MOOSOMIN, Sask. Ñ Sinclair Harrison wore a grin and bit of a cold as he watched Sunday sports in his and wife Gail’s comfortable farmhouse north of Moosomin, Sask.
Sinc, as farmers, friends and politicians across the nation know him, got both the smile and the virus from doing what he says he hopes he does best, “pushing for a fair ag agenda.”
He is just home from yet another in a never-ending series of road trips and meetings that began in 1976 when the farmer was elected as reeve of the Rural Municipality of Moosomin No. 121.
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This time it was the announcement that the Farmer Rail Car Coalition, of which he is president, has moved closer to buying the federal government’s grain hopper-car inventory. The news came out at the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities annual meeting, a 900 kilometre round trip to Saskatoon for him. Harrison was SARM’s president for eight years until 2002.
The 61-year-old farmer has given up many things to be “good at what I do. Or least to be as good as I can be.”
Last week he gave up a month-long trip to summery New Zealand where he and Gail had rented a house to attend a Nuffield scholars’ event. In 1984, he won the prestigious scholarship to study agriculture and local government there.
Gail went. Her husband stayed to answer the last-minute, insistent vibrations of his Blackberry, portable e-mail and cellular telephone device, when it began telling him that his group’s application to the federal government for the grain cars was likely a go.
He has given up many things to represent his fellow prairie farmers. A couple of years ago he gave up active farming. After 30 years of planting crops on what had become 2,000 acres, he said he was faced with a choice: planting crops or representing people.
He chose the latter and sold most of the farmland.
“I felt I couldn’t do both (be president of SARM and farm) the way I wanted to, so I chose,” he said.
“I haven’t missed too many big opportunities in the grain business lately either,” he joked about the sale.
“I’m not saying it’s easy to let land go, but it let me pay off my debts and keep doing something I enjoy,” he said.
It might have been different if any of his four daughters or his son were interested in farming.
“But, maybe luckily, maybe not, they weren’t. So we got to choose,” he said.
Moosomin is located on the Trans-Canada Highway, a few kilometers west of the Manitoba border and is 21Ú2 hours from the nearest airport in Regina.
Harrison makes the trip there or to Winnipeg nearly weekly.
Last Sunday night he was leaving for Calgary via Regina after being home for a day.
“I’m getting to know Ottawa pretty well. We’ve been there 26 times (for the rail car coalition) in the past two years. I was there quite a lot for SARM before that,” he said.
Harrison, as SARM president from 1994 to 2002, was automatically a member of the national municipalities association, which took him to meetings and events in every territory and province of Canada. The job also took him overseas.
“It can be tough to take on a leadership role and do it well without a lot of support at home. Farming or owning a business makes it doubly tough. I have a lot of respect for those that can do it all,” he said.
“I had that support at home and in the RM. Great administrators and outside staff. You have to, to keep getting elected to these positions back at home and on the bigger stage. You need a lot of help, otherwise something will give and you won’t be there any more,” he said about being challenged only once for his position of reeve.
He said the role of representative groups for farmers and rural people has never been as important as now. With the loss of farmer-run organizations such as Saskatchewan Wheat Pool, there will be few lobbying on their behalf.
“There are no shortages of issues, sometimes people, not issues,” he said as he began looking at his watch.
It was 3:30 on a Sunday afternoon. Sinc wanted to make the icy drive through blowing snow to Regina in daylight to fly to Calgary and review some rail car maintenance facilities on behalf of farmers.
