When Cherilyn Jolly-Nagel introduced a speaker and oversaw a presentation at the recent Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association convention in Winnipeg, she didn’t do it alone.
She had help from her three-week-old baby girl, Addison.
The baby slept quietly beside her mother on the stage while the speaker discussed some of the finer points of Australian grain marketing.
Near the end of the speech, Addison woke and fussed, and Jolly-Nagel quietly took her off to the side and a relief convener was brought in for the question-and-answer period.
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It’s the kind of flexible, relaxed, arrangement that Jolly-Nagel helped bring to the wheat growers association and, she hopes, a sign of the increased youthfulness of the group in the wake of its near collapse five years ago.
The organization considered folding in 2003, facing internal strife over its relevancy and whether it truly represented the feelings of its membership. A group of young farmers, headed by Jolly-Nagel, was given control of a reform process and six months to see if something could be salvaged. They decided the group could be saved and began working on rebuilding it from within.
“That was our chance to shake things up and get the young people involved,” she said.
This year’s convention was still dominated by the sort of 50- to 70-year-old men who dominate most farm organizations.
However, a small number of younger farmers were also present, and Jolly-Nagel said more young farmers are showing up at other wheat grower events.
She said she hoped for a big break with the past when she first took a leadership role with the group, but added she’s mellowed in the past five years.
“I was somewhat critical of the previous board at first, thought they had lost touch with the membership, and now that I’ve been doing this for a number of years, I can appreciate where they were coming from,” she said.
“There are only so many hours in the day, and you can’t do everything all the time.”
The Canadian Wheat Board’s monopoly marketing powers are still the dominating issue for the organization, a focus she supports in light of her work lobbying the federal government for policy changes. It’s a focus that some have seen as an obsession but that Jolly-Nagel defends.
“We’ve been criticized for being a one-trick pony. At some times I wish that it had been true because it would have been nice to focus on just one thing. But the reality is that the wheat board is an important issue,” she said.
“It’s not an issue the wheat growers can afford to ignore. It’s not an issue the wheat growers would want to ignore.”
Now that Jolly-Nagel has stepped down as the organization’s president, she said she will be able to get a few things done that organization work took her away from. However, she insisted that it’s never seemed a chore, and she’s enjoyed being a working mother.
“Everyone here has been so supportive of me having children with me,” said Jolly-Nagel, whose other daughter Claire, 2, has been a fixture at wheat grower events.
“I don’t think I ever missed a beat.”
