MEOTA, Sask. – Hubert Esquirol is a guy who just wants to have fun.
After three years of juggling the onerous demands of running a farm while heading up a major farm lobby group, he’s ready for a more relaxed approach to life.
“I want to work eight hours a day instead of 18,” he said over a mid-morning cup of coffee in his newly built lakefront house at Meota, Sask.
Since stepping down as president of the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association a year and a half ago and resuming life as a full-time farmer, Esquirol has made a point of whittling down his schedule so he can do what he likes.
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His philosophy has become to enjoy life now, because you never know what might happen tomorrow. So he quits working at six o’clock every night and tries to keep his weekends free to spend with his two children and wife Janice, who works during the week as a teacher’s assistant at the local school.
Enjoy hobbies, sports
He has set himself a goal of taking eight weeks of holidays a year. An avid pilot and outdoorsman, Esquirol’s idea of heaven is heading off into the wilderness with some buddies for a couple of weeks of hunting or fishing or hiking or snowmobiling.
“We like having fun,” he said. “That’s a priority in our life.” It’s something he says he missed as WCWGA president, although he’s quick to add he has no regrets about taking on the job. “That was fun too, in a different way.”
During his stint at the helm of the wheat growers, the 48-year-old Esquirol spent an average of 180 days a year conducting association business, including 103 days on the road.
It became all-consuming, he said, conferring on the phone with fellow directors, traveling to Regina for board meetings, speaking at public and private events across the Prairies, traveling to Ottawa and elsewhere to lobby governments and dealing with endless calls from reporters.
As Esquirol got more involved in farm politics in the late 1980s, he realized not only would his leisure time suffer, but so would his farm. It became impossible to do justice to both. The roof didn’t get fixed, the fences didn’t get mended, the shelterbelts didn’t get maintained.
Soon it became clear he was probably headed for the top job, while at the same time prospects in the grain market looked grim. So he decided to sell his machinery and hire his brother to farm his land, in order to devote his full energies to farm politics. He remained intimately involved in all the decision-making on his farm, but still found himself under attack from political opponents.
“They said I wasn’t a farmer, that I had gone broke,” he said. “It wasn’t true, but it didn’t bother me.” He quickly learned that when you run for office, you become not only a public figure but also a target. People beat you up, “but you have to take the abuse.”
One of the things Esquirol talked a lot about during his tenure as president was how the end of the Crow Benefit transportation subsidy would lead to a more diversified and stable farm economy. If the herd of bison now roaming his land is any indication, he has taken his message to heart.
In November 1995, on a trip to Quebec, he bought 16 of the shaggy beasts. While saying he’s “excited” by this latest twist in his farming career, he’s also reluctant to make a big deal about it.
There are lots of people that know a lot more about the bison industry than him, he said. And he adds, only half jokingly, that he knows of people who have made a big splash about some new business venture only to have it go sour.
“I don’t want to jinx it.”
Suited to lifestyle
He’s also afraid people might wrongly conclude he’s abandoning the wheat industry. That’s not the case.
“It makes sense for the type of land I’ve got, for the lifestyle I want to lead and for the economics,” he said. Esquirol has pasture, hay and lots of water. Bison are a low-maintenance animal, so he’ll have lots of time to pursue his philosophy of fun. The people in the industry are great to be around, he said.
If there’s a lesson he learned in the last 10 years, it’s to spread out the risk. Sometimes, he said, the good times make farmers forget about the bad times.
“We as farmers have to use the buoyant times and good returns to prepare our operations for the tough times. I didn’t want to go through the 1980s grain economy again, so I thought I’d do something about it.”
In the wooded, rolling hills around Meota, dotted with oil wells (although none on his land), Esquirol now farms about 1,600 acres. There are 300 acres of pasture, half for his bison and half for a neighbor’s cattle. There are 600 acres in annual crop and 700 acres in hay, which he sells standing for neighbors to harvest.
Showing a visitor his land, pointing out the farm where he grew up, navigating his truck along rutted, muddy roads, describing how to put up a buffalo-proof fence, Esquirol is a long way from the board rooms and government offices where he spent so much time in recent years. But he’s not about to complain.
“It’s good to get out and do real stuff, like put up a fence, dig a well or go fishing,” he said.
