Decades ago, says Albert Lister, life was simpler and a man’s word was as good as a legal document.
This winter, the 83 year old published his autobiography, Memories of a Cattle Buyer.
“Buying cattle is so complex today,” said Lister, referring to auction marts and satellite sales.
But he said the technology is “absolutely better as far as producers go. A friend of mine bought 3,500 head in one day” using computers.
Lister said the personal touch was popular in his day.
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“Today, with some buyers, they never leave the auction.”
The book recounts his life in southern Saskatchewan, where he travelled to farms to buy cull cattle, fatten them in the family feedlot and ship them to packers.
The business was risky. He and his partners would pay farmers for the animals and shipping costs and hope to get paid by the slaughter plant. This speculator’s life led to some sleepless nights and, while honesty was his policy in all verbal contracts, marketing smarts were necessary.
He recounts how he and his partners devised a code for their deals when talking on the telephone. In those days all phones were party lines, open for anyone to listen in.
His story about the codes intrigued his daughter, Sandra Hamon. She said she nagged him to write the book after hearing some stories while they were having supper together three years ago.
Lister started buying cattle in 1937 after working two years loading cattle for the railway at the Moose Jaw stockyards. He jokes that math was his worst subject in school, yet it was his main tool when working out prices with farmers and guessing the weight of their cattle.
When he started, he was buying mainly dairy cattle and a few Herefords. At the end of his career in the 1980s, he was seeing the British meat breeds lose their prominence as exotic animals arrived from Europe.
Lister played no favourites among breeds, and can’t recall a particular animal because “I’ve seen so many of them.” But when pressed, he remembered the one that got away by leaping the fence.
Lister said the cattle business was especially profitable in the late 1950s and 1960s.
“We shipped many thousands across the line into the corn belt and to Ontario and
Alberta.”
He made enough money that Hamon remembers he took the whole family on a year-long world ramble in 1960. Lister shrugged when asked why he did that, other than to say he’d been to Australia before and wanted to see it again.
Lister is a youthful looking octogenarian and credited his diet for his health.
“I don’t eat pork. I don’t eat chicken. I don’t eat seafood. Just beef.”
And no vegetables either, added his daughter.
The cattle buyer has written two other books, also self-published, about his life. The first he wrote by hand, the second by typewriter and the third by computer.
Many of the stories in the third book are illustrated with pictures from the Saskatchewan Archives. To buy a copy, phone Lister at 306-693-4759 or Hamon at 306-693-7027.
