Margaret Chappelle's legacy saved MacKinnon Ravine

Trust officer Ellen Armstrong had a big task ahead of her when Margaret Chappelle, an Edmonton artist and activist, died on June 29, 1992, with no apparent heirs. Her husband, a local doctor, had passed four years earlier and the couple didn't have any children or other close family. After several months passed and no will turned up, Armstrong was sent to search the 1.2-hectare Grovenor estate at 146 Street and Stony Plain Road to find one.

Eventually, she reached the property's cluttered garage. "What Chappelle would do is, as papers came in — a gas bill or power bill — she'd put them in a pile on the table," recalls Keith Stefanick, who worked with Armstrong at the time. "Occasionally, she'd write out a will and put it on the pile. Then, when the pile got too high, she'd take it and move it out to the garage."

It was in those piles of paper that Armstrong found several handwritten wills. The major takeaway: Chappelle wanted the SPCA, now the Edmonton Humane Society, to be the recipient of her $3.7-million estate, and care for her beloved cats. She stipulated that the SPCA hold her art works in trust for 10 years before going to auction. The estate, which included her house, would be worth roughly double that in 2026 dollars.

The donation was record-breaking for the charity. "It was the largest donation to a Canadian Humane Society," says Liza Sunley, CEO of the society. "The team at the time was really quite shocked."

The funding kick-started their quest for a new purpose-built building, which today includes a sign welcoming visitors to the Chappelle Centre for Animal Care. "It was truly a legacy," Sunley adds. "It enabled us to create what we have right now, which is still leading-edge in the animal welfare world."

But this was far from the only legacy Chappelle left behind. A decades-spanning battle that started in the mid-1960s and ended in the mid-1980s with Chappelle at the helm could have resulted in MacKinnon Ravine being dismantled to build roads.

"Look at the bike path in the MacKinnon Ravine today," says Stefanick. "We can thank Margaret Chappelle for that."

Chappelle was born Margaret Ayling in Winnipeg in 1915, but grew up in Edmonton's Garneau neighbourhood. According to the Alberta Foundation for the Arts, her mother was a socialite, while her father was a prominent businessman who served for a time as president of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce. She was afforded the luxury of pursuing her passion for art without much concern for its financial viability.

A friend from high school, Dorothy Barnhouse, told the Edmonton Journal in an extensive obituary from 1993: "She was absolutely stunning and totally outrageous. She was so beautiful that the boys were afraid to talk to her and the girls were just in awe of her."