What kind of Calgarian would rather go further east into the Prairies on their vacation instead of escaping west to the Rocky Mountains like almost everyone else in the city?
That contrary rock in the field is myself, Doug Ferguson, the new reporter for the Calgary bureau of The Western Producer. While other Calgarians are speeding west up the Trans-Canada Highway, trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and what some regard as a flat, featureless farmscape of straight roads to nowhere, I’m enjoying the sense of freedom I feel as I slowly explore those roads with my car windows down, wondering at the whispering, still presence of a land that is as powerfully endless as the skies above it.
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When I was a teenager, I, too, thought the Prairies, and by extension, farmers, were a bit boring. Not much to see here; move on.
But I had close ties to farmers, even as someone who was born and raised in Calgary. My father was from a pioneer farm family of 11 children from northern Alberta, while my mother was from a family of five children in a small southern Alberta hamlet surrounded by farmers’ fields.
Even now, when a weathered tree is all that remains of my maternal grandparents’ house, those fields still have the same immediate, rich scent of earth and growth that they did when I was a kid. The seed that was planted in me back then has grown into something I now treasure.
Not that I am an expert about farming. I have much to learn, which is why I look forward to my new job at the Producer. I get to listen to readers like yourselves talk about the things that interest and concern you.
As someone who has worked for both of Calgary’s daily newspapers and most recently as a freelance writer for the University of Calgary about the research of its scientists, I hope to put my skills to use explaining everything from the latest scientific advances affecting farmers to the government decisions that impact your lives.
Working in agriculture often requires a clear-eyed, practical approach to life, with little room for a city dweller’s sentimentality. But I also think that, like me, you may sometimes stop what you’re doing when you see a blue heron or hear a meadowlark, which was one of my mother’s favourite birds.
Like me, you prefer the roads less travelled.
