DRAKE, Sask. – Neither icy roads nor cold nor snowdrifts nor travel advisories stays these Canadian Wheat Board workers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.
With apologies to the U.S. Postal Service, that could well have been the motto of a hardy band of wheat board employees travelling across northern Saskatchewan last week.
The intrepid explorers put about 1,500 kilometres on the odometer as they trekked from Lloydminster to Yorkton, with eight stops in between. Along the way, they encountered some of Saskatchewan’s typically lovely January weather.
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Snow and more snow
“Yesterday we were ploughing snow for 20 miles,” said John Hamilton, the board’s Saskatoon-based area representative, describing parts of the Jan. 21 drive from Biggar to Kinistino.
“There were four-foot snowbanks that we went through and there was one lane of traffic only and no room to pass. If you ever met a car, you were in trouble.”
Of course the chances of meeting a car were pretty slim, since the RCMP had warned people to stay off the road unless travel was absolutely necessary.
As far as the board employees were concerned, it was absolutely necessary. The meetings had been advertised, the town halls and community centres booked and the coffee and doughnuts ordered in.
And they figured, correctly, that no matter how bad the weather was, some fearless farmers would show up.
There were 65 in Biggar, although callers to the highway hotline that morning were warned of “snowdrifts, snowpacked and icy sections, blowing snow and reduced visibility” in the area. It was enough to keep at least one nervous reporter at home.
A phone call to Kinistino, site of that evening’s meeting, elicited the rather unsettling news of whiteout conditions in the area. Undaunted, they journeyed on.
And just as Amundsen reached the Pole, so they made it safely to the Legion Hall, where 17 farmers waited to find out about grain markets and watch a video about malting barley.
Hamilton said he can’t recall the board ever cancelling one of its annual country meetings because of bad weather. The smallest attendance he’s ever heard of was three.
Brian White, senior board official on the trip, showed true prairie grit by downplaying the risks to life and limb encountered during the week’s travels, saying he’s driven in worse conditions.
But he did add that it might be a good idea to add another location for next year’s Grain Day meetings.
Somewhere like Mesa, Arizona. There are lots of prairie farmers there and they’d probably like to find out what’s going on back home, he said with a laugh. And he’d be happy to handle the meeting.
