Fonds 438 R. Kay Trelle fonds

R. Kay Trelle fonds. — 1924-2011. — 191 cm of textual records. — 37 photographs. — 66 blueprints. — 1 sound recordings.

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Biographical Sketch

Kay Trelle, born and raised in the Lake Saskatoon area of the Peace River Country, spent most of his career working for the aerospace industry in the United States. It was an interesting time of rapid growth in the aerospace industry, with the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Space Race to land on the moon. For much of that time, he worked in secrecy for Boeing and Lockheed on projects such as the Polaris and Poseidon missiles, and the drone-carrying Boeing 747. While he recognized these accomplishments, as an engineer his greatest thrill was always the challenge of solving the next problem. He returned to Canada in 1973 and retired to the Lake Saskatoon district in 1990.

Roy Kay Trelle was born August 18, 1924, “at home” near the hamlet of Lake Saskatoon, Alberta. He was the second child of Herman William Trelle and Beatrice Irene (Burdick) Trelle. His father was an internationally known agriculturalist who grew award-winning crops in the Peace District and helped open the world’s eyes to the agricultural potential of the Peace River Country in northern Alberta.

Kay started his education in a two-room school at Saskatoon Lake and finished high school in Calgary when his father was stationed there during World War II. When he turned 18 in 1942, he enlisted in the Canadian Air Force and trained with the Commonwealth Training Program in Vancouver, British Columbia. After the war, he traveled down to the United States to visit his family who had just moved to California. While he was there, his father was murdered by a disgruntled farm worker. Extending his visit to help his mother and 12 year-old brother during this crisis, Kay overstayed his Visa and was drafted into the American Army. He served for two years with the occupation army in Japan. After his military service, he stayed on in California to attend the Cal-Aero Technical Institute on the G.I. Bill. He graduated in 1950 with an Honors B.Sc. in Mechanical/Aeronautical Engineering, and received a special letter of recommendation from the president of the college. He married Dorothy Smith in 1949, and was divorced sometime in the 1950s.

After graduation, Kay worked first with Convair, an American aircraft manufacturing company. In 1952, he took a position as Design Group Supervisor with Hiller Helicopters in Palo Alto, California, where he directed engineers and draughtsmen on helicopter basic structures and mechanical design. From there he went on to become a Consulting and Design Engineer for Cook Research Laboratories in Redwood City, California, in 1957. Often, because of his aptitude in the field, he was sent on extra courses. This would continue throughout his career.

In 1958 Kay was hired by Lockheed Aircraft Corporation, and three weeks later became part of a 33 member international team (called the Skunkworks) designing the Polaris Missile. He was working there during the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The Polaris Missile is still being used today on the Trident Submarine. Kay designed the release mechanism for the missile. He received a special commendation “for demonstrating outstanding imagination and design conception versatility resulting in substantial cost conservation benefits to the Polaris Missile Design Project.”
When the Poseidon C3 Task Force was formed in February, 1964, Trelle was included as a Design Specialist and Lead Engineer. He received his second commendation for his work on the Poseidon “design solutions for re-entry system installations, structures, and deparation devices. It is obvious,” the letter continued, “that your valuable contribution will result in missile systems of high quality and will extend the success of LMSC in missile system programs.”

In 1966, Kay married his World War II sweetheart, Mae Morton, whom he had first met while in the Canadian Air Force Commonwealth Training Program in Vancouver. Mae had trained as a nurse and completed post-graduate studies of midwifery in Scotland and a specialization in operating room management. The couple had lost contact during the war and Mae assumed that Kay, like too many of his fellow-soldiers, had died during the war. Kay re-established contact in 1965, and after a separation of 23 years they were married in 1966.

That same year, Kay moved from Lockheed to Boeing Aircraft Corporation in Seattle as a design specialist and lead engineer, with his primary responsibility “to develop an entirely new bomb suspension concept for tactical fighters….” The fighter program was being carried out in Germany and Kay took German language classes to facilitate his work. It was all for naught as the program was abandoned in November 1966.

The next project was the Boeing 747 Drone Carrier in 1969. This was “a concept for launching and retrieving unmanned aircraft, using as a carrier a modified 747 commercial airplane.” The idea was that if there was another war, commercial jets such as the Boeing 747 could be quickly outfitted as drone carriers. Kay’s responsibility was “to create and analyse various military derivatives for the 747 airplane.”

From 1971-1973, Kay spent much of his time and energies inventing, designing and building an expandable recreational vehicle in the basement of their Seattle home. The vehicle was completed and licensed in the state of Washington, Kay and Mae began the patenting process and explored potential markets for its production. The costs of engineering and patenting each individual part were so expensive the project was not feasible. The expandable camper, twenty years before its time, stills sits in the garage on their Lake Saskatoon property.

In 1972 the Trelles returned to Canada, and in 1973 Mr. Trelle assumed a new position with Lockheed, this time with their Petroleum Services (LPS) in New Westminster, B.C., which offered a comprehensive subsea well completion, production and service system to the offshore oil industry. His primary function was to establish project definitions and program planning, review engineering and design in general for conformance to specifications, and good engineering/design practices. He conducted gross hazards/failure modes and effects (FMEA) analyses and assisted with critical path scheduling.

Mr. Trelle concluded his career as a Professional Engineer at TRIUMF, the tri university meson facility which is Canada’s national laboratory for nuclear and particle physics research. It is located on the campus of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. TRIUMF is owned and operated by a consortium of universities to provide a world class facility for research in the areas of particle and nuclear physics, molecular and materials science and nuclear medicine. TRIUMF was interested in building the KAON Factory, a nuclear accelerator such as they had in Caen, France, and in 1985, the Trelles traveled to see work being done on the super collider between Switzerland and France. They went on to Germany, where a linear accelerator was assisting with treating cancer of the kidney, a medical benefit of that research. They were treating brain tumors at the Caen factory. There was a lot of free exchange with no political interference, but the Canadian ambitions did not come to fruition because the accelerator was so expensive. It was, however, a rewarding end to Kay’s career.

During his lifetime, Mr. Trelle was a registered member of the Association of Professional Engineers of British Columbia; a member (Honor Pledge 1950) of Alpha Eta Rho, International Aviation – Engineering; a member of the Engineers and Architects Association, Southern California; a member of the Institute of Aeronautical Sciences, International; and a general building contractor in the State of California. Outside of his work, his hobbies included Egypt and its archaeology, geology, and designing and building models such as a geodesic dome. He also spent many years trying to solve the problems for creating the Magnet Motor which, as a source of perpetual and clean energy, he described as “every engineer’s dream.”

In 1987, Kay suffered his first stroke, and after his rehabilitation the Trelles retired to the Saskatoon Lake area near Wembley, AB. They purchased a property directly adjacent to the original Trelle homestead, and built their home next to the wildlife sanctuary on the shores of Saskatoon Lake. This land has been bequeathed to the Grande Prairie Regional College to serve as a retreat and conference centre while keeping alive the name of Herman Trelle, the most famous agriculturalist in the Peace Country.

Custodial History

The records were donated to South Peace Regional Archives by Kay and Mae Trelle on June 27, 2011.

Scope and Content

The fonds consists of Kay’s personal papers; his ideas as an engineer; the records of the N.E.W. Systems Ltd. company which he founded with two partners; patent applications for his inventions; files containing his designs and working papers for his original ideas, such as an expandable mobile housing unit, alternative energies, pyramidology, geodesic dome structures, and the magnet motor; files containing his work history, designs and working papers for projects such as helicopter design for Hiller Helicopters, the Boeing 747 Drone Carrier, the high sea system with capsule for Lockheed Petroleum Services, the Trident Amphibian aircraft, and his work at TRIUMF, Canada’s meson facility based at the University of British Columbia.

The photographs in this fonds are of the construction and finished prototype of the expandable mobile housing unit, and of the modified Boeing 747 commercial aircraft redesigned as a Drone Carrier.

Blueprints include 12 hand-drawn plans on graph paper for the testing of the components of the expandable mobile housing unit, 53 diazo plans related to the Boeing 747 Drone Carrier project, and 1 diazo plan for the Trident Amphibian aircraft.

The sound recording is an interview with Mae Trelle, in January 2011, regarding Kay’s life and work.

The files were retained in their original format, as Mr. Trelle had created them, with the same file label on each individual file. The order within the files, and the order of the files themselves were sometimes adjusted for date as Mr. Trelle appeared to keep the more recent files in a different location, as if he was working on the current files.

Notes

Title based on the contents of the fonds. Kay was the family’s most common address for Mr. Trelle, who used Roy K. Trelle professionally and signed his work as R.K. Trelle.

Item descriptions of the photographs, the blueprints, and the sound recording are included in this finding aid.

Related records: The Herman Trelle family fonds, Kay Trelle series.

Biographical information based on information from Lake Saskatoon Reflections, Mr. Trelle’s curriculum vitae, and from the 2011 interview with Mae Trelle, wife of Kay Trelle.

Quotations in the biographical sketch are from the curriculum vitae in the personal papers series of the fonds.

Accession Number: 2011.40