Fonds F1866 - Len Walker fonds

Leonard Walker, 1911-1996, was born in Wabasca, Alberta where his father was chief factor of the Hudson's Bay Company (HBC) trading post. In 1913 he and his family moved to Grouard, Alberta, although he and his mother lived in Ontario while his father was overseas in the First World War service. After attending high school in Edmonton, Len worked in Calgary as a buyer for the HBC Raw Fur Department, 1928-1929, and in the summers as purser on a steamer between Waterways and Fort Fitzgerald. In 1929 he worked as a lease clerk for Hudson's Bay Oil and Gas Co. at Kehoe Lake. In 1931 he worked in his father's High Prairie general store, and from 1933 to 1935 he owned a garage in Rycroft.

For the next few years he roughnecked in the Turner Valley and Vermilion area, and from 1940 to 1943 was a pipeline superintendent in Trinidad. He returned to Alberta to work for Oilwell Supply Co. in Okotoks as a district engineer. He joined Union Tractor in Calgary as a salesman in 1945, and again worked in Trinidad from 1947 to 1949. He went into oilfield equipment sales with Cardwell Manufacturing Inc. in 1950, and formed Petrolia Pipe and Tool Co. in 1968. In 1981 he established Len Walker and Associates, oilfield marketing consultants. He married Noreen Margaret Cumming in 1941, and they had four daughters, Shirley-Ann Walker (Guyot), Beverly (Russell), Robbie (Cuthbertson), and Jeanne.