For the next year, this column will mark The Western Producer’s 100th anniversary by taking a deep dive every week into a past issue of the paper.
The Canadian Wheat Board became a major story 10 years ago when Stephen Harper’s Conservative government dismantled its marketing monopoly, but the growing tension was already becoming visible in the 1990s.
An article in the May 20, 1999, issue covered the wheat board’s promise to fight a proposal from Justice Willard Estey’s 1998 report into Western Canada’s grain handling and transportation system that would remove the board from transportation decisions and confine its role to grain delivery.
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Arthur Kroeger, who had been appointed to develop a plan to convert Estey’s report into action, said he was far from certain the wheat board’s arguments had any place in the upcoming negotiations over how to implement the report.
“My mandate is not to allow Estey to be re-opened but to figure out how to implement it if that’s what the government decides to do.”
To show where the debate over the wheat board was at in the late 1990s, the Producer ran a cartoon depicting the wheat board as Dracula rising out of his coffin while a farmer stood in front of him carrying a stake and a hammer behind his back.
In other news, the paper debuted its second annual feature that followed three farm families throughout the growing season from seeding to harvest.
The 1999 feature followed Ken and Brenda Caritt from Sydney, Man., John and Diana Kindrachuk of Speers, Sask., and Harvey and Marjorie Nahirniak of Round Hill, Alta.
In this issue, besides the introductory story on the front page, the feature took up pages 70-72 with long stories and many photos.
There was also a story and photo about bison triplets born on Peter and Judy Haase’s farm near Olds, Alta.
“We plan to put them back into the herd at six to eight weeks of age and then bottle feed them from a truck,” Peter said.
“We want them to get used to the herd and not grow up thinking they are goats.”
Contact bruce.dyck@producer.com
