Harvey Kavaner's Letter of Condolence to Norma (Skilling) and Ray Jackson

When his wife's sister Norma and her husband Ray's first child, Barbara Ann died in hospital only 19 days after she was born on October 30, 1928, Harvey Kavaner sent a letter of condolence to them. Here is the letter written on his Red River Grain Company letterhead.

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Here is a link to Barbara Ann's details on Ancestry: http://person.ancestry.com/tree/22408306/person/1231120798/facts

Harvey Kavaner Patents Gert's Invention

After Aunt Gert invented Red River breakfast cereal in her Winnipeg kitchen in 1924, the product was showcased at the Toronto Canadian Exhibition in August 1926. It must have been so popular that her husband Harvey Kavaner decided to apply for a Canadian Patent in March 1927. The patent was approved on August 6, 1929, with the applicant, Harvey Kavaner, listed as the "designer to Maple Leaf Milling Co. Limited".

I have obtained a copy of the original patent (shown below) from a family member but the Canadian Intellectual Property Office has an online database which shows Harvey Kavaner as the patent holder for Patent Number 292000, a Food Product, issued 1929-08-06.

Harvey's Application for Patent

Specification for Ingredients

Harvey's Claim Regarding His Invention

According to the Canadian Intellectual Property Office, Harvey's patent expired in August 6, 1946.

Gertude Edna Skilling 1887 - 1946

Red River Cereal was invented by my husband’s Aunt Gert in 1924 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. At the time, her husband Harvey Kavaner was President of the Red River Grain Company and a member of the Grain Exchange.

Gertrude Edna Skilling
c. 1905

Gertrude Edna Skilling was born on April 14, 1887 in Teeswater, Ontario, Canada, the fifth child and fourth girl, of John Skilling and Agnes Ruxton Skilling. Her father was a music teacher, choir director and sold musical instruments and sewing machines. Her mother was a homemaker and bore 10 children, nine of whom survived.

Gert attended primary and secondary school in Teeswater, Ontario and then took Normal School (probably in nearby Mount Forest, Ontario) and became a teacher by about 1906. She taught for about 5 years around Teeswater then took a teaching job in Calgary, Alberta, where she taught for several more years.

In 1915 in Calgary she married Harvey Kavaner, an up-and-coming member of the Grain Exchange. They had three children.

Around 1920 they moved to Winnipeg where Harvey became President of the Red River Grain Company and a member of the Winnipeg Grain Exchange. It was here in 1924 that Gert invented Red River Cereal.

According to her sister Norma, Gert was very bright and ahead of her time on the subject of nutrition. She experimented in her kitchen with various grains and various degrees of grinding to come up with the exact formula for Red River Cereal: 85% wheat, 10 % rye, and 5% flax. In 1926 the cereal was introduced in the Food Building  at the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, with family members giving out free samples with real cream in little paper cups.

Her sister Norma Skilling Jackson describes this and other aspects of Gert in her memoir “Skilling Family Memories” .

Gert’s husband Harvey filed a food patent for Red River Cereal on March 21, 1927, with the Canadian government and it was approved by 1929. Unfortunately, Gert’s name does not appear on the patent and so her fame remained a part of family lore and she was never given public credit. This blog is my attempt to rectify this oversight and give her the acknowledgement she is due.