Frederick Stanley Albright was born in Beamsville, Ontario, on March 23, 1883. After growing up in rural Ontario, Mr. Albright moved to Toronto where he attended Victoria College, University of Toronto receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science in 1908. It was there that he met Evelyn Kelly, born on November 13, 1889, in Owen Sound, Ontario. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and History in 1912.
After receiving his degree, Mr. Albright moved to Calgary in 1909 where he started as a student-at-law with the Walsh, McCarthy, Carson firm (later Macleod Dixon LLP before becoming Norton Rose LLP) on September 8, 1909. Senior partner, William Leigh Walsh, once described Mr. Albright as “one of the brightest articling students he had ever seen.” As a student, Mr. Albright kept good company. He shared a living quarters with future Alberta Premier, John Brownlee and future Chief Justice of Alberta, Clinton Ford. He also, on numerous occasions, came in to contact with R.B. Bennett, prominent Calgary lawyer and future Prime Minister of Canada.
Fred Albright seemed to settle nicely in to his new surroundings. In one of nearly 600 letters he exchanged with Ms. Kelly, he expressed the openness and beauty of the Alberta as “peculiar[ly] exhilarating quality that only the West can give.” Mr. Albright opined in another letter to Ms. Kelly that “ultimately Alberta will be the banner Prairie province and it’s good to see a place in the making.” He sent Ms. Kelly postcards from the first Calgary Stampede in 1912, and expressed that it was “a wonderful realistic indication of the life of the early days.” Despite keeping in regular contact with Evelyn Kelly, he greatly missed her. He wrote in one letter, “I wonder if you are lonely for me tonight as I am for you.”
Though he returned to Ontario for occasional visits, he knew he would settle in Calgary. Fred wrote to Evelyn about property and investment opportunities in the city. Unfortunately, he failed to partake in these early investments that were paying off handsomely for those who were of a less conservative nature.
After completing his articles, Mr. Albright was admitted to the Law Society of Alberta as a Barrister and Solicitor on September 16, 1912 and continued to practice with the Macleod firm. Starting in 1913, as their wedding day was approaching, Fred and Evelyn were writing each other on a nearly daily basis. In June 1914, they were married and settled in Calgary.
They were honeymooning in England when crisis erupted into war in August 1914. After returning to Calgary, it was likely difficult to lead a normal life knowing what was happening across the Atlantic. Reports from the war were swirling, and the Albrights received news about friends who had been killed oversees. Nearly two years into the conflict, Fred Albright enlisted as a Private in 1916. He was initially sent to England and then to France. He was killed in action during the Battle of Passchendaele on October 26, 1917. The Battle of Passchendaele, part of the third Battle of Ypres, was a major offensive of the First World War. Fought between the Allies and the German Empire, it took place on the Western Front from July to November 1917. Known for heavy rain and mud that bogged down any troop movement, the first Battle of Passchendaele took place on October 12, 1917, and killed nearly 13,000 Allied troops. Mr. Albright was killed during the second Battle for Passchendaele, it was his first frontline action. In the end, nearly 15,600 Canadians were killed or wounded on the battlefield of Passchendaele, a large price to pay for territory that was abandoned by Germany early in the next year.
During his absence oversees, the Albrights continued to write. The last letter he sent was dated October 19-20, 1917. Her last letters were returned unopened with the stamp “killed in action” across the envelope. She received official notification of her husband’s death via telegram on November 10, 1917, “4204 deeply regret to inform you eight nine five one seven three PTE Frederick Stanley Albright infantry officially reported killed in action between Oct twenty third and twenty six nineteen seventeen.”
According to an editorial in the Calgary Daily Herald following his death, he enlisted “not because he loved war, not because the life of a soldier appealed to him, not because he did not have reasons aplenty for remaining home; he enlisted purely out of a sense of duty, because he felt he was called to don the uniform to serve his country and his God.”
Another Alberta lawyer, Sydney Raymond Vallance, was injured at the Battle of Passchendaele. In 1918, Mr. Vallance wrote to Charles Adams, Secretary at the Law Society of Alberta, that he was receiving medical clearance and would hopefully be returning to Alberta, and that his “good fortune was due to a dose of gas at Passchendaele, received about the same day that F.S. Albright was killed.”
After receiving notification of the death of her husband, the life Evelyn Albright had imagined was significantly altered. She was young, well-educated and naturally intellectual. This is evident from many of the letters she exchanged with her husband on topics that included feminism, race, eugenics, health, religious, social and political concerns. In one letter she wrote, “what makes me mad, just hot, fighting mad, is for a man or a boy to claim that because he is a man he should vote, because I am a woman, I should not vote.” She continued, “that he has any more interest in government then I have I resent and deny, what is implied in that contention, that is the superiority of the man over the woman.”
Following Fred Albright’s enlistment in the army, Evelyn applied as a student-at-law with the same firm that her husband practiced with. She completed her articles with A.H. Clarke, and was admitted to the Law Society of Alberta on October 16, 1919. She became only the second woman to be admitted to the Law Society. However, Mrs. Albright never practiced law. After her admission she returned to Ontario and joined the English Faculty at the University of Western Ontario as its first female instructor. She also earned a Master’s degree, and taught until her retirement in 1951.
She never remarried, and rarely spoke of her husband. Evelyn Albright passed away at the age of 89 on April 24, 1979. The nearly 600 letters exchanged between the young couple during their courtship, marriage, and his military service were donated to the University of Western Ontario. They were organized and transcribed by Lorna Brooke, a library assistant at the university. The letters can be accessed at www.echoinmyheart.ca.
*All the letters quoted in this article can be found at www.echoinmyheart.ca.
**All photos courtesy of UWO Archives.
