IT COULDN’T be much more direct than Daniel.
“Dear Ontario farmers,” he wrote April 6. “I thank you for making delicious food and selling it to stores so we can buy it. I hope farming makes you happy.”
It couldn’t be much more self-serving than “a kid who needs maple syrup.”
“Dear Ontario farmers,” he or she wrote. “We need your food! I can’t live without maple syrup.”
It couldn’t be much more blunt that Kevin.
“Dear Ontario farmers,” he wrote. “I am writing this down deep in my heart because I think people are thinking ‘Oh, this Ontario food suck.’ Well, I think that’s wrong.”
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It couldn’t be much more bottom-line than Derrick. “If it weren’t for the farmer, I’d be dead.”
The April 5 mass farmer rally on Parliament Hill may have provoked yawns or ridicule or strains of “same old same old” in some cynical quarters but in Alexandra Woloschuk’s grades five and six classroom in Eardley Elementary School in Gatineau, Que., across the river from Ottawa, it provoked nothing but concern and praise.
The students, many with a connection to farms in the Pontiac Valley through parents or grandparents, were doing an annual exercise in researching where food comes from and why it matters to health when they saw images of the rally.
They read newspaper stories, visited websites and were guided by their teacher to imagine how many different foods are in their local grocery store and what it would be like if there was no food there.
It led to a project of writing letters to the Ontario Federation of Agriculture in support of the rally, or as one student wrote: “The Parliament guys are stupid to buy from Argintina and not from you so stryke on.”
“They did this of their own accord,” said Woloschuk, whose mother came from a farm in eastern Ontario. “Everyone seemed to have their own story, their own connection. And the kids were thrilled to have their voices heard.”
The Ontario Federation of Agriculture responded with a thank-you letter and some individual e-mail messages. The letters, with their creative drawings of farmers, farms, plants and animals included, were posted on the OFA website.
There was much support for chicken wings in the letters that outlined farm products they like. One included a drawing of a chicken with an arrow highlighting the wing.
The letters are wonderful, sincere, profound.
“We all apreciate your help and we thank you for all the fresh fruit and vegetables that you put your time in to grow,” wrote ‘your friend Stephanie’. “Are you afraid of cows? My mom’s grandpa used to have a dairy farm and she’d have to get up at 2 in the morning. She was also afraid of cows.”
Eleven-year-old Cynthia Vallepas wished Ontario farmers luck. “I know I’m just a kid and I can’t do anything about it but if we all stand and prove our points, we might make a difference.”
If only Cynthia and her classmates can hold that thought and that concern for another decade or two, Canada might not be having the depressing farm crisis debate in 2026 that it is forced to have, once again, in 2006.
