MADE FOR EACH OTHER: CALGARY AND THE PIONEER TRACTOR COMPANY. (2024)

Just as Albertans today look to high-tech firms and the oil and gas sector for job creation and economic growth, a century ago it was the agricultural manufacturers that could really make a community thrive.

In 1912, local papers were reporting that the Pioneer Tractor Company of Winona, Minnesota had demonstrated some of its products in Calgary. "The [tractor] engine starts from a crank and might easily be operated by one man," was the impressed analysis of the Calgary Daily Herald. (1) The newspaper article continued:

One of the hardest things on modern farm machinery is the fine dust, which rises from the ground and penetrates to the utmost parts of the machine. The Pioneer Tractor Company believe that they have surmounted this obstacle by their system, which is to build all the working parts in tight covers, which prevents this dust nuisance. (2)

It took another ten years before other manufacturers routinely enclosed all working gears to protect them.

The company was also so confident in its smooth-running engine that it paid a photographer to take a time lapse photo every one second for a full minute whilst a coin balanced on the crankcase of the tractor, with the engine revved to 550 revolutions per minute. The coin, the company claimed, would not fall or even wobble--and the photographer later swore in front of a notary that there had been no trickery in the images he took that day.

But the banner news in the story was the update that the company might be establishing a plant to build it tractors right here in Calgary.

In 1912, Alberta was experiencing the high of its pre-First World War boom, and the economy was in a period of what must surely have seemed like boundless growth. An estimated 30,000 American settlers arrived in 1912 alone; there were so many newcomers that there was a rumour that the U.S. Secretary of Agriculture was planning a campaign to dissuade Americans from making the move to thriving Alberta. Real estate was flourishing, and investment in new developments had become a popular--and perilous--spiral. For example, residential lots in Calgary that had been worth $100 were now selling for upwards of $6,000. And while natural gas, mining, and construction companies were thriving, agriculture was the economic heart of investment.

The Pioneer Tractor Company and Calgary seemed made for each other. Pioneer was new on the scene and had been in business only since 1909. The company was interested in marketing its products in Canada, but Canadian tariffs on imported farm machinery added significantly to the expense of imported tractors. Pioneer was considering building a large factory in Calgary as a way of dodging the Canadian tariffs. In Alberta in 1913, it was estimated that only two percent of arable land had been broken. The massive tractors assembled by Pioneer were made for exactly the purpose of turning prairie sod into bountiful farmland. "The Pioneer Does the Work of 30 Horses!" was the triumphant claim. (3)

In February 1913, the Morning Albertan confirmed that Victoria Square was going to be the site of the new plant. Across the border in the United States, the Winona Republican-Herald in Minnesota also reported on the visit of Pioneer's vice-president, Edwin McClelland (E.M.) Whcelock, to western Canada to determine the possibility of opening a factory. It confirmed the plans to locate a new facility in Calgary and described that the amenities were intended to be twice the size of the holdings in Winona. They made it clear that the new facilities at Calgary would be building tractors, not just assembling them.

Victoria Square was a small community located four miles east of Calgary. It had been the site of a government watering station, and the area was known for its large supply of good well water. It was also located along the Grand Trunk Pacific Railway line that was still under construction between Three Hills and Calgary. These could have been the reasons why Pioneer chose to set up their operations where they did.

The Victoria Square "Model Town" had been conceived by the Alberta Financial Brokers in 1911, and real estate agents Lavender & Horner were enlisted to promote the community and recruit buyers, some of whom were from faraway places like England and Montreal. The amenities at Victoria Square included the Buckeye Machine Company's tool factory, a hotel, a jam factory, a brickyard, and proximity to Rockland School. The school was originally located in the former Chinese cafe but a fine new brick building eventually opened in 1915. Church and Sunday School services were also held in the school, and the minister and schoolteacher both lived in the Victoria Square Hotel, which was also the venue of many fondly remembered dances. The Square, as the district had become called, "was a real Swinger," as one community member later recalled. (4)

Victoria Square

PAY ROLLS BUILD CITIES

BUY NOW IN VICTORIA SQUARE

Pioneer acquired 40 acres in Victoria Square, and its choice to locate near Calgary was seen as a boon to western industry--no longer were farmers reliant on manufacturers in the eastern half of the country to supply them with products that they needed to run their businesses. Pioneer was also expected to employ three hundred men in its first year alone. In addition to two large assembly shops, one more than a block long, a 150-foot square building was also built for the other manufacturing processes required to turn out and repair their equipment. The bricks were locally supplied by the brick factory; bricks from this sandstone factory were also used in the construction of buildings in downtown Calgary.

Victoria Square was projected to be a large, substantial, and stable community that would benefit Albertans, and Alberta, for the long haul. It was also situated near the proposed (but never built) inter-urban railway that would connect Chestermere to Calgary. In their publicity for their new community, the triumphant news that the Pioneer Tractor Company would be the anchor of the new development was a key part of the Lavender & Horner advertising. In April 1913, the Calgary Daily Herald published photographs showing the massive Pioneer Tractor building under construction. It opened three months later.

The Armored Tractor

God shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into ploughshares, and spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation; neither shall they learn war anymore. (Isaiah 2:4)

The arrival of Pioneer was, of course, very interesting timing. Just over a year after the company appeared in Victoria Square, Canada was going to be engulfed in a long and deadly conflict in faraway Europe that would have economic implications for many businesses.

Wheelock became the Calgary plant's president and general manager. He was described as 'a mechanical genius,' and it was noted that

Mr. Wheelock in his work has tried out very thoroughly all possible construction that could be utilized in a gas traction engine, and the machine that the Pioneer Tractor Manufacturing Co., is manufacturing today is the result of his very careful comparative tests. (5)

Pioneer tractors had dust covers, glass-enclosed covered and heated cabs (curtains cost extra) and generous warranties.

As war loomed and then broke out over Europe, Wheelock had come up with designs that went far beyond agricultural equipment. In 1923 he recalled that the thought came to him while he was travelling by train between Calgary and Winona. The only difference between the bullet-proof monster in Wheelock's imagination and the specimen that became known to history as the tank was that Wheelock's had wheels instead of tracks.

Wheelock gave the Canadian government the first crack at his plans. Canada had entered the First World War along with the British Empire at the start of the conflict in 1914, while Wheelock's homeland remained neutral until 1917. Wheelock travelled to Ottawa and met with Major General Sam Hughes in 1915, presenting the minister of militia and defence with specifications for the "land battleship." Hughes dismissed the idea as impractical; the machine moved so slowly, he believed, that it would be vulnerable to artillery.

Next, Wheelock took his plans to Washington, D.C. and was given $15,000 (the equivalent of roughly $244,000 in 2022) to develop his prototype. What he built was "capable of climbing straight up a wall." (6)

Frances J. Lowe, a representative with Pioneer, then planned a trip to England to offer the plans to the British government. But the reception was no better in England than it had been in Canada. When Sir John Balfour saw the plans he demanded, "What is it? Another one of those beastly trucks?" (7) The applications for an armoured tractor were evidently too theoretical to imagine. Nevertheless, a copy of the plans was left for further study. Neither Wheelock nor his representative Lowe ever heard from the British again. However, two years after that meeting, a contingent of snarling tanks rolled over the horizon and began slicing through the German lines at Cambrai. These fearful relatives of tractors had teeth, and they vomited bullets.

Eighteen months after Wheelock's unsuccessful meeting with General Hughes, the Canadian government was now very interested in "armoured monsters" that could advance through craters and trenches, and in the manufacturers that had the expertise to build them. The Imperial Munitions Board contracted Pioneer Tractor to stop making tractors and start manufacturing shells.

Boom and Bust: Pioneer and Victoria Square

By 1917, The Pioneer Tractor Company was being liquidated; the building was being advertised in Calgary newspapers for sale. Pioneer and its competitor Buckeye had both made the switch from manufacturing and repairing agricultural equipment to profiting from the war effort. Both concerns vanished in the final years of the war, and they were not alone. "By the winter of 1917 and 1918 rigor mortis was beginning to set in," recounted Torrey Ellis in a history of the area. (8) As the core businesses failed, the entire community of Victoria Square died out. Houses were moved away as people left the area. One of the barns that had stabled the dray and general hauling horses for the town was carted away to a local farm. (In the 1970s, it was still in use).

Wilbur Horner of Lavender and Horner fame stuck around; he continued his real estate career, dying in 1951.

Calgary's hectic pre-war boom was nearly over when Pioneer built its magnificent Victoria Square facilities in 1913. The war elongated it artificially for some industries, but, by 1917, it had well and truly ended. The brief Turner Valley Oil Boom of 1913-14 aside, it would be sixty years before another such boom would be repeated.

The Pioneer Tractor building at Victoria Square was completely closed by 1921 and sold to the Riverside Iron Works Company. The floor of the factory was jacked up and moved to Chestermere, where it was used for community dances until the construction of the Chestermere Community Hall. Later, the building materials from Pioneer were used in the construction of the Dominion Bridge complex, which remains extant in the city's Ramsay district.

As for the Pioneer Tractor Company itself, by 1917, the American parent company had less than ten years left on the clock; it really folded far sooner. There are several explanations for what forced Pioneer out of the industry. Competition from other better-established companies may have overwhelmed it. The groundbreaking dust shields that Pioneer initiated in 1909 were more commonplace by 1920, and so were other innovations--smaller tractors that had just as much horsepower as the behemoths Pioneer had built for ripping out prairie sod.

The famously generous Pioneer warranty may also have been contributed to the company's downfall. Honouring such a broad and substantial guarantee might indeed have influenced Pioneer's demise. That warranty stated,

Pioneer Tractor Co. warrants the within described engine to do good work, to be well made, of good materials, and durable if used with proper care. If upon trial, with proper care, the engine fails to work well, the purchaser shall immediately give written notice to Pioneer Tractor Co., Winona, and to the agent from whom it was purchased, stating wherein the engine fails, shall allow a reasonable time for a competent man to be sent to put it in order, and render friendly assistance to operate it. If the engine cannot then be made to work well, the purchaser shall immediately return it to said agent, and the price paid shall be refunded, which shall constitute a settlement in full of the transaction. (9)

The 1920s brought a global financial slump that has been eclipsed in popular history by the more devastating Great Depression that followed a decade later. That early 1920s recession had international implications of its own that extended far beyond Alberta's borders. However, Pioneer's significant investment in Alberta must surely have been a contributing factor to the ultimate failure of the company. The hectic economic cycles in Alberta have caught many capable people and good businesses off guard time and again.

At its heyday, the Pioneer Tractor Company had sold tractors all over the world. They were in business for seventeen years and built a product that was literally groundbreaking, considered by some to be the best tractor of its time. Yet the company was not mentioned in a 100- year history of Winona, and when the former president of the company, CM. Youmans, died in 1943, the Pioneer Tractor Company was not mentioned in his obituary. Youmans' grandson did not even know that his grandfather had ever been associated with a global tractor business.

As for Victoria Square, for one hundred years the land where it once stood returned to natural prairie and farmland. But. in 2011, the last crop was planted next to the natural grass pasture where sandstone bricks had once been cut from prairie clay. The following year, soil turned as development of the new East Hills Shopping Centre commenced.

More than one hundred years after it dried up and blew away, Victoria Square lives again. It is the site of a Wal-Mart, a Costco, and many other box stores. A housing development is also being built. One wonders how many of the inhabitants realize that their "new" community was planned--and existed--at the very same location where Pioneer Tractor Company used to be more than a century ago.

by Shelly McElroy

Shelly McElroy is the curator of Pioneer Acres Museum in Irricana and the current Historian in Residence at the Calgary Public Library, a partnership between the library and Heritage Calgary. She has a background in education, agriculture, counselling, and museums. A previous version of this article was first published as a blog on Heritage Calgary's website (heritagecalgary.ca).

Notes

(1) "Pioneer Traetor is Demonstrated Here," Calgary Daily Herald, 28 March 1912, 15.

(2) Ibid.

(3) "Pioneer Tractor Does the Work of 30 Horses," Morning Alhenan,4 June 1912, 9.

(4) Torrey Ellis, ""Victoria Square', 1912-1918," in Chestermere Historical Society, Saddles. Sleighs and Sadirons (Calgary: Chestermere Historical Society, 1972), 401.

(5) "Arc Best on the Market," Winona Republican Herald, 4 April 1910, 5.

(6) "First Tank Ever Built in the World Constructed Here," Winona Daily News, 12 June 1940, 7.

(7) Ibid.

(8) Ellis, 403.

(9) "O Pioneers!", Bill Vossler (Farm Collector, 1 October 2001).