Harvest excursions took Ontario farm kids west
Labour was scarce out West after World War I. So, once the Ontario harvest was complete, lots of young folk from rural Ontario headed west for a few weeks on the harvest excursions.The trains to the Prairies were long and slow. It took three days to get to Winnipeg, with the harvest trains spending a lot of time on sidings to allow express trains to thunder through. The ticket was $20 to Winnipeg, plus half-a-cent a mile for any distance beyond.
"The men had a really big time of it, playing their violins all night long," the late Velva Lane recalled during a break from her 93rd birthday party in 1995. "There was no drinking or carrying on like there is now. But it was noisy. Everyone was out for a good time."
The trains were divided into cars for the men and cars for the women.
"We were in second-class coaches," Velva recalled. "The seat would flip over so that you could have double seats facing one another if you wanted.
"And at night you would pull the seats out and lie down. You'd take your own pillow with you, and your big lunch to last three days."
Velva was 19 years old when she went on her first harvest excursion in 1922. She traveled with her best friend from childhood, Elva Long. The two had been friends since growing up on farms in Egremont township, South Grey County, and remained dear friends their entire life.
They headed for Craik, Sask., an area where a lot of people from the Mount Forest area landed.
"My mother gave me a half-gallon jar of preserves for the train, but that wasn't necessary. We had all the food we needed for three days," Velva said.
At Craik, she looked after young children on a farm while the men were off in the fields. In her spare time she loved riding one of the family's horses.
"I'd ride bareback or with a saddle. There was one beautiful horse, but when you tried to get on him he'd rear up. Finally you'd get on and away he'd go.
"Some horses, when you put a saddle on them, breathe in and make themselves bigger. And when you get on them, they breathe out and the saddle gets loose and slides down on the side.
"One day we were just galloping across the prairie, and here I was, slipped around the side, hanging on to that horse's mane and going full speed across the prairie.
"And the people said, 'My heavens, Jackie (I was always called Jackie out there) is really riding fast today.' And I came up to them barely hanging on to the side of the horse.
"Oh, we had a lot of fun out there," she said, smiling fondly
with
memories of the harvest excursions.
Campbell Cork lives and writes in Mount Forest
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UNEARTHED
Notes from All Over
Spuds and language duds
Even in New Brunswick potato country, home of the mighty McCains, farming traditions are losing their lustre as a growing urban population demands change.
For 40 years, children in New Brunswick's potato belt, along the Maine border, have returned to school in August and then taken two weeks off in September, commonly refereed to as spud break, to help harvest the crop.
But with fewer area children taking to the field, about 30 per cent this year compared to 70 per cent in the 1950s, pressure from the growing number of non-spud parents has forced schools to abandon spud break, the Globe & Mail reports.
The New Brunswick Potato Agency says bigger farmers can utilize mechanization, but smaller farmers, who rely on more physical labour, will be hurt. And what about the kids? The potato growers' Patton MacDonald says they'll probably end up like a lot of school age children in urban centres - wondering if potatoes grow on trees.
Barriers to rural and isolated medical practice are everywhere it
seems.
Early September, Quebec's language cops snared a doctor seeking
to help
some beleaguered colleagues. When Dr. Donald Harris, a Lanark
county ER
physician, failed the French language proficiency test necessary
to
practise medicine in Quebec, it flat-lined his plan to join his
brothers,
Robert and John, two of five GPs at a 26-bed hospital in northern
Quebec.
Donald intended to fill in for three vacationing GPs at the
hospital that
serves 12,000 residents of Chisasabi and nine nearby Cree
villages on the
shores of James Bay some 1,000 km northwest of Montreal. Common
sense
prevailed, however, and Donald was granted a one-year temporary
licence.
Brother John was elated, reported the Ottawa Citizen, in part
because of
the urgency of the situation - services would have had to be cut
back - and
also because, he said, Cree is the mother tongue of most area
residents and
French isn't necessary because everyone speaks English.
Camels chowing down with cattle have become a familiar sight on
Hudson
Ranches in Kansas, Missouri and Texas, reports the Furrow. A
small herd of
camels are put into the pasture as weed control; they'll eat
brush the
cattle aren't interested in and leave the grasses the cattle
like.
Hudson imported a few camels from Australia in 1989, and the herd
has
grown to 65 females, with one bull at each location. Baby camels
are also
paying off, with most of the calves sold off to petting zoos and
exotic
animal brokers before they are one month old. Young males go for
US$2,000
to $2,700 and females for US$4,000 to $5,400.
The camels are easy to care for and easy to get along with, said
Dave
McKinney, foreman for Hudson Ranches in Kansas. "They're kind of
fun to
have around, and they definitely attract a lot of attention."
Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association, a lobby group pushing
wheat
marketing reform, has produced a promotional product based on the
popular
board game Trivial Pursuit. Here's a sample of the brain teasers:
1. Who is Eugene Whelan?a) Former host of Stampede Wrestling2. What are "fobbing" charges?
b) Minister of Fisheries
c) Former federal Agriculture Minister
a) The cost of a new watch strap/band
b) A first class ticket on the Titanic
c) The costs associated with moving grain from a terminal elevator to a shipAnswers: 1. c; 2. c
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