Fonds F1698 - Walter Norman Smith and Amelia Turner Smith fonds

Walter Norman Smith, 1887-1972, was born in England. He came to Canada in 1906 and engaged in newspaper work with Winnipeg, Calgary, Edmonton and Regina newspapers. He served with the Machine Gun Corps during the First World War, and on his return worked for the Calgary Albertan, 1919-1921. He became education secretary for the United Farmers of Alberta in 1921. He was appointed editor of The UFA newspaper when it was started in 1922. He remained with The UFA until it ceased publication in 1936. From 1921 to 1935, Smith prepared much of the UFA's political literature, and in the mid-1930s he made an intense study of Social Credit philosophy. In 1936, he and his wife launched the Western Farm Leader, a bi-weekly newspaper, which they edited and published until their retirement in 1954.

Amelia Turner, 1891-1982, was born in Ontario. She came to Alberta with her family in 1903 and moved to Calgary in 1913. She began work in the UFA office in 1920 and was soon transferred to The UFA where she worked from 1922 to 1936. She was a Calgary school trustee from 1926 to 1935 and held the chair in 1934. She was at the founding convention of the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation in 1932 and ran, unsuccessfully, as a CCF candidate in 1933 and 1934 provincial by-elections. She married Smith in 1937.

For more details see Pat Roome's articles "Amelia Turner" in Citymakers : Calgarians after the Frontier / Max Foran and Sheilagh S. Jameson, eds. - Calgary : Historical Society of Alberta, Chinook Country Chapter, 1987 and "Amelia Turner and Calgary Labour Women, 1919-1935" in Beyond the Vote: Canadian Women and Politics/ ed. by Linda Kealey and Joan Sangster. -- Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989, p. 89-117, reprinted in The Prairie West: Historical Readings/ ed. by R. Douglas Francis and Howard Palmer. -- Edmonton: Pica Pica Press, 1992, p. 424-449.