in 1925, she was invited by william richard motherwell, the federal minister of agriculture, to help manage the newly opened dominion rust research laboratory at the university of manitoba in winnipeg, established as a response to rust outbreaks in 1916, 1919, and 1921. she was appointed the laboratory's senior plant pathologist, a position she maintained until retirement, and brought with her former student thorvaldur johnson as her research assistant. she established an annual stem rust survey in western canada, discovering a diversity of races in rust populations, which eventually enabled her to discover and catalogue the wheat species and cross-species resistant to stem rust.