Margaret Chappelle

Margaret Chappelle was born in 1915 in Winnipeg, Manitoba and grew up in Edmonton's Garneau district. Her mother had been a prominent Winnipeg socialite and her father was a well-regarded businessman who served for a period as the president of the Edmonton Chamber of Commerce. Coming from a well-off family and later married to a successful doctor, Chappelle had the resources and the leisure to pursue her artistic interests. An avid painter from childhood, she enrolled as an art student at the University of Alberta in 1947 and studied under H.G. Glyde and J.B. Taylor. She subsequently became a full-time artist and strong supporter of the Edmonton art community. She was a member of the Alberta Society of Artists, president of the Edmonton Art Club and the Federation of Canadian Artists. She also served on the board of the Edmonton Art Gallery and helped to organize lectures featuring such notable artists as Group of Seven member A.Y. Jackson.

A very accomplished artist, Margaret Chappelle was particularly good at landscapes and floral paintings, and her love of art was matched by her love of the environment and animals. In the late-nineteen-sixties, when Edmonton's city council proposed to build a freeway through the McKinnon ravine in Edmonton's river valley, Chappelle launched a public campaign – ultimately successful – to oppose the plan. Upon her death, she left the bulk of her substantial fortune to the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, now known as the Edmonton Humane Society. She also left a provision that all of the artworks left in her estate not be put up for sale until ten years after her death and that anything realized from eventual sale be donated to the SPCA.