As are popular at tractor pulls. The toughest competitor for an A is usually another A, although occasionally a Minnie U will give it a tough time.
The other popular tractor in this period was the John Deere D, a product so beloved that it had a thirty-year production run. John Deere Ds were manufactured from 1923 to 1953 with over 159,083 tractors built. Naturally, changes were made to the design during this exceptionally long production run, but the updates only tinkered with the original design, at least mechanically.
The earliest Ds, called “Spokers,” came equipped with an open spoke flywheel. As it became apparent that those flywheels were susceptible to cracking, the design was updated in 1925, with solid “disc” flywheels were being installed that resisted cracking.
Other improvements to the Ds included luxuries such as rubber tires, power take off shafts, an improved transmission with three forward speeds instead of the original two, oil filters and improved steering gear. In 1939, the design itself got an overhaul, with John Deere introducing stylized bodywork and fenders, which means that John Deere Ds can look quite different from one another, depending on when they were built. Nevertheless, from start to finish they were largely identical from a mechanical point of view. The very last Ds were being influenced by electrical developments and could be ordered with electric starting and electric lights. They also had hydraulics. You can watch a John Deere D in action here in a chain box competition (@rainhill1829 video used with the courtesy and permission of Justin Campbell).
For those who were raised on farms across western Canada, there may be specific ideas of what tractors are used for … harrowing, choring, hauling feed for cattle. But the versatile John Deere Ds also turned up on construction sites, climbed mountains with logging companies and worked in the resource industry.
However, what Donalda remembered was the annoying “put put put” the John Deere engines made! You can decide for yourself if John Deeres sound annoying or awesome; this is a short of a John Deere “spoker” and you can listen to the classic “put put put” soundtrack, too! (@rainhill1829 video used with the courtesy and permission of Justin Campbell).
Vulcan in the 1950s was situated halfway between the two major centres of Calgary and Lethbridge. The community was small. Donalda once telephoned her grandmother only to be told by the operator, “Your grandma isn’t home right now, Donalda. She’s gone for groceries.” There was a lot of social support, fun to be had skating in the winter, with the best and most beautiful prairie crocuses blooming down by the grain elevators in the spring. Both Lilian and Iris were involved in the church, while Bill with his valuable background in law enforcement was a magistrate for Vulcan and the head of the Emergency and Medical Services. The Cold War was on at the time and some people were building bomb shelters in case of nuclear war.
In 1965, the family decided to close the business. There were personal and professional reasons for the change. The Morrison and Shield families had been dedicated community members in Vulcan. They were involved with the Lions Club, the I. O. O. F., Chamber of Commerce, the Town Council, the Masonic Lodge, were active church members – and more. Bill had received a Queen’s Medal, and Max had been decorated with the Order of the British Empire. Max was ready to retire, and that changed life for Iris and Bill, who moved to Weyburn, Saskatchewan, where here Bill was employed as manager of Case Power and Equipment. They replicated their hard work and dedicated community spirit in a new setting.
It changed life for Donalda, too. She knew what she wanted to do, but she had a couple of Grade Twelve classes to redo first. She worked in the summer at the YWCA in Banff and ruled something out: she knew that she never wanted to work in the food retail industry again. Education and home economics on the other hand were a great fit. She always enjoyed the activity and busy-ness of teaching, and she replicated her parent’s attitude towards community life in the places that she worked. In Strathmore, she has chaired the Alberta 55+ Summer Games, helped to plan the Strathmore 100th Anniversary celebrations and has been a dedicated member of the United Church.
Today, Vulcan, Alberta still has a Brandt dealership selling John Deere equipment. Kubota, AGCO and a Rocky Mountain Farm Equipment dealership are all located in High River, about 65 kilometres away. Lethbridge also has farm equipment businesses; it is about 94 kilometres away from Vulcan. Vulcan is far enough from other major centres that farmers, at least those who use John Deere equipment, can still get the service and equipment that they need locally.
Donalda has an abiding memory of a time that one of her parent’s customers won $10,000.00 in Las Vegas. He came in to buy a tractor with a huge sack of cash. How to get one million dollars in farming? Start out with three million. The old joke still holds. Las Vegas might be a safer bet than farming and farm equipment in some ways.
Still, “I always thought it was a good life.”
Thank you to Shelly McElroy for preparing this story.
Thanks also to the Historical Society of Alberta for their funding support.
