Trailblazer
Clara
Winifred Fritz, 1889-1974
Canada's First Woman Timber Pathologist
An original tree hugger
Clara Fritz was nontraditional. She was equally at home in the woods
or in the laboratory. But it was her love of trees that led her into her
career studying tree diseases as Canada's first woman timber pathologist.
Tree doctor
Clara received her doctorate in forestry from the University of Toronto
in 1924. In 1925, at age 36, she was hired by the Forest Products Laboratories
of Canada at McGill University in Montréal. She was not only the
first woman timber pathologist, but also the first person in Canada qualified
to carry out such research.
When the laboratory moved to larger facilities in Ottawa in 1927, Clara
transferred with it. The new facilities were supposed to be temporary,
but she was still working in the downtown building, near the present Canadian
Museum of Nature, when she retired in 1954.
Valuable breakthrough research
In the Ottawa lab in the late 1920s, Clara began researching organisms
that cause wood decay. Her first project focused on red stain in jack
pine, a tree that grows throughout Canada and is traditionally used for
railway ties. This red stain fungus, Fomes pini, attacks jack
pine, destroying the trees' tissues and making them unusable as railway
ties.
Clara experimented with treating the wood ties with creosote and found
that it halted the decay and protected them against rot. The railway companies
began using her creosote protection technique, saving upwards of $2 million
a year. Clara considered this to be one of her most valuable achievements.
Her most personally significant achievement was the establishment of a
reference culture collection representative of the organisms found in
the field. To this day, her collection is still kept at the lab.
Challenges in the field
Her biggest challenge was working in a largely male-dominated field.
When Clara visited the forestry reserve in Petawawa, Ontario, to study
her research plot, there were no suitable housing arrangements for women.
Though her male counterparts stayed on the reserve, she was forced to
stay at a hotel five kilometres away in Chalk River.
Another time, Clara was asked to give a speech to the Pulp and Paper
Institute on slime in pulp and paper mills, a subject she had been researching.
The speech was to be given at the Château Laurier hotel in Ottawa,
but because women were not invited to the dinner, she had to wait in one
of the private rooms until the members had finished eating. Her speech
was well received and noted as one of the best given to the institute
that year.
Academic achievements
Clara published papers on her research findings on stain and decay in
lumber-seasoning yards in both scholarly and government publications into
the 1950s. In 1928, she presented a paper at the Third British Empire
Forestry Conference held in Australia and New Zealand, an impressive achievement
for a woman in that era.
She retired as chief of timber pathology at the Ottawa Forest Products
Laboratories in 1954. (The Forest Products Laboratories were privatized
in 1979 and became Forintek.)
Life achievements
- 1924 Received a doctorate in forestry from the University of Toronto.
- 1925 Hired by the Forest Products Laboratories of Canada at McGill
University in Montréal. - 1928 Presented a paper at the Third British Empire Forestry Conference
in Australia and New Zealand in 1928. - 1954 Retired as chief of timber pathology at the Ottawa Forest Products
Laboratories.