Younger readers may not know how Grainews got started. The first edition was in 1975 and the publisher was United Grain Growers (UGG). UGG was a farmer owned grain company with shares – it was not a co-op. The first editor was John Clark and he recruited active farmers to write it as it was “down on the farm” for Grainews readers. Farmers writing for farmers was how John Clark described it.
An early gang of farmer/writers
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The farmer columnists I knew best were Alf Bryan of Tugaske, Sask., Harvey Gjesdal of Birch Hills, Sask., Boyd Anderson of Fir Mountain, Sask. and Lyle Walker of Milk River, Alta.
In this piece I will talk about Alf Bryan. Alf’s columns went under the title “I may be wrong but…” and he carried on to write as he saw it. His columns were entertaining as well as informative.
Alf and I would banter back and forth in our columns. When I first started to write he thought it was rather stiff and academic but, by and by, loosened up to be readable. When I bought my three quarters of farmland at Dundurn in the early 1990s he penned a special piece and named the quarters Make, Jake and Shake. He then went on to relate the three quarters talking to one another and the fun they were going to have with “a university professor no less.” It was a scream.
Alf spent a bit of time at U of S but it was not his cup of tea. He was very well read from early childhood days thanks to an extensive library his grandparents brought with them from England. It included works of Chaucer and Shakespeare and the Encyclopedia Brittanica, as well as many history books, poetry and novels. He could easily stump me based on the reading he did from that home library.
It was my pleasure to meet Alf a couple of times at his farm just west of Tugaske. He showed me around the farm and nearby crops. He lived in Tugaske at the time but we met at the farm. He fired up the barbecue and did up a T-bone steak of a size only a young, strong man could get around. And I did with great pleasure.
The early ’90s came after the very droughty ’80s, crop prices were not great and interest rates were through the roof. Many farms were on the edge of bankruptcy but Alf toughed it out and made it. His son Shane is farming the land now.
The hard times of the ’90s inspired Alf to pen “Futuristic View: Saskatoon and the Prairies in 2098, Part 1” which was published in Grainews on May 4, 1995. I have never seen a Part 2 — if it even existed.
But Part 1 showed Alf’s imagination and ingenuity in grand style. It was supposedly written by Alfreda Bryan. She was his great-granddaughter, who by then was running the farm as a hunting lodge with buffalo for rich American hunters. In the intervening years farmers had gone broke, infrastructure withered and many small towns were abandoned. The Gardiner Dam had burst and Diefenbaker Lake let go with a rush that took out all the bridges in Saskatoon.
The ‘Futuristic View’ describes Alfreda’s trip with a 4×4 van to get supplies from Ram Singh in what had been the famous Bessborough Hotel in Saskatoon. The entire piece was a great bit of imagination and interesting reading.
I wonder what it will really be like in 2098? None of us will know except young kids of today.
Alf went on to pen several books. Some were “The best of” from his Grainews articles. He also did some fiction work a bit on the racy side.
Alf worked hard and played hard and could spin a tale like few others. He rented some clay land near Moose Jaw and he described it as “soft, sweet clay that the discers cut into like warm butter.”
This is one in a few pieces that will talk about columnists I have known. They will be sprinkled in with no particular schedule. Keep tuned.
