Error in column
Back in the Feb. 11 issue I noted the passing of a neighbor, Dave Willness, but made a couple of historical boo-boos in the process.
Dave’s wife, Florence, reminded me that it was a beef marketing board that Dave and Johnny Minor were campaigning against back in the 1960s, and not a hog board as I had suggested.
She also said Dave managed the farming operations at the big Chilco Ranch in British Columbia while Johnny managed ranching activities.
Thank you, Florence, for the correction. I guess if I propose to take up journalism as a career I’ll have to obtain my data from something better than a crowded memory chute.
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Clyde McMurchy was The Western Producer’s agricultural editor at that time and covered the campaign. He told me when he was down at a meeting at Maple Creek one of the speakers was rancher Rube Gilchrist. Rube was not a supporter of marketing boards and he had a colorful way of expressing his point of view. He described the marketing board option in the following terms:
“It’s like having a fellow move in to spend the night with you and not bring his own blankets.”
There I go giving you second- and third-hand information again. However, since all of the principals have long since died, it would be difficult to produce any footnote references that would get me off the hook.
The time is rapidly approaching when I’ll have to bury my long nose in some dusty bound volumes of decades old Western Producers and give you some first-hand second-hand information.
