OKOTOKS, Alta. – When Rodney James helped import tall, blocky European cattle to Canada, he knew he was joining a revolution.
Forty years later, Charolais and Simmental are considered mainstream Canadian breeds.
Born at Ponoka in 1932, James was a central Alberta farm boy with his eyes on the horizon. His love of the cattle business took him around the world, but he never strayed far from his roots.
Now retired to Okotoks south of Calgary with his wife, Mernie, he has time to travel for fun, entertain grandchildren and reminisce about a beef revolution he helped lead in the early 1960s.
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While running the family farm, James became an artificial insemination technician in the early 1950s. This was a new technology and would later make the spread of European cattle faster and easier without the risk of importing live animals.
When the Canadian Charolais Association started in 1962, he was hired as its first secretary manager. Canadians had been able to import Charolais cattle that had come from Mexico since the 1930s. The Mexicans had imported cattle from France under an agreement that they would not export any females. Cattle arrived in Texas and Arizona and crossed with domestic herds.
“It’s a pretty porous border between Mexico and the United States. They always kid about how well the Charolais cattle swam the Rio Grande,” James said.
Dissatisfied with the growth and performance of his Herefords, he imported three Charolais females from Arizona. By 1963, he started Canada’s first bull test station to measure the superior growth of these new cattle.
In 1965 the Charolais board of directors decided the only way to upgrade their cattle was to import directly from France.
Agriculture minister Harry Hays had visited a major cattle show in Vichy, France, and when he saw the big white Charolais, he scissored through the red tape to open imports. James joined a buying group in France where people were permitted to import a maximum of two animals each. They selected calves on the basis of two for one. If one died, the buyer had a backup purchase.
The major concerns at the time were foot-and-mouth disease and guarantees the animals were free of bluetongue, tuberculosis, anaplasmosis and brucellosis.
After a series of tests, 110 were shipped by boat to Grosse Iles, a quarantine island in the St. Lawrence River. They were isolated for 90 days and had further tests.
“They had to be so certain. It was the first time ever bringing cattle to Canada and the United States from Europe,” he said.
Prior to arrival, the cattle were almost swept overboard from their pens on deck when they were caught in a North Atlantic storm. Insurance had been obtained through a special Lloyd’s of London contract. The ranchers’ greatest worry was losing the cattle to disease and having the government slaughter them.
“We didn’t realize what the cattle were worth. We hadn’t paid much for them over there – about $2,000. We had no idea they would sell for huge dollars here,” he said.
Demand was almost out of control as animals were sold for more than $50,000 in the mid 1960s. A single sale in Red Deer managed by James averaged $32,000 on 25 calves.
High rolling investors flocked into the business and gave the fledging industry a boost.
“They brought the pizzazz that brought the big prices. It made an incredible difference in their lives and a lot of money was made with the injection of outside capital from businesspeople,” he said.
About 15 breeds were ultimately imported but only a few succeeded.
“Charolais and Simmental succeeded because of the integrity of the breeders and the ability of them to sort out in Canada what we could accommodate here.”
The most astonishing impact was hybrid vigour, which is more rapid growth obtained by crossbreeding.
But the new breeds were not perfect.
“The one thing we couldn’t accommodate here was the calving difficulty that some of the breeds had, including Charolais. That had to be sorted out to produce an animal that was suitable to Canadian conditions,” he said.
James travelled to France more than 10 times on buying missions and each time the Canadians became more savvy in the kind of cattle they wanted.
By 1967, he started a breed magazine, the Canadian Charolais Banner, with the help of American publisher Hays Walker III.
With a Grade 9 education and no journalism background, he was determined to produce a common- sense, independent publication for breeders. He ultimately started six business and livestock magazines. He and his son sold the Banner to a consortium in 1984.
James and partners also started a national livestock sales management business in 1969, a marketing agency that handled advertising, catalogues, auctioneers and ring staff, and did the administrative work of transferring pedigrees and ownership documents. They introduced the idea of using staff in the ring to take bids and help run a smoother sale.
Transcon Livestock continues, but James recently turned it over to his son and daughter-in-law.
All was not smooth sailing in the beginning. Commercial cattle producers rejected the new breeds and it was a struggle to sell them in a public auction ring.
“There was terrible prejudice against these new breeds,” he said. It took about 10 years to gain acceptance.
To promote the cattle, he and partners initiated a Char-cross feeder program in the late 1970s. Each partner invested $10,000 to develop a branded beef product using Charolais cross calves that were custom fed and custom processed. The meat was eventually featured at one of Calgary’s poshest restaurants, The Inn on Lake Bonavista. However, they could not supply beef year round and the business folded.
With the blending of breeds and colours, he worries the Canadian herd has become too homogenized where no one can differentiate one breed from another.
“Everybody is trying to be everything in every breed.”
He also questions the modern need to rely so heavily on technology and less on instinct.
While the Charolais association was the first to build a computerized databank of breeding and performance records, he is not sure people understand the science and the paperwork.
“There is no substitute for a cow man,” James said.
“In the purebred business, every animal is an individual and to get the maximum results you have to know what each of those animals is made of.
“They are trying to take all the judgment and all the cattle ability out of the equation and replace it with scales and measuring tools.”
