What do soggy red tomatoes and half-black bananas have to do with oil upgraders?
Well, as a young guy growing up in rural Saskatchewan, I was always taken aback by some of the produce my mother would bring home from our local Co-op store.
When we asked her why, she would say “well, someone has to buy it. It’s our store and we have to help them out for the good of all.”
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It never made sense to me. I couldn’t stand the look, let alone the flavour, but whoever was supposed to be taking care of business obviously wasn’t.
However, from my mother and a countless bunch of rural folk like her, came a staid and stronger local Co-op, Credit Union and Saskatchewan Wheat Pool elevator, and hence a very strong Federated Co-operatives Limited.
It was never a big deal in the cities, where they saw themselves as just a little too cosmopolitan for a lefty group like a Co-op.
But as many farmers retired to the cities, they took their preferences for Co-op canned goods and case lot sales and demand with them, which more than anything was the driving force for more and bigger service centres in the city.
The most enjoyable thing for me, as someone who lived in Alberta 30 years ago, is how FCL has made great strides in providing service in that considerably right-of-centre province.
FCL bought a great produce company with their collective pennies extracted from the socially minded people in the rest of Canada and now own The Grocery People Ltd. of Edmonton, a prudent buy.
The people in Calgary don’t much think about where this company’s roots are, or much care. They know it holds some of the top retail convenience spots in the city, and if you use Crowchild Trail as an example, it has three progressively larger service centres as you move to the northwest of Calgary.
The question is not whether they are doing well or right by pioneers. I believe they are. But without the persistent support of a few, it may never have happened at all.
In many communities in Saskatchewan, these farmers were in groups jokingly known as “Red Squares.”
Today they have kicked it up a notch with the heavy oil upgrader and refinery they built and run with some provincial and most certainly previous tomato buyers’ help.
FCL generates and throws off such an increasingly embarrassing profit that some of the management and staff are remunerated to a degree that is very comfortable, exceeding many like jobs in government and the private sector.
What is lost on any merchant is the fact that the public are fickle, and when they turn on you, and in this case it would be away from you, your business intentions mean very little – except to little old Saskatchewan ladies who buy rain or shine at the local Co-op.
This is still well represented in local support as you drive through Salmon Arm, B.C., where again, because of the strong presence of ex-prairie farm men and women, the lumber mills of FCL have a strong presence, albeit down-sized from times past.
Perhaps they have forgotten just what a strong contribution this forestry business made to our building of quality lumber for houses and out-buildings.
It may be the right time for a dividend on ripe fruit and vegetables.
