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The Food Issue
2017
Grains
West
24
Feature
P
RIOR TO CONFEDERATION,
Canada already had more than
250 years of agricultural history
to look back on from European settlers.
However, that history was modest
and the agriculture skewed toward
subsistence, as opposed to the eye-
popping crop yields of today. Twenty-five
years before Canada officially became a
nation, agriculture was being formed as a
vital cornerstone of the country’s history
and identity in rural Ontario.
David Fife was, by all accounts, your
average Scottish immigrant. He came to
Canada as a teen and farmed his whole
life in Otonabee, ON, about two-and-
a-half hours northeast of Toronto. He
and his wife, Jane, a farmer’s daughter
herself, worked hard to make their farm
productive. Upon request, a friend of
Fife’s had sent him a package of wheat
varieties in 1841/42 that originated
in Glasgow. It is widely believed that
those seeds came to Glasgow by way
of Danzig, now Gdańsk, Poland. Others
posit the wheat originated even further
east in the Galician region of Europe.
According to documented history,
what Fife didn’t realize was that the
variety was actually a winter wheat,
which should have been planted in the
fall. However, the Fifes planted it in the
spring. Only three heads were produced,
and a cow ate a generous chunk of
that paltry crop. From there, only a few
precious seeds survived. Those seeds
were replanted the following year and
the results were staggering. They yielded
like no other, showed stronger resistance
to rust—a fungal disease that farmers had
no answer for at the time—and produced
quality flour for bread making. The variety
was dubbed “Red Fife” based on the
distinct reddish tinge of the Fife family’s
wheat fields.
It gave birth to a class of wheat you
likely eat every day: Canada Western
Red Spring wheat, known as CWRS or,
more colloquially, “hard red.” This class
and Canada Western Amber Durum, or
CWAD, are our country’s two most vitally
important wheats in terms of acreage and
contribution to Canada’s GDP.
As the years went on, Red Fife seeds
were spread around Canada and the
northern United States’ crop-growing
regions. By the time Red Fife reached
Manitoba in the late 1800s, it was a force
to be reckoned with. It grew in Manitoba
better than anywhere else in Canada
or the United States. “Suddenly it had
become, by all accounts the finest wheat
in the world for milling bread flours,”
wrote historian G.N. Irvine.
The variety’s reputation spread like
wildfire. Minnesota started importing
Canadian Red Fife andmarketing it as a
premiumproduct over its locally grown
Minnesota Red Fife wheat. According to
the Canadian government, 580,000 acres
of grains were grown inWestern Canada
in 1885, which exploded to 13.6 million
acres in 1910, including 7.6 million acres
of spring wheat alone. Canada’s Grain
Inspection Act of 1885/86 decreed that
any wheat hoping to receive top grade
must be primarily Red Fife.
The Canadian West had been secured
and solidified by Macdonald and the
influx of European immigrants, and
wheat production skyrocketed. Across
the Prairie provinces, 2.8 million metric
tonnes of wheat were produced in 1906.
Although it was the best wheat variety
Canada had ever seen, Red Fife’s long
maturity period was problematic for
farmers. Many wheat crops fell victim to
killing frosts in the fall as farmers waited
for the crop to mature. The need for a
BY TREVOR BACQUE
150 years of wealth throughwheat