“Mary,” the Iconic Canadian

Mary was a man. Her name was Willard . . .
All of knitting history is a universal story of emulation or, the garment industry’s technical term being “knock offs.” Women and men of knitting have, since the dawn of “knit and purl,” borrowed, loaned, and purloined ideas, realizing that each hand-knit piece is the unique garment sprung from a storehouse of graphic ideas from all cultures.

All of knitting history is a universal story of emulation or, the garment industry’s technical term being “knock offs.” Women and men of knitting have, since the dawn of “knit and pearl,” borrowed, loaned, and purloined ideas, realizing that each hand-knit piece is the unique garment sprung from a storehouse of graphic ideas from all cultures.

Cowichan sweaters, a Vancouver Island handmade staple of the Coast Salish culture, were adapted from Icelandic or Scottish influences and combined with West Coast icons such as the eagle, mythical thunderbird, deer, whale, bear, or fish. They stand themselves as remarkable garments that hold up as well-constructed physically, aesthetically and culturally. They are the original inspiration for the enormously successful Canadian phenomenon that is Mary Maxim.

This essay salutes the wild good luck and innovations of Willard McPhedrain and his band of witty entrepreneurs. The sweaters, visible from the streets of Vancouver to the consecrated halls of the high-fashion runway, are the witty offspring of bold Cowichan patterns. Most are the results of the design work of the multi-talented Barry Gibson, designer of the initial line of Mary Maxim Northland (type of 4-ply wool) sweaters. The knitters of Canada are champions of the knitting craft and they and their international comrades owe a lot to Gibson.

Economic need

To encourage lagging yarn sales, Olive McPhedrain, Williard's wife, had employed Stella Sawchyn to design a sweater, the now-famous Reindeer, later pattern #400. Gibson retooled the design and started an international knitting notation revolution. To this day knitting notation is universally written in the graphic shorthand manner using Gibson’s rectangle, not squared, graph paper. Armed with this innovation and an unbeatable wool yarn, this small powerhouse of extremely enthusiastic entrepreneurs, Willard McPhedrain having astutely gathered them together in Sifton, Manitoba, began a journey that is still continuing today. They tapped into the general popular psyche by delivering timely icons, all carried through the wondrous energy of the mythological Mary.

Canadian Vernacular
The origins of the Maxim sweaters and the Canadians who developed a taste for generous yarn and bold graphics demonstrate the contemporary development of vernacular arts. The ideas of William Morris and others were familiar to those who were part of the progressive movements internationally for a more collectivist or social democratic political, community, and cultural solution to the problems brought about by the perils of the Industrial Revolution. Willard saw a need and began a hands-on enterprise to address the needs of his village.

Vernacular arts and crafts are characterized by the same aspects as vernacular language :
• local resources to address local needs
• of a people, colloquial (jargon, argot, slang)
• indigenous, mostly popular taste
• regarded as native or natural
• everyday expression
Contemporary thought around the vernacular has been influenced a great deal by the Japanese idea of elevated, yet uncelebrated, achievements of “hand-crafted art of ordinary people” (minsh_-teki-na k_gei)) with an invented label out of those concepts: mingei. This idea was ascertained by S_etsu Yanagi as he discovered beauty in everyday, ordinary, or functional objects created by nameless and unknown craftspeople. According to Yanagi, down-to-earth objects are often “beyond beauty and ugliness." Below is a mirror of the criteria for vernacular arts, Yanagi’s criteria of mingei art and crafts:
• made by anonymous crafts people
• produced by hand in quantity
• inexpensive
• used by the masses
• functional in daily life
• representative of the regions in which they were produced.

Yanagi's book, The Unknown Craftsman, has become a widely influential work since its first release in English in 1972. While Yanagi's work has been criticized for its possible origins in xenophobic nationalism, its value to us is in his observation and appreciation of art and design in everyday things, including especially textiles, ceramics and woodwork. Bernard Leach, Yanagi’s UK comrade in this now-established theory, often lamented that “we do not even know the name of the knitter of a fine sweater we wear.”

The Mary Maxim sweater, knitted in husky 4-ply wool, was so overwhelmingly embraced by Canadians that wardrobes, attics, basements, vintage and retro garment boutiques, thrift shops, and internet auction pages still contain thousands of beautifully crafted examples. These sweaters are an original vernacular phenomenon which keeps on appearing, courtesy of television, cinema and the internet.

Branding

Along with the out-of-work immigrants living around him in the dirty 30's, Willard McPhedrain invented a whole new business which empowered his tiny town, Sifton, Manitoba, to become a powerhouse of creative energy. Willard transposed Miss Mary Maximchuk's name when he grasped that he needed a personalized branding. The McPhedrain housekeeper's name was transformed into Mary Maxim and commercial history was made.

A solid human bond had been struck between Mary Maxim, the company personalized, and people who ordered socks and eventually the millions of knitters who ordered patterns and wool skeins. The sweaters are the result of a meeting with Alma Warren, head buyer for Woodward's in Edmonton, who suggested the company make bulky yarn and emulate the Cowichan sweater.

Over the next decade, the resultant high quality of the 100% wool yarn and the innovative large-scale conspicuous motifs combined with the Mary Maxim personalization of the company to produce a phenomenon that would surpass Willard's wildest dreams.

McPhedrain, with his windfall good luck produced by his unbounded good will and affable personality, enlisted the assistance of his wife, his daughter, Lavina, her husband Earl, the visually talented Barry Gibson, later on his son Larry, as well as several relatives and friends.

Earl Shaw, the affable and skilled son-in-law initially managed the Cross-Canada explosion of sales and promotions, then later the UK connections. Barry Gibson moved to Sifton in 1952 with his new bride, Joyce, to begin managing the development of the company for McPhedrain who was continuing as station master of the Sifton Canadian National Railway station.

For a golden era between 1951 and 1964, a series of mercantile and artistic successes launched the company, helping it thrive to this day. For many, Mary Maxim carries with her name the meaning and essence of an innocent or idealized Canada. Her name has been synonymous with the benign nature of the 1950's, the visual innocence and the profoundly kitsch elixir of bold graphics worn proudly while we skied, sailed, golfed, gardened, skated, hunted, square danced, fished, went for a drive, attended school, bowled, curled, marched in a parade, hiked, or went for a walk. We were proud of every non-nuanced moment in which we got away with wearing a garment so bold, so warm, so local and so sentimental.

Sweaters were cool.

Jackets are plain. Coats are formal. Sweaters are as “cool” as they were warm. From prime ministers to corporation executives, from Bob Hope to the Royals, from movie stars to sports idols, from Marilyn Bell to every school child in the country, these 4-ply heavy duty garments were wholesome, toasty, down to earth, and ready for a good time out doors. Canadians became envied for these sentimental motifs developed in the main by Barry Gibson for his mythic Mary.

Barry Gibson’s accomplishments

First male knitting designer of that era, from 1952 to 1957 at Mary Maxim, landing his first serious job in his mid twenties, Gibson happily developed these symbols of our wide-open country and its connection to nature. Since the 1950's these woollies, their patterns, and their catalogues have been sought after in the countryside or the cities. From London, New York, as well as all of Canada, Vancouver being a hotbed of vintage sweater élan, the patterns and style of Mary Maxim established an international knitting fellowship.

Mary Maxim patterns offer the convenience of working from graphic-style patterns rather than words. Using only graph diagrams instead of the traditional knitting verbal descriptions, Gibson, in his efforts to teach himself the needs of the knitter, introduced the concept of a visual representation of individual stitches, depicted in his elongated graph diagrams to represent actual garment configuration, size and shape. Combined with the bulky yarn, experienced knitters realized that they could knit “half a sweater of an evening.”

To this day Gibson's Mary Maxim graph method is followed around the world for all knitting styles, in a stroke of serendipity creating a community of international knitters, as well as establishing a huge knitting pattern market, henceforth not dependent on written language and numerous translations.

Worldwide Mary

Indeed, the Mary Maxim brand quickly spread to the United Kingdom and the United States, establishing unique products for those cultures, launching with the cornerstone icons of the bold 4-ply Canadian sweaters. Today there are stores in unlikely places such as Tokyo, Osaka and Shanghai selling vintage Mary under the moniker of “Cowichan sweater coats,” “Canada Cowichan Coat Sweater,” “Vintage Cowichan Maxim Sweater,” “Cowichan Saiwash Vintage Sweater,” even “Mary Sweater,” accidentally telegraphing the inspiration and some of the story of the original impulse to make burly wool garments popular.

Cowichan and Mary Maxim

A Coast Salish sweater is knitted with uneven organic wool, using traditional European skills. The authentic tube-knitted, circular construction, not parts sewn together post-knitting, as with Mary Maxim products, Cowichan garments are to this day respected internationally, on and off the high fashion runway, right along side Mary. Take offs of the Cowicahan and Mary Maxim styles include the White Buffalo company and its Buffalo wool, the company which used the “Cowichan” word for its name yet had nothing to do with the Salish of Cowichan Valley.

Others who received inspiration from Coast Salish and Mary Maxim were Barry Gibson's own Minaki Trading, Minaki, Ontario; Bouquet Polar Yarns; King Patterns; Beehive Yarns; Parkspin Yarns, and several leading American and British hand-knitting yarn companies. Ralph Lauren of New York created a sweater for the runway market in 2003. It is a cross between Maxim and Cowichan with a prominent eagle. From then, direct quotes from Mary Maxim motifs such as sail boats have been spotted on the runway and in the stores from YSL of Paris, Guru and Dolce & Gabanna, both of Milan, as well as UNIQLO of Tokyo and New York. Numerous uses of these have been sighted in films and television productions such as The Stick Men and Studio 60.

The Cowichan and Mary Maxim sweaters are staples of costume designers for Canadian television and film productions. Audiences are used to seeing them as they sit in the theatre wearing an example from their own collection.

With wide-spread pattern distribution and development of thick yarns, Mary Maxim allowed the sincerity, skill, and above all, love, inherent in a hand-knit sweater, to flourish. Each of the pieces in the Tom Graff Collection now owned and housed by Vancouver’s Original Costume Museum Society, is an affable garment still carrying stories, memories, and vivid feelings for family and friends.

Internet Mary Classics

On the day of the gifting of the collection, 29 March 2009, Mary was sited on Google had 12,400 “Mary Maxim” citings, while at the same time, eBay.ca had 87 items for sale , with eBay.ca “Vintage Sweater” having 2,638 listings, most related to or actual Mary Maxim sweaters or patterns.

Mary, a.k.a. . . .

Known also as large yarn Mary Maxim sweaters or bulky “Indian” or, erroneously, Cowichan sweaters, they are daily available on the internet through auction and sale, usually offered out of collections in British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, and Ontario. Some are offered in the United States, Japan, and the UK.

Key words on search engines such as vintage, retro, “awesome retro-Canadian,” vintage Cowichan sweater jacket,” Canada icon sweater coat” or” antique sweater—Canadian,” are frequently evoked with an esteem normally reserved for vintage bottles in a wine cellar. Prices can range from $14.50 to $500, depending on quality, original wool or not, and the skill of the original unidentified knitter. Often these garments were crafted so well that with their unmatched quality wool and superior knitting they can be worn today without any repairs needed.

Horses, are the most motif popular at times, along with the Stella Sawchyn and Barry Gibson early Reindeer design which became Mary Maxim Pattern #400, the first pattern, first in a line of icons devised by Gibson. Patterns of curling, skiing, skating, hunting, wild and domesticated animals, oil rigs, hockey players, and others that imply action or some measure of activity, are the most popular.

These brash yet happy garments have come full circle and are now a collectible source of amusement and warmth for the Generation which calls itself X. Those who wear them usually do so with some knowledge of the sweater’s mid-century origin, at least in Canada.


A short chronology of the Mary Maxim company
Compiled by Lavina Shaw (nee McPhedrain) and Tom Graff

1934-1936 - Willard McPhedrain assisted John Weselowski and Roland Forester in selling spinning wheels and hand carders. Thousands were sold throughout Canada under the name of Spinwell. During this time, Willard founded the Sifton Credit Union and was President of the Board of Trade. He also learned Ukrainian and was able to help immigrants market their goods.

1937 - A woollen mill (Spinwell Woollen Mill) was erected where blankets, socks, sleeping bags, comforters and yarn were manufactured. John Weselowski, the local blacksmith, made most of the machinery looking at diagrams in an encyclopaedia of machinery.

1941 - The mill was short of capital so new equity was put into the company. The new partners decided to move the mill to Brandon as the sewage disposal and water supply in Sifton were inadequate. McPhedrain continued to sell local merchandise under the name of Sifton Products, assisted by his wife Olive. Daughter Lavina worked for the company from 1945 to 1946. The customer files were kept in a shoe box. John Weselowski did some manufacturing on a smaller scale in the Spinwell building, calling his mill Custom Woollen Mill.

1947 - Willard decided to personalize the company by advertising under the name of Mary Maximchuk, the McPhedrain's housekeeper. Subsequently the name was shortened to Mary Maxim. "Mary" received numerous love letters and valentines along with orders for the patterns and yarn.

1951 - Willard met with Alma Warren, of Woodward's in Edmonton who suggested the company make bulky yarn and emulate the Cowichan sweater. Willard and son-in law Earl Shaw went to Vancouver Island and bought 10 Cowichan sweaters as models. John Weselowski started manufacturing bulky yarn and Stella Sawchyn designed patterns similar to those done by the Norwegians and reminiscent of Cowichan Valley Salish garments.

After a chance meeting with Barry Gibson late in 1951 at an ad agency in Winnipeg, McPhedrain hired Gibson to be his manager/designer. In a Sifton ex-pool hall, Barry Gibson, along with his mentor McPhedrain, set the groundwork for the Mary Maxim mastery of the knitting market. Gibson and McPhedrain devised designs for outdoor activities, copyrighted methods of knitting graph motifs, and along with Earl Shaw, son Larry, and a Canada-wide sales staff, established a masterful system of distribution through department stores such as Eaton's, the Bay, Woodwards, and Sears.

1952 - 1957 Mary Maxim's graph style patterns, as originally developed
by Stella Sawchyn and vastly improved by Gibson, prepared knitters everywhere for the convenience of working from diagrams rather than words. Gibson's graphs introduced knitters to the concept of a visual representation of individual stitches, depicted in elongated graph diagrams to represent actual configuration, size and shape. This has been emulated around the world for all knitting styles, creating a world community of knitters, and numerous cross-cultural knitting ties, as
well as establishing a huge knitting pattern market not dependant on language.

1954 - Mary Maxim was officially incorporated, although the name had been used since 1947. Shareholders were Willard, Olive and Larry McPhedrain and Earl Shaw. The company moved to larger quarters in Dauphin, Manitoba, and an office was opened in Paris, Ontario, managed by Earl Shaw.

1955 - Willard left the CNR after 37 years of service and moved to
Dauphin where larger supplies of wool were available.

1956 - Son Larry McPhedrain, opened an office in Port Huron, Michigan,
USA.

1957 - In an agreement with Willard McPhedrain for royalties on patterns
sold for the next five years, Barry Gibson left Mary Maxim which was
then the largest distributor of yarns in Canada to go into a partnership
with his brother in the printing and direct mail business. He later established the Minaki Trading Company in Minaki, Ontario, a firm which designed and
manufactured knitwear.

1958 - Willard and Olive McPhedrain moved to Paris, Ontario, closing the
Dauphin office. A number of employees moved as well. Earl Shaw opened
a branch in Leicester, England.

1964 - Earl Shaw left the company and bought a woollen mill, Parkspin
Ltd., in St. Thomas, Ontario.

1971 - Willard McPhedrain passed away at age 68.

1993 - Olive McPhedrain passed away at age 87.

2002 - Larry McPhedrain passed away at age 69 in Port Huron, Michigan.

Larry's son, Larry Jr. (“Rusty”) continues to operate the Mary Maxim mail
order and retail businesses in Port Huron, Michigan and Paris, Ontario.

In the bottom second photo by Susan Stout, the author ponders over Mary Maxim patterns from his vast collection. Vancouver’s Original Costume Museum Society held its Spring lecture at Hycroft on Sunday March 29 in which vernacular arts expert, Tom Graff, offered his high-tech lecture about a hands-on low tech subject, the quintessential Canadian icon of the 1950’s, the Mary Maxim sweater.

Lavina Shaw (nee McPhedrain) was in attendance. She is the daughter of the originator of the company Willard McPhedrain. She was celebrating her 80th birthday that day.

At the conclusion of his talk, Graff announced his donation of his entire collection of over 100 sweaters and a large group of vintage patterns, catalogues, and other ephemera and documentation related to his research, to Vancouver’s Original Costume Museum Society.

In the first bottom photo,also by Susan Stout, Lavina Show (nee McPhedrain) receives flowers wearing a
light weight UK version of the original Mary Maxim golf sweater



Lavina Show (nee McPhedrain) receives flowers wearing a light weight UK version of the original Mary Maxim golf sweaterLavina Show (nee McPhedrain) receives flowers wearing a light weight UK versionTom Graff ponders over Mary Maxim patterns from his vast collection photo: Susan Stout