Ralph K. Larmour

The People

Ralph K. Larmour

← People of the Society · on record 1953–1969

This is the Society’s own record of Ralph K. Larmour. A biography: Obituary, 1970 →

Possibly the same person: Dr. or Mrs. Larmour →
The 1963–64 Executive Council prints “Dr. or Mrs. Larmour”: the Society’s papers credit this seat to a couple, Dr. Ralph K. Larmour and his wife, Reta Larmour, and do not say which of them held it.

The Society’s records

Everything the Society’s own records say of Ralph K. Larmour: the offices held, the standings conferred, and the awards won. Where the records are silent, so is this part of the page.

In memoriam · 2 October 1970

Died 2 October 1970, per the Society’s own contemporary obituary (Fall 1970 newsletter, page 7: "Dr. Larmour died October 2nd, 1970"), where the Spring 1975 retrospective gives the month only. The obituary adds that he was a Charter member of C.S.C.L. The Society’s twenty-five-year retrospective in the Spring 1975 newsletter records that "he was greatly missed by all those that knew him when he passed away in October 1970" and that he "gave a great deal of time and energy to the development of C.S.C.L." His tools and leather supplies were sold in three auctions for the Larmour Memorial Library, raising over $1,000 by 1974. The Toronto Daily Star's own obituary (5 October 1970, "Ralph Larmour, 75 leading Canadian cereal chemist") corroborates the October death date (he "died Saturday," i.e. 3 October, in a Monday paper, a day off the Society's own 2 October, both kept as printed). On his cereal-chemistry career the Star's own account is internally hard to square: it has him becoming director of the National Research Council's Saskatoon laboratories and, "in the same year" (1945), the first director of Maple Leaf Mills' Toronto research laboratory, before leaving the NRC in 1947 to concentrate on Maple Leaf Mills work until retiring in 1963. Both accounts are kept as printed. His family's death notice gives Saturday, 3 October 1970, at West Lincoln Memorial Hospital, Grimsby, and two further obituaries say he "died Saturday"; the Society's 2 October is kept beside it.

From Fall 1970, page 7; Larmour, Ralph Kenneth, Ph.D., F.R.S.C. (death notice); Obituary: Dr. Ralph Larmour; and Dr. R. Larmour, cereal chemist, dies at Grimsby.

Also recorded as Dr. Ralph K. Larmour, R. K. Larmour, R.K. Larmour, Ralph Larmour

Branch

Peterboro · recorded holding office in 1956

Certification

Fellow of the CSCL 1953

The Society's printed lists give him as Dr. R.K. Larmour in 1955 and 1956, Dr. Ralph Larmour from 1957 to 1959, and Dr. R. K. Larmour in 1960.

From Autumn 1955, page 11; The History of the Canadian Society for Creative Leathercraft: its own short account, page 1; Leathercraft Standards and the Point System for Scoring Craft Works, April 1996, page 6; 40th Annual Meeting 1990: programme, Elmhurst Inn, Ingersoll, page 6; Spring 1956; Autumn 1957, page 11; Spring 1960, page 6; and Ralph Larmour, 1894–1970: obituary, Toronto Daily Star.

Served the Society as

President c. early 1950s to 1956
Past President 1956–1957
Vice-President 1953
Peterboro Branch Honorary President 1956
Executive Council 1957–1965
Members at Large 1959
Historian 1960

Honours

Honourary Life Membership 1969
Presented by Mrs. Nora Huyck at the Nineteenth Annual Meeting, held at the Scottish Rite, Hamilton, on 22 March 1969, with President Mrs. Dorothy Muma in the chair, "in tribute to his many years of dedication and assistance to leathercraft". Larmour was the Society's Honorary President and the voice of most of its platform occasions: he made the 1962 presentations to Don MacKinnon and Robert Muma and the 1964 presentation to Robert Dengler. The Society's own retrospective history of Spring 1975 dates this honour to the annual meeting of 1970 and calls it an Honorary Fellow Life membership; the contemporary notice of Spring 1969 is followed here, and the disagreement is recorded rather than resolved.

Demonstrations given

A showing of his colour slide record of Canadian leathercraft 1953
4th Annual
From Summer 1953, page 1.
A talk on Leathercraft, with films 1956
Peterboro group meeting, 1956
From Autumn 1956, page 11.
Coloured slides of the pieces on show 1956
CSCL Exhibition, Ryerson Institute of Technology, Toronto, October 1956
From Autumn 1956, page 12.

Where this comes from

Life and work

From his obituary in the Toronto Daily Star, 5 October 1970, and the Society's own obituary in its Fall 1970 newsletter. Other lines come from the sources named under each.

Background: Ralph Kenneth Larmour, an internationally known cereal chemist, taught school in Ontario and Saskatchewan before the First World War.
From Ralph Larmour, 1894–1970: obituary, Toronto Daily Star.; He was born on 17 December 1894 at Irena, Dundas County, Ontario; his Toronto Daily Star obituary printed the place as Arena.
From University of Saskatchewan Archives, authority record ‘Larmour, Ralph Kenneth (1894-1970)’, https://memorysask.ca/larmour-ralph-kenneth-1894-1970-professor-of-chemistry, and Bower-McBurney Genealogy, https://bowergenealogy.ca/11/11657.htm, citing Ontario’s birth registrations, 1832–1917.; During the First World War he served with the 78th Battalion (Winnipeg Grenadiers) and received the Military Medal after action at Passchendaele.
From University of Saskatchewan Archives, R.K. Larmour fonds (MG 24), description, n.d., accessed 20 October 2026, https://memorysask.ca/r-k-larmour-fonds.; While on the Saskatchewan chemistry staff (1927–1945) he was also active in the Canadian Officers Training Corps (COTC).
From University of Saskatchewan Archives, authority record 'Larmour, Ralph Kenneth (1894-1970)', n.d., accessed 20 October 2026, https://memorysask.ca/larmour-ralph-kenneth-1894-1970-professor-of-chemistry.
Family: He died at his home in Grimsby, aged 75, survived by his wife, Reta, a daughter and a son.
From the biography “Obituary, 1970”.
Work: In 1945 he left the University of Saskatchewan's chemistry department to become director of the National Research Council's regional laboratories in Saskatoon, and in the same year became the first director of the research laboratory of Maple Leaf Mills, Toronto. After serving as scientific adviser to the Canadian High Commissioner in London, he left the National Research Council in 1947 and concentrated on pioneer research for the baking and milling industry at the Maple Leaf Mills laboratory until retiring in 1963. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and a member of the Defence Research Board.
From the biography “Obituary, 1970”.; The Society's own obituary adds that he had been a professor at the University of Saskatchewan, a Canadian delegate to the founding meeting of UNESCO in Paris and a member of the National Research Council's Defense Board (Food Section); that he joined the Maple Leaf Milling Company in 1947 and worked there fifteen years on Canadian diet and nutrition, the Monarch mixes among his work; and that he received the Canadian Baking Industry's first Award of Merit and an Honourary Life Membership from the American Association of Cereal Chemists, who called him the "Dean of Cereal Chemists".
From Fall 1970, page 7.; He enrolled at the University of Saskatchewan in 1919 (B.Sc.), was a Shevlin Fellow at the University of Minnesota, joined the Saskatchewan chemistry department in 1927 and spent 18 years building a reputation in cereal chemistry, and briefly held a chair of milling industry at a mid-western American university.
From Nature 155, 358 (1945); University of Saskatchewan Archives, accessed 20 October 2026, https://www.nature.com/articles/155358c0.
Study: He then returned to school, taking a B.Sc. from the University of Saskatchewan in 1923, an M.Sc. there in 1925, and a PhD from the University of Minnesota in 1927.
From University of Saskatchewan Archives, authority record ‘Larmour, Ralph Kenneth (1894-1970)’, https://memorysask.ca/larmour-ralph-kenneth-1894-1970-professor-of-chemistry.
Collections: The University of Saskatchewan Archives holds the R.K. Larmour fonds (MG 24): chemistry-department material and files on the Board of Grain Commissions, Saskatchewan Co-op Wheat Producers and the Junior Grain Club, plus a portrait photograph (196-?).
From University of Saskatchewan Archives, n.d., accessed 20 October 2026, https://memorysask.ca/r-k-larmour-fonds.
In the press: He showed coloured slides on leather subjects at the Society's 1953 Annual Meeting; the Toronto Star's report of the meeting lists his Fellowship as honorary.
From “Leathercraft Body Holds Annual Meet”, the Toronto Star, 19 June 1953, p. 30.; Nature announced his appointment as director of the National Research Council's new Prairie Regional Laboratory in Saskatoon, which was to study the industrial use of farm crops.
From Nature 155, 358 (1945), 'Prairie Regional Laboratory, Canada: Prof. R. K. Larmour', https://doi.org/10.1038/155358c0.; Saturday Night of 24 January 1953 wrote that his wife had drawn him into leathercraft to the point where he had become practically an authority on dyeing leather, approaching it scientifically and finding methods of his own.
From Saturday Night, 24 January 1953, Vol. 68 No. 16, https://archive.org/details/sim_saturday-night_1953-01-24_68_16.
Publications: He published ‘Comparative study of glutelins of cereal grains’, Journal of Agricultural Research vol. 35 no. 12 (15 December 1927), pp. 1091–1120; it was reissued by the US Department of Agriculture as a separate in 1928.
From US Monthly Catalog of Government Publications, May 1928 (UNT digital record), https://mocat.library.unt.edu/catalog/401-ch14.

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