Taking a quieter road | Relationship blossomed from similar interests
KANE, Man. — It’s the quiet time of year on the Toews farm, which sits halfway between Winkler and Winnipeg.
But both Barb and Bill have been cheerfully busy. Earlier on this day, Barb had been in Winnipeg as part of her work with the Provincial Council of Women of Manitoba, presenting to the provincial government.
And Bill had been enjoying a pastime that suddenly had become pleasurable again.
“I have a little more time to read,” he said. “Honestly, there’s less tension now.”
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The tension that had been in the air around the Toews household came from Bill’s former duties as a farmer-elected director of the Canadian Wheat Board, as well as being chair of the Canadian International Grains Institute.
Both of those positions ended abruptly in December when the federal government’s new CWB act was passed and the old farmer-elected directors were fired.
Now, instead of having to plow through and analyze piles of financial and management reports as preparation for CWB and CIGI board meetings, Bill can read books and magazines he likes. And he gets more of a chance to look at the published work of his daughter, who is a professional photographer in Mexico.
Barb said she enjoys not having the tempestuousness of the day-to-day turmoil of the CWB issue thrust upon Bill every day. However, she’s not happy with what has happened.
“Life’s easier, but we’re both sad because we’re both very passionate about the wheat board,” she said.
“But life’s easier.”
The CWB issue isn’t over for Bill, who is one of the directors taking legal action against the federal government, arguing it didn’t have the right to break the old wheat board act by passing a new one.
But that legal situation isn’t a day-by-day commitment like the positions he held, so life has become less intense, especially with no crop growing in the fields.
Barb and Bill are both locals, with Bill coming from a farming family and Barb being a town girl from Plum Coulee. They met nearby at the ball diamond. Bill was “a baseball star,” she said, although not one she was initially keen on.
“I didn’t like him, but we figured it out later,” she said.
Added Bill: “She didn’t like my competitive nature.”
But as they got to like each other, their lives came together. Barb had been studying teaching while Bill studied agriculture at the University of Manitoba.
They left the area for a long time, first with Bill teaching soil science in Alberta and later when the family spent five years working in Canadian development projects in Kenya and Pakistan.
It was there that Bill said he developed his commitment to “collective action” because he saw it work in those areas and also saw how weak people were without it.
It’s a passion Barb shares, she noted as she repeated the motto of the Council of Women: “Together we’re stronger.”
They raised three children overseas and back in Manitoba on the farm, got involved in organizations and pursued active lives.
Barb taught adult literacy for 12 years in Winkler. Bill has been involved in farm policy and advocacy for decades.
But now they are older and hope to also enjoy the quieter sides of farming life, without as much of the intensity and stress that the CWB situation had been bringing as it skyrocketed up into the political stratosphere.
Bill noted at CWB directors’ local meetings last year that he has Parkinson’s disease, something he immediately turned into a joke by noting that if he seemed to be a little shaky, it wasn’t because he didn’t believe what he was saying.
Barb is managing multiple sclerosis, and fortunately “I’m doing really well. I’m lucky,” she said.
So they’ll keep active and committed to their causes but don’t mind toning life down a little and enjoying the farming life.
“I’m looking forward to a number of years of farming,” said Bill.
“I don’t know how long I’ll do it, but if I don’t have the wheat board to worry about, it’ll seem like semi-retirement.”
