List of 150 Alberta Historical People
) Roberta MacAdams, Politician and War Time Nurse
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- 124) Ryutaro Nakagama, Japanese Resident from Southern Alberta
- 125) Sam Drumheller-Town is named after him, he won coin toss!
- 126) Sam Livingston. One of Calgarys First Settlers
123) Roberta MacAdams, Politician and War Time NurseAlready, during the First World War 1914-1918, Canadian women joined the military. Mostly, they worked as clerks or nurses. When Roberta MacAdams enlisted, she became a nursing sister. A dietician because of her education in food science, she was made a lieutenant. Before the war, she had taught Home Economics in Edmonton and rural areas. Then, during the war in England, she was responsible for planning 6,000 meals a day for the military. In 1916, Alberta women had won the right to vote and run for the legislature. But countless men and women were overseas. So, a special act allowed them to elect two of their own representatives. Roberta became a candidate for the June, 1917 election. Running as an independent, she pledged was to represent soldiers, their families and veterans. Her slogan was unique. “After you have voted for the man of your choice, give your other vote to the sister.” Soldiers and nurses valued MacAdam's work and commitment. So they voted for her. However, it was difficulty to collect overseas votes. The vote count came in later than those at home. But Roberta had won! At home in Alberta, the vote was counted immediately. Louise McKinney won her riding. Officially, she became the first woman elected as a member of the legislature. Yet she and Roberta were both the first women elected in Canada and the British Empire. And they took the oath of office on the same day. Roberta wasted no time. Almost immediately, she introduced the War Veterans’ Next-of-Kin Association Act. It gave legal recognition to a veteran’s group. With it, she became the first woman in the Empire to introduce a piece of legislation. Later, she continued helping Alberta’s soldiers, their families and war brides. Clearly, she was a politician who kept her promises. By Faye Holt 124) Ryutaro Nakagama, Japanese Resident from Southern AlbertaAt the time that Japan entered the Second World War, Japanese-born Ryutaro Nakagama lived a quiet life with his Canadian-born wife Nobuko, daughter Rita, and son Ken in Steveston, B.C. Ryutaro immigrated to Canada in 1924, became a Canadian citizen in 1926, and before long started his own store, married, and settled down to raise his family. Unfortunately, fear and suspicion of Japanese-Canadians spread once Canada was at war with Japan. People worried that Japanese-Canadians would be more loyal to Japan than to Canada, even though more than 75% of Japanese-Canadians had been born in Canada. The government declared them “enemy aliens” – meaning that they were no longer officially considered Canadians – took away their homes, businesses, and belongings, and moved them away from the Pacific Coast to internment camps in the interior of British Columbia and in southern Alberta. Japanese-Canadians were forced to live like prisoners, farming sugar beets that were processed into food for Canadian soldiers fighting overseas. Cold, rickety beet shacks became homes for the internees. Weeds would grow through the cracks in the floorboards during summer, and snow would blow in through the cracks in the walls in winter. Despite this horrible treatment, Ryutaro worked hard and got special permission from the authorities to start a business selling familiar foods to other interred Japanese-Canadians. After the war ended in 1945, many Japanese-Canadians returned to their former homes on the coast of B.C., but others chose to stay in southern Alberta near where the camps had been, because they formed new communities with their fellow inmates. In 1947, Ryutaro got permission to open a Japanese grocery store in Lethbridge. Though Ryutaro passed away in 1990, Nakagama’s Japanese Food and Giftware still serves Lethbridge and southern Alberta. Today, most of the store’s customers are non-Japanese, who have embraced Japanese food, art, and the contributions of Japanese-Canadians like Ryutaro to Canadian society. By Cory Gross 125) Sam Drumheller-Town is named after him, he won coin toss!You probably guessed correctly; the town Drumheller in Alberta’s Badlands, is named after Sam Drumheller. Yet there is a story behind this. In the early 1990’s, Sam and his brother Jerome actually came to Alberta from Walla, Washington, to buy a ranch and farm wheat. They stopped at the first homestead, established by Thomas Greentree, and spotted a bucket of bitumous coal that Greentree used for his stove. This discovery led them to explore the property and soon they found a five-foot seam of coal at the banks of the Red Deer River only fifteen feet up. In Calgary, they acquired mineral leases in the valley, thinking they could make more money mining than ranching. The brothers knew the railroad was going through the valley and Sam bought Greentree’s land to build a town. The story is that on his third trip to the area in 1910, Sam Drumheller paid $2,800 cash from his shirt pocket to Greentree. But then they needed a name, and in the brand new post office, Drumheller and Greentree flipped a coin to see if the town would be called Drumheller or Greentree’s Crossing. The rest is history. Sam Drumheller opened the valley’s second coal mine in 1912; the first was owned by Jesse Gouge and Garnet Coyle called the Newcastle mine. Drumheller’s mine was one of 139 mines that eventually dotted the valley and coal became an important industry for the region. Sam and his wife settled in Drumheller and contributed in many ways to the community. By Debbie Noesgaard
When the Glenmore Dam was built and the area then flooded, a portion of the Livingston house was preserved and is now stands in Heritage Park in Calgary. A school was named after Livingston in Calgary in 1963. In the 1860’s he was the first to bring a threshing machine to the area with the following year the first binder in 1886. In 1884, Livingston became the founding director of the Calgary District Agricultural Society and helped bring the exhibit of grain and vegetables to the Toronto Industrial Exhibit. Livingston was named the founding director of the Calgary branch of the Canadian North West territories Stock Association in 1886 and was also named one of the trustees of the Glenmore School in 1896. Livingston passed away on October 4th, 1897 in Calgary. By Michael Peace
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