(woman)
Manitoba was built

on agriculture
and the family farm.

[fiddle plays in bright rhythm]

At the turn of the century,
agriculture was the reason

that the Manitoba
legislative building

is this huge beautiful building,
because it was booming,

we were going to be
the Chicago of the North.

[drums, guitar, & melodica
play in bright rhythm]

[woman voices
the following credits]

And the members of...

(male narrator)
200 years ago, Lord Selkirk
had a dream

of building
an agricultural community

on the cold prairies
of Manitoba.

Agriculture did become
established

and his dream was realized.

But over those 200 years,
this prairie region

would witness massive changes
in farming, business,

the makeup of society
and the role of women.

Various institutions, regulatory
agencies and exchanges

would emerge along with a series
of farmer-run organizations.

(Laura Rance) Around the turn
of the 20th century,

there was just a huge measure
of discontent

with how the grain handling
system

and the marketing system was
treating farmers.

They felt that they were
being wronged

not only on the driveway
of the elevators

that they were delivering to,

but by the Winnipeg
Grain Exchange,

which was where, in farmers'
eyes, the speculators

were being used to drive down
prices artificially.

In the late 1800s, early 1900s,
agriculture was becoming

very significant in Western
Canada, and the issue was that

producers felt that they were
bound by a couple of things.

One was they couldn't get
railcars from the railway

and that forced them to go
through the grain companies.

They would have to deliver their
grain to the grain companies

and they really felt that
on both quality and quantity,

they were not necessarily
being treated fairly.

Essentially what we had happen
was the agrarian movement

coalesced around
the common enemy

and they began to build
a structure,

they began to lobby very heavily
with the government

to get legislation in place.

There was
the Manitoba Grain Act,

which was followed
by the Canada Grain Act.

And from there you had these
farmer-owned grain companies

start to build a system
where they felt

that they should take back
grain-handling marketing

from the speculators
in Winnipeg.

And one way to do that was
by establishing cooperatives.

(Brian Hayward)
And really, it was a vehicle

for farmers at the time to take
control of their marketing

by virtue of having
their own people trading.

There was a lot of suspicion
that the markets were rigged,

that there was speculation that

was not in the interest
of farmers.

There were co-ops, the pool
organizations in particular

in Western Canada
that espoused more of

a left-of-center controlled
marketing environment.

United Grain Growers
on the other side

tended to espouse and promote
out laissez-faire

free enterprise environment
for marketing grain.

The pooling organizations were
set up in the 1920s

and they had a much more
radical, if you like,

pure and idealistic version
of co-opertism,

and they also wanted to get
around the machinations

of the grain exchange,
which they considered

to be an evil gambling game.

(Mike McAndless) Manitoba,
Saskatchewan, and Alberta,

the 3 largest food-grain
producing provinces,

actually established their own
cooperatives,

Manitoba Pool, Saskatchewan
Wheat Pool

and Alberta Wheat Pool
as a balance

against the privately-held
companies at that time.

It's like any competition,
the way it would have

provided leverage is by
giving farmers an option.

Certainly the cooperative
members

would likely deal with their own
cooperatives to offer pricing

and service alternatives
to what they had up until

that point or what they felt
they had up until that point.

They became
larger than the privately-held
companies ultimately.

(Peter Cox) It resulted
in a lot of farmers

who saw cooperation not as much
of a political movement

as just a pragmatic way
of cooperating.

(narrator)
Few individuals have had
as significant an impact

on prairie history as
Edward Alexander Partridge.

He was 6 foot tall with blue
eyes that flashed when he talked

and hands that were
constantly in motion.

He was a dreamer, an idea man.

When he talked, people listened.

He believed that farmers should
and could have more control

over their destiny
if they united.

(Dr. Paul Earl) It was a child

of the Territorial Grain Growers
Association

and more specifically,
a child of Ed Partridge,

who was very much a moving
spirit behind both the formation

of the Territorial Grain Growers
Association

and then subsequently a moving
spirit behind the creation

of the Grain Growers
Grain Company.

He and a small group
in Sintaluta started

the Territorial Association,
but Partridge had bigger plans

and a larger vision,
and he wanted to set up

a cooperative grain-handling
and marketing company as well.

(narrator)
In 1906 Partridge saw part
of his dream come alive,

but his continued butting of
heads with the Grain Exchange

led to the Grain Growers
Grain Company

losing trading privileges
at the Grain Exchange.

Obviously a matter of
belligerence

on both the part of Ed Partridge
who hated the Exchange

and on the part of the Exchange,
who wasn't that happy with him.

(narrator)
Partridge was fond of calling
the Winnipeg Grain Exchange

"A combine
with gambling hell thrown in."

The Exchange also wanted
Partridge out, no question,

and so the company replaced
Partridge as the official member

with another person
in the company.

(narrator)
Ed Partridge did not disappear.

He became editor of the
company's monthly journal,

"The Grain Growers Guide,"

often contributing
fiery articles of his own.

He authored
"The Partridge Plan,"

that called for public ownership
of grain elevators

and advocated a nationwide
overhaul of the grain business.

Because Ed Partridge was
a moving spirit

behind the Territorial
Grain Growers and was

a moving spirit behind the
Grain Growers Grain Company,

his history after that is
rather interesting,

because he stayed
on the board of directors

of the Grain Growers
Grain Company until 1912,

and then he had a falling out.

(narrator)
Tragedy was part
of Partridge's life.

He lost a leg
in a farming accident,

one of his daughters drowned,
his wife died of a heart attack,

and he lost 2 sons
in the First World War.

When Partridge left, he tried to
start up another grain company

and it failed, and then he
became an activist

and then he wrote a book called,
"Poverty"

and was active in some very
left-wing organizations, and

then sort of just disappeared
out to the West Coast,

lived with his daughter,
and then he just disappeared.

That's what happens
with radicals.

(narrator)
Farmer, teacher, businessman,
agrarian radical,

Ed Partridge died
of asphyxiation in 1931

at the age of 69,

alone in a boarding house in
Victoria, British Colombia.

His only income for a number
of years

was a monthly stipend of $75
from the United Grain Growers.

The structure of the co-ops
was always changing,

and in the 21st century,
they began to disappear.

Co-ops needed money
for capital expansion,

and as co-ops, being able to
raise that money from members

was becoming more and more
difficult.

(Dr. Paul Earl)
They had invested so long ago

and the facilities
were so far written off,

to actually build modern
facilities

was going to require a massive
injection of capital.

Throughout most
of the 20th century,

there's been a consolidation
of cooperatives,

of companies generally.

In the 1990s there was probably
the last phase of it

where the big co-ops
amalgamated,

at the time they had become
public companies even,

so they really weren't
member farmers

and operated by member farmers,
they'd become member-owned

or completely publicly traded
companies.

To a certain extent, it was
a bit of a surprise

that they all disappeared just
in terms of an approach.

They just weren't generating

enough profits in the first
place to be able to reinvest

in the capital required
to build new facilities.

And by 1919, all the co-ops

were facing severe financial
challenges.

The pools were and UGG was,
and what do we do about this?

It's ultimately the producer
that decided in the end

that there wasn't a requirement

for the sort of cooperative
style of business.

And today,
all that's really remaining

are private grain companies
and no cooperatives.

So the producer himself has
changed his requirement,

and I think that the grain
business, the agrigrain business

in Canada has changed
to meet that demand.

[banjo plays softly]

(Bob Roehle)
Well, the Wheat Board
came into being,

I guess, largely because
the 4 pools failed.

There was a Wheat Board back
in 1919 for one year

and so when the government

disbanded the original Wheat
Board, farmers weren't happy.

In their mind at least,

the Wheat Board had to do
with getting higher prices.

When they first established
the Wheat Board,

one of the reasons they needed
it or wanted it

was that Canada was a major
supplier to Britain

during the war years
and this was a way

of securing supply for that.

But the first Wheat Board
was established

after the First World War.

Governments of the day wanted
to return to the open market

and they tried to return
to the open market,

but farmers again lobbied very
heavily to have that returned,

and ultimately, the Wheat Board

did become mandatory
in the 1930s.

The government stepped in
and formed the Wheat Board

in order to handle the grain
for the farmers

and sell it on the world market.

It was felt
that because Canada was

such a large supplier
of the world markets,

we could get better prices

with a "single desk seller,"
as it was described.

(Bob Roehle)
That experiment
in their experience

made them want a Wheat Board,
and of course,

there was this underlying
egalitarian notion

that all farmers should be
treated equally

and they should get the same
price for the same quality.

And so they lobbied long and
hard, and eventually,

they got a Wheat Board in 1935.

And so that was part
of the agrarian movement,

it was an extension
of the whole notion

that we're in this together,
and we should help each other.

After the war, and as new crops
came along,

farmers began to take
a much broader interest

in what they were doing,
in the whole process

of not only production,
but also marketing,

and they discovered they could

quite readily market
their canola.

And I think as the age
of the farmer has changed,

the ones who had grown up
in the 1930s and '40s

were no longer around, the
importance of the Wheat Board

historically tended to diminish.

Then over time, over the last I
would say probably 15, 20 years

that one could see
the Wheat Board starting to lose

some of its power
for a variety of reasons.

There wasn't the same public
support for it,

farmers were better marketers.

One might also say there were
ideological issues.

(narrator)
The Canadian Wheat Board
disbanded

the single desk marketing power
on August 1, 2012.

Irrespective
of the economics, the idea

that the farmer cannot sell
his own property [laugh]

at whatever price he wants,
I find it abhorrent!

In my personal opinion, the
Wheat Board was a perfect tool.

It allowed me to market
my grain without worrying

about whether I was getting a
better price than my neighbor.

I had come
to a mental conclusion

that I would accept the average
of the year, the pool,

that was the principle
behind the pool.

I wouldn't get the high,
I wouldn't get the low,

I didn't have to worry it was
Thursday or Monday

or if my neighbor went before me
or I was ahead of my neighbor,

who got there first,
who got there last.

We got the pool price; that was
the whole term of pool meant,

it meant average,
right across the board.

I didn't have to wake up
in the morning saying,

oh, where's the market today?

[piano plays softly]

(narrator)
In the early 20th century, grain
elevators dotted the prairies

every 6 to 10 miles
or 10 to 15 kilometers apart,

a distance that was
a good day's journey

for farmer and horse
with a full load.

Probably every 10 miles there
was a grain elevator.

Nowadays, you might
go 50, 60 miles

without seeing grain-handling
facility.

Branch line network strung like
spiderwebs across the west.

In the '70s and '80s there was

a great deal
of branch line abandonment.

(narrator)
By 1930, there were 5,733 grain
elevators in Western Canada

and now, only 346
grain elevators stand.

Particularly in the grain
handling business

where you have now far fewer,

a fraction of the number
of elevators

spread across the prairies,
the farmers have to haul

long distances anyway, and if
one company gets control

over too many grain elevators
in one area, the farmer

really, for all practical
purposes, has not choice,

because he'd have to truck his
grain hundreds of kilometers.

So much is becoming not
capitalism but corporatism.

And I think that is
where the danger lies.

(narrator)
Over the past 150 years, the
role of private grain companies

has been important to the
development of Western Canada.

Winnipeg was the hub of all
of that at that time,

it was the gateway to Western
Canada,

it was a transportation center,
a distribution center,

and it was a headquarters
of the agricultural business

in Western Canada,
particularly the grain trade,

because there was thousands
of participants

in the grain trade in Canada
and hundreds of companies

involved in the grain industry
back then.

We could probably count them on
1 or 2 hands today.

We were started in 1909,

started by a 50-year-old Parrish
and a 30-year-old Heimbecker,

so I'm the 4th-generation
Parrish.

It was a bit more
of a cowboy era then.

(John Heimbecker)
The Heimbeckers were

flour millers in Ontario
around the turn of the century.

They decided that they needed to
take a much larger interest

in procuring wheat for their
flour business

and they dispatched their son,
Norman,

who was the oldest of 10
children out to Western Canada

to learn more about
the procurement of wheat.

He ran into and made friends
with W.L. Parrish, who was

already trading grain under the
name of Parrish and Lindsay.

They struck up a friendship
that obviously morphed

into something that was greater,

which became Parrish
and Heimbecker.

The founder of the business was
actually by training a tailor,

and as part of his business
back in 1857

of creating clothing for people
in that community

around Kingston, Ontario, it was
not uncommon to take payment

in the form of barter, and one
of the elements of barter

the farmers in the Kingston area
had of course,

was their production,
their grain.

So he became an owner
of grain, inadvertently,

in return for the clothing
that he was making

and he started to merchandise
that grain to be able to create

cash flow to be able to continue
doing what he was doing.

Well, he thought he was actually
pretty good

at merchandising grain
and decided

that might be a better pursuit
to him than tailoring

and that was the beginning,
the genesis of the company

and it's carried
through 5 generations to today.

(Andrew Paterson) There's been 4
generations of Patersons

involved in the grain business
in Western Canada.

Our company has marketed grain
before the Wheat Board,

with the Wheat Board,
and now again

after the Wheat Board is gone.

The company was formed
by my grandfather,

but actually my great
grandfather, H.S. Paterson,

merchandised
the first cargo of wheat

out of the Province of Manitoba.

It's surprising how many
multigenerational relationships

exist between the Richardson
family

and a number of farm families
in Western Canada

where we were doing business

built on service and trust
over the years.

The management of Parrish
and Heimbecker

are actively involved out
in the country with producers

and we still think that matters.

And the feedback that we get is
they find it amazing that

the owners of the businesses
would actually take the time

to come out to the individual
country locations,

meet with them, actually hear
their concerns, versus

having them sort of filtered
through the grain elevator

and the merchants, etc.

So we spend a lot of time to
build that communication link

and foster the growth
of the relationship.

(Laura Rance) It's been said

that if men were the pioneers,
women were the settlers.

They were the ones that created
a home out of some very,

very sparse resources they had
to work with

when people first arrived here.

And they were doing this
all the time

while they were caring for
and producing children,

which were a major source
of labor on the farm.

(Loyd Kitchig)
On the day I was born,
the thrashing crew

pulled in that morning
to start thrashing.

And Mother not only had to look
after me,

she had to feed the thrashing
gang, about a dozen men.

And one of the neighbors came
over to help her

look after feeding
the thrashing crew

and a week later she had
a baby of her own.

We had to make a living in the
'30s and mother had to help

with the milking at night
and I guess we all learned

because the men were busy
with using horses to farm

and so it was
a whole different era.

(Laura Rance)
We've seen the farm women's jobs
change over time

as all jobs
on the farm have changed,

but they're still
the home builders

and they're still feeding
the family.

In many cases today, it's the
farm wife

that leaves the farm to work
and it's her salary

that helps to support
the family.

I think it's electricity was
the bonus

that came to all rural
communities in 1947,

because we had no electricity
on the farm.

So it was the roles
would be homemaker,

and you had to make the bread
and if you did the milking,

then you had to put it through
the cream separator,

which is a horrible thing
to wash.

But Mother would print up 15
pounds of butter at a time and

send them to Deloraine and that
was the money for groceries.

(Laura Rance) As these farms
became established,

the attention very quickly
turned

towards community structures
that provided

some civilization
and social support

to what they were doing
on the land.

The women's movement
becoming very powerful

through organizations like the
Women's Institute Organization,

and many of the women who were
key players in that

were people who came
from pioneer stock.

(Gwen Parker) I met one lady
when I was working with W.I.

telling me that when she was

farming there, she would go

to a W.I. meeting 6 miles away

and she would walk with a baby
in her arms,

another one over her shoulder
and the little ones walking

for 6 miles to cross a stream
and go to that meeting

and then come home
and do the chores.

The Women's Institute
Organization, which fought,

of all things, for public
restrooms, because in that time,

women would come to town
with the family,

the men could go to the pubs,
but women weren't allowed there.

There was no place for women
and children to be,

and that was the foundation
of the restrooms.

For a lot of women, Women's
Institute was

their only contact as a group
together.

An older lady said that one
of their members came in

and she was pregnant and she had
9 children already at home.

The group gathered around her
and just cried

because family planning wasn't
legal at that time.

Cases like that,
you feel that you've been

right inside a person's heart.

Though farmers for the most part
were exempt

from military service and that
doesn't mean they didn't go,

but I think that's where one
found the women taking

a much bigger role in the
management of agriculture.

And I think when the fellas
came back after the war,

the ladies had taken over
a certain amount of doing

some of these things and I think
we find a lot of farms now

that the role played by women,
particularly women

who graduate with degrees
in agriculture,

more than half of the students
taking agriculture

at the University of Manitoba
are women.

The first woman, Dorothy Clark,
graduated in 1922.

It wasn't until 13 years later
that the second woman graduated.

And looking at the statistics,
up until the mid '60s,

from the time the college
started until the mid '60s,

there had been only 21 women
students graduate.

From the mid '90s,
two of the years

there was actually 75%
of the student body were women.

Now it's about 50/50.

(narrator)
The University of Manitoba,
from its earliest days,

had a unique way of providing
education to its citizens.

(Dawn Harris) The college at
that time had a very close
association

with the Ministry of
Agriculture,

and one of the things that it
did, starting in 1907, and it

carried on to the mid '20s,
was put out extension trains.

And these were actual trains
that went out,

there would be 2 or 3 cars
and they went out

to various communities,
and there was one

that was the Dairy Special
and it would have

the newest milking equipment,
the newest kind of technology

that was available, how you
would feed your dairy cow.

And this would be contained
in these cars,

they would attract
the local farmers,

they would come out
and gather information

or there would be a lecture
given.

There were a number
of these different trains.

They lasted into the '20s
and they stopped

at 150 different points
in Manitoba

and reached
more than 35,000 people.

So that was
the degree

of importance that was placed

on this information that was

being taken from the college
out into the countryside.

Cora Hind was a woman who came

to Western Canada
in the early 1800s.

She had come out here to work
as a school teacher

and wanted to become
a newspaper reporter.

She was originally turned down,
it was considered newspapers

were no place for women to be,
but she ultimately became

the agricultural editor
of the "Winnipeg Free Press."

And she took that job and
created a persona around herself

because of her very intuitive
ability to judge

how much the crops were
going to produce.

Every year, she traveled
across Western Canada

and looked at the crops
and wrote what she thought

that crop was going to produce

and she was remarkably
accurate in her projections.

And she was widely followed
by anyone in the world

that had an interest
in what Western Canada

was going to contribute
to the world grain trade.

She was also very active
in the Suffragette Movement

and very active in securing
social supports for women.

After fighting so hard to get
a job working in the press,

she was ultimately paid
the best compliment

she could have received
at the time.

Her colleagues reported
that the best newspaperman

in Western Canada was a woman,
and that was E. Cora Hind.

[drums & melodica
play in bright rhythm]

[woman voices
the following credits]

And the members of...

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