By all accounts, James Garfield Gardiner was a force to be reckoned with.
Biographers describe him as stubborn, resilient, relentless and combative.
These qualities served the farmer, teacher and Liberal politician well – he was elected continuously from 1914 to 1958, when he suffered his first personal defeat.
They also served farmers well, although if Gardiner had had his way, he never would have been Canada’s longest-serving federal agriculture minister.
Gardiner was born Nov. 30, 1883, in Farquhar, Ont., in a region that produced other political notables such as William Aberhart, Arthur Meighen, John Diefenbaker and Walter Scott.
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He went west during a homestead excursion in 1901 and studied at Manitoba University before moving to Saskatchewan to teach. He bought a farm in the Lemberg area during the First World War.
Gardiner entered politics during a provincial byelection in 1914. At his nomination in the North Qu’Appelle constituency, he said, according to biographer David Smith, “my ambition today is to be a farmer with education representing the farmers of this constituency in the legislature.”
His political star rose, leading him to be Saskatchewan premier twice, from 1926-29 and 1934-35.
He then resigned as premier to join William Lyon Mackenzie King’s federal cabinet, later running and winning the Assiniboia and Melville constituencies.
Gardiner initially didn’t want the agriculture portfolio, believing himself more suited to finance. But once he accepted the post, he made it his mission to ensure farmers received fair and stable returns.
Reorganizing the agriculture department and enhancing and restructuring the Prairie Farm Rehabilitation Administration were among his first acts.
During his tenure, programs such as the Prairie Farm Assistance Act were implemented. The PFAA, which passed in 1939, provided direct payments to farmers who had harvested low yields due to circumstances they couldn’t control. The legislation was the forerunner to crop insurance.
Gardiner recognized the federal government’s obligation to western farmers. He believed Ottawa had encouraged farmers to settle on quarter- and half-section farms in the West, even in the dry Palliser Triangle, and that the country had prospered because of it.
“He never tired of issuing warnings about the dismal consequences for the nation that would follow if young people refused to stay on the land, which he prophesied would happen without the kind of help the PFAA provided,” Smith wrote.
The Wheat Acreage Reduction Act established grain delivery quotas to support farmers and help deal with wartime wheat surpluses. The legislation paid
farmers to leave land fallow or plant something other than wheat, and to store grain on their farms.
As well, a two-price system for wheat was introduced, which used a processing tax on millers to inflate the domestic price. The proceeds went to farmers.
“The package Gardiner had worked out, based on an advance payment per bushel of 70 cents, gave the farmers a total income of $325 million,” Smith wrote in Jimmy Gardiner: Relentless Liberal.
“Ultimately, this acknowledgement of a required basic total income, which over the next four decades was to triple in value, helped transform permanently the perception farmers and the federal government held of each other.”
The Agricultural Prices Support Act later established marketing boards and post-war price supports, including feed freight assistance.
Gardiner remained agriculture minister until he lost office when Diefenbaker swept to power in 1958. He retired and returned to the Lemberg farm, where he died Jan. 12, 1962.
Gardiner had lobbied for decades for a project to capture and store water on the South Saskatchewan River.
The Gardiner Dam officially opened in 1967, creating Lake Diefenbaker.
