DR. ANGUS McKAY.
THE MAN WHO TAUGHT US HOW TO GROW WHEAT.
On January 16, 1923, I received a letter from Dr. Angus McKay,
stating that he would be in Regina that evening on his way to an agri-
cultural convention at Saskatoon, and would see me at the King's Hotel.
I had not met the doctor for a good many years, and it was almost with
eagerness that I wended my way to the rendezvous. I found him reading
the evening paper in the hotel rotunda and after greetings we went up-
stairs to the hotel parlor. This was unoccupied and remained so, except
for a subdued bridal couple in a corner and a burly man who came in and
for a couple of minutes positively roared over the telephone. Facing each
other in two roomy comfortable arm chairs, the conditions were highly
favorable for a talk. Before we got back to old times I asked Dr. McKay
his age and I told him my own. "Oh," said the doctor, with a humorous
smile on his fine, fresh-colored, shrewd, keen, kindly face~"Oh! you are
only a boy; I am eighty-three." The story that the patriarch of eighty-
three told the boy of seventy-two follows, and is set down practically ver-
batim in the veteran's own words. It will be noted that it is a remark-
able narration told in a matter of fact way, without any attempt at color-
ing or effect. The reader will be glad to get this story from "the man
who taught us how to grow wheat."
"I was born on January the 3rd, 1840, 50 that I was eighty-three years
of age thirteen days ago. My birth place was a farmhouse, near Picker-
ing, South Ontario County, Ontario, about twenty-five miles east of To-
ronto, on the main Kingston road. My father was Donald McKay and
he was a Highlander born in Caithness. My mother's name was Margaret
and she was a lowlander from Dumfries. Her maiden name was Broad-
foot. My father came to Ontario from Demerara where he had been em-
ployed on plantations and he settled at Pickering about four years before
I was born. I was the second child, and I appeared on the scene about
a year after my father came to Pickering. I stayed on the farm till I
was grown up and after; and when my father died the farm came to me.
I lived on it and worked it till four or five years before I came west,
when I sold it to fair advantage.
"My attention was first directed to the Canadian west by the great
boom of 1881. It appeared to be a land of great opportunity, and four of
us Pickering men formed a company, with the intention of coming up
in the spring of 1882 and securing and working a relatively large area of
land. The members of the company were Mr. William Williamson, ~
carpenter and building contractor, who also had a farm; Mr. Robert
Miller, one of the big breeders of Ontario; Mr. Edward Boone, a farmer
well-to-do, and myself.
"In the spring of 1882 Mr. Williamson and I came west. We left
Pickering on the 2nd of April with a carload of settlers' effects, attached
to a passenger train, and three hired men. We had six horses of medium
weight; two yoke of work oxen, one cow, wagons, implements and sun-
dries, and some lumber. We had to come in by the American route. On
our arrival at St. Paul, Minnesota, we stayed for a day or two in the
stockyards there. Mr. Williamson and I then went on by train to Winni-
peg but the car did not arrive. The great flood of 1882 was upon us and
had stopped the car at Emerson, and it had been backed up from Emer-
son to a place called Halleck in Minnesota, which was a new village just
started. When we found out what had happened, Williamson and I
thought the best thing we could do was to go down to the car at Halleck,
and we did so, but were delayed so long that we did not get that car into
Winnipeg till the last day of April, which made a journey of just four
weeks since we left Pickering on the 2nd of April. This flood was one
of the worst on record, either before or since. The C. P. R. at this time
had only reached as far as Oak Lake beyond Brandon, or Flat Creek
as Oak Lake on the C. P. R. was called then; but the railway bridge at
Brandon over the Assiniboine River was washed away, and we were told
that it would be a month before it could be replaced, and traffic resumed
for us to get through. This was a very discouraging prospect. At this
stage we met an old friend from Toronto who had had some experi-
ence, and he advised us to rent a small place near Winnipeg, and use the
season to grow some grain on it. There was a farmer at St. Francis
Xavier, a French settlement, which was in the hands of a mortgage com-
pany. This (about 24 miles from Winnipeg on the Portage la Prairie
trail), we rented, so we loaded up our outfit, taking the whole lot except
some lumber, and set out for the farm. We had two wagons and a buck-
board. We had not proceeded very far before we came to a big slough
which it was impossible to get across, so we turned back to Winnipeg and
crossed to the south side of the Assiniboine River by the Main Street
bridge. We camped on the other side of the river for a few hours, and
then started west, but about eight o'clock at night we ran into the flood
again, so we retraced our way back to the bridge at Winnipeg, near
which we camped on the south side of the river. We did not know what
to do, as we seemed to be beaten at every point, and could see no way of
reaching the farm with our outfit as we had tried both sides of the river.
"But the river which was the cause of our troubles through the flood
was to be the means of helping us after all. Next morning I took across
the bridge from our camp to go into Winnipeg. When I got on the bridge
I saw a steamboat about two or three hundred yards from the bridge fac-
ing up stream, on the east side of the river. I went over and saw that a
number of men were carrying goods and parcels of different kinds onto
the boat, and they told me the boat was going to start that afternoon
with freight for Fort Ellice at the mouth of the Qu'Appelle River. That
year, I think, was the last year that a steamboat went up from Winnipeg
to Fort Ellice. The river has not been high enough since. I do not re-
member much about the boat itself, but it was a paddle steamer and I
think the paddles were in the stern of the vessel. I made a bargain with
the boat people to take our whole outfit to St. Francis Xavier, and land
it at the farm we had rented; so we loaded up on the steamer, and got
to our journey's end about 12 o'clock that night. The farm was near
the river, but was not flooded. There was a log house upon it which was
inhabited by thousands of bugs. Fortunately the weather was fine, so
that we had no difficulty in getting settled. We started to work right
away and put in twenty acres of Red Fife wheat, and eighty acres of oats.
"We had a neighbor named Thomas Lumsden, an old Ontario settler,
who was flooded in. He came over for us in a canoe, and we went back
with him. He was living in the upper part of his house, the lower part
being flooded. The door was open so we sailed right into the house in
the canoe, and landed on the stairs. When the crop was in I went Into
Winnipeg to see about getting away west, and on the 3rd of June we
loaded up the outfit on the train, and all left except Mr. Williamson, who
stayed behind to watch the crop. Myself, the three men, and the outfit,
got to Flat Creek (Oak Lake) the same day; and we started for the west
on the trail the next day, the 4th June, heading for the Indian Head
country. The reason why we had the Indian Head district in our minds
was this: Thomas Lumsden, our neighbor on the rented farm, had a son
who had been employed on the C. P. R. survey in the Rocky Mountains;
he had come out of the mountains in the spring, and came right across
the plains to his father's house with a horse and buckboard, about a thou-
sand miles. It was young Mr. Lumsden who told us about the Indian
Head country. He said that after leaving Fort Qu'Appelle he struck
the finest tract of land between the mountains and Winnipeg, except the
Portage plains.
"When we had loaded up our car at Winnipeg for Flat Creek a man
drove up with a span of horses and a buckboard. He had a car just be-
hind mine and proved to be a man named Myers, agent for Osler, Ham-
mond & Nanton, the land men. Myers did not seem to know much about
the practical side of things, so we helped him put his outfit in his car;
and at Flat Creek we helped him again, and he journeyed with us for a
few days and then went on ahead. He said he had been appointed agent
to sell lands in the Indian Head country north of the track up to Fort
Qu'Appelle, and that if we bought land from him he would do the best
he could for us. It took us till the 15th of June to get to our destination.
There were numerous sloughs and boggy places and we were in constant
danger of getting mired. Once we had to unload everything. A wagon,
which contained among other things our clothes and provisions once went
entirely under water, and we had to stop for two days to dry things and
fix up. That was in crossing a little creek, which had been swollen to the
proportions of a sizeable river.
"We left the Fort Ellice trail north of Moosomin and struck for the
railway survey, which we hit at Broadview. Broadview had been selected
as a divisional point, but there was as yet no railroad there, although it
was being brought rapidly forward. Although we had our minds fixed
as it were on the Indian Head country, yet We had an open mind, so we
stayed in Broadview a day or two and looked around that district. We
then went on to what is now Wolseley, but it was not the kind of land we
were looking for, so we continued to what is now Indian Head, arriving
there on the 15th of June. I stayed there two days and then went on to
Fort Qu'Appelle to see the man Myers. At Fort Qu'Appelle there was no
village, but there was a police barracks, with Major Walsh in charge.
There also was a post office, which had to serve a very wide stretch of
country. For some time afterwards, till '83 or '84, the Indian Head set-
tlers had to go to Fort Qu'Appelle for their mail, and in the season of '82
we only got mail every three weeks.
"I found Myers camped up on a hill on the south side of the Qu'Appelle
Valley. There had been a bridge across the stream, but this had been
swept away by the flood. The waters had not yet subsided, and some hun
dreds of intending settlers were held up on the south side waiting to get
across. They were in tents, and so on, and the scene was quite novel
and interesting.
"I should say that after we left Broadview; Mr. Robert Smith and
Miss Smith, who were afterwards so well known, passed us on the trail,
and we found that Mr. Smith had already started a tent hotel at Fort
Qu'Appelle, where he subsequently built a large and commodious building
in which he ran the hotel business for a good many years. Mr. Smith
now has a ranch near Lethbridge in Alberta. Miss Smith married Mr.
Raymond, who with his partner, Mr. Love, were so well known to be
travelling public as the proprietors of the Leland Hotel at Qu'Appelle
Station.
"The land survey at the time was not completed. There was a town-
ship survey with the corner posts six miles apart, and this was very
useful, of course, as it gave us some idea of the location of the land. I
saw Mr. Myers at the Fort, and got some idea of the land prices and then
went back to Indian Head, and looked the land over. There were two 6i'
three men there who had taken up homesteads and they went around with
me for a day or two, and I picked on some land. I then went back to Fort
Qu'Appelle and bought two thousand acres of land from Mr. Myers at
two dollars an acre. Ultimately my land purchases were readjusted so
that I got four sections as close together as was possible under the system
of reserving alternate square miles for homesteading in between the rail-
way lands.
"Among the settlers nearest to me were Ralph Todd of Camelford,
Ontario; an Englishman named Rigby, who had newly come out from
the Old Country; a Mr. Pugsley, William Douglas and Joseph Kline. These
were all homesteaders who had taken up free land under the settlement
regulations. My company, of course, bought from the C. P. R. Subse-
quently I bought a quarter from one of these men, and we also secured
two canceled homesteads.
"There were some homesteaders in there under rather interesting cir-
cumstances. An effort was made to get the new capital of the Territories
at Indian Head, and some person or persons paid certain individuals to
take up homesteads on or adjacent to the proposed townsite. These men
were paid expenses while they held down the land; but the government
got wind of the scheme and cancelled the homesteads, and I needn't tell
you that the capital never came to Indian Head. As the quarter sections
were not surveyed what you did to show you had a claim on the land was
to put up four sticks which represented the four corners of a house.. One
of the homesteaders whose entry was cancelled was an official of the Hud-
son's Bay Company. One of my partners got his homestead
eventually.
The one I got cost $400 and I think the Company got the other for $200.
We bought them from the Government.
"The Bell Farm started the same year we did. The company procured
a block of land ten miles square. The Government gave them the home-
stead lands, and the company bought the other sections from the C. P. R.
Indian Head was about in the centre of this 60,000 acre block.
"After we left Broadview a large company of men and teams passed
us and we thought they were a railroad outfit-navvies going to work on
the railroad; but when we got to Indian Head we found they were break-
ing up the sod. This was the first breaking done, I think, west of Mani-
toba. The section they were breaking on subsequently became the Ex-
perimental Farm, and it is the Experimental Farm today. They were a
gang who had been working on the railroad but the Bell Farm had hired
them to break, and altogether they broke I think three or four thousand
acres. As I have said, my company bought four sections. In the first
summer (1882) we only broke thirty acres. By the time we got our
land surveyed so that we knew where we were at it was the end of June.
Mr. Lumsden's son, who told me about the good land of Indian Head, told
me not to break anything after the first of July, so we only broke
thirty acres, and this we backset in August and September in accordance
with what Lumsden's son advised. We put the thirty acres in crop in
1883 and in 1883 we broke three or four hundred acres. In 1884 we
sowed what we had broken in 1883, nearly all in Red Fife wheat, and
the stubble from the thirty acres we broke in 1882 we put. in with oats.
We had a wonderful crop of wheat in 1884, but it was late in ripening.
The first frost came on the 8th of September, before the grain was cut.
Nobody knew anything about frozen grain, as not enough had been fro~en
previously to do any harm, and we couldn't sell a bushel of that frozen
wheat. The Bell Farm also had a great crop, but were in the same fix we
were. There was no market for frozen grain.
"The Bell Farm had built a grist mill that summer and when we
found we could not sell our frozen wheat we had a carload ground into
flour. The Bell Farm also had a carload of flour made from frozen wheat
but the wheat was not badly frozen at all. In two or three days more it
would have been quite matured. I shipped our carload of flour to Winni-
peg but found no one would touch it. I then shipped it on to Toronto
with the same result. I then sent it on to Montreal and there we sold it
with the net result that instead of realising anything out of the flour we
were actually out of pocket eight dollars.
"The wheat was beautiful wheat, but the millers had no experience
with it and didn't know how to use it and so they wouldn't touch it. The
balance of that frozen wheat lasted us for three years; we fed it to our
horses, and they did well on it, although of course we had to be careful
how we fed it and not give too much at once. In this way none of that
grain was wasted.
"The Bell Farm sent their flour to Montreal but I don't know what
they got for it. They couldn't sell any more and Major Bell bought a lot
of pigs, including I think, two carloads from the States, to feed it to.
"In 1883 there was a twenty to twenty-five bushel crop of wheat, with
very little straw. We had a horse-power threshing machine, and it took
two men to handle the wheat and only one man to handle the straw. In
1884 the state of things was entirely reversed, for the straw was very
heavy. We did no stook threshing but stacked all the grain and it
was away on in October in 1884 before we got the stacking done; with a
horsepower threshing outfit, it took us all November to get through
threshing. In 1884 we broke another 300 or 400 acres, I forget exactly
bow much.
"We couldn't sell our 1884 crop. We had to sell in Winnipeg at that
time and there was no market for our 1884 wheat, but in 1885, Rebellion
year, we sold all our wheat, which was taken by Spink of Winnipeg. It
realised 75 and 80 cents.
"In the spring of '85 the Bell Farm sent a hundred teams to work
on the Rebellion transport, receiving ten dollars per team, amounting in
all to a thousand dollars a day. All the homesteaders went to the war
on the transport. The Bell Farm, with so many teams away, did not put
in much crop in 1885. Then came the dry year of 1886." Asked if there
had ever been a drier year than 1886, Dr. McKay said: "Yes, there was
one year, I think it was 1890, when there were only three inches of rain
on the Experimental Farm."
Continuing, he said, that "for many years the crops of 1891 and
1892 were the biggest ever grown. The Pickering Company continued
till 1887 when the four partners decided to dissolve. They decided to
draw lots, the first one to have his pick of the sections and so on down.
They did the same with the horses and machinery. The company never
went into stock raising or dairying. They had a few milk cows, just
enough to supply the needs of the farms; and as far as he could remem-
ber he didn't think they raised any pigs." This carries Dr. McKay's
story up to the time he was appointed head of the Experimental Farm
for the North West Territories, which was started on a section which
formed part of the Bell Farm, Indian Head.
The appointment was made in 1887 before the selection of the site.
At that time and for many years afterwards the "patronage system" in
politics was in full vogue. A member of Parliament who was a supporter
of the Government had the privilege of nominating appointees to all
government positions in his constituency. Mr. W. D. Perley had been
elected as the first Dominion Member of Parliament, for the constituency
of East Assiniboia. It went almost without saying that the Experimental
Farm for the Territories would be somewhere in Mr. Perley's constituency
and this being so it followed, equally as a matter of course, that Mr.
Perley would have the nomination of its Director, and Mr. Perley (subse-
quently Senator Perley) deserves a high meed of praise for the great
service he did the whole western country when he nominated Dr. Angus
McKay. He might, of course, have selected some political friend with-
out any special qualification, and had he done so the country would have
been much poorer today for it is not too much to say, that in those early,
crude, formative days when the colonisation of the North-West Territories
was one gigantic experiment the services rendered by Dr. McKay were
beyond calculation. Further credit may also be accorded Mr. Perley be-
cause in nominating Dr. McKay he was nominating one who was by the
way of being a political opponent. Perley and McKay were on the same
side in Dominion politics, but in the first election that had taken place in
the district for the North West Council, Dr. McKay was one of six candi-
dates, and was in opposition to Mr. Perley. The election was for two
members; and the successful candidates were Perley of Wolseley and
Jackson of Qu'Appelle.
In the session of the Dominion House held at Ottawa in the spring
of 1887 it was decided to establish experimental farms. This was a new
departure. Dr. McKay was notified of his appointment and requested
to come at once to Ottawa. He remained there two months, assisting in
establishing the farm which had been selected at Ottawa. In October
Dr. Saunders, who was the Dominion director of agriculture, came west
to select sites for the Manitoba and North-West Territories' Experimental
Farms. Mr. Bedford had been appointed director for the Manitoba Ex-
perimental Farm, and both he and Dr. McKay accompanied Dr. Saunders
in his journeys in search of suitable sites. The three drove west from
Winnipeg examining the country, but Mr. Bedford did not proceed fur-
ther than the Manitoba boundary as his interest was with the Manitoba
farm. only. Having given all the care they could to the matter, Dr. Saun-
ders and Dr. McKay recommended the purchase of 680 acres of the Bell
Farm at Indian Head, and this became the experimental farm. The
Canadian Pacific Railroad formed the southern boundary of the section,
but there was a gore of forty acres, and this gore was included in the
purchase.
It must not be supposed that in those eager young days, such an im-
portant matter as the selection of a permanent farm would pass without
attracting a great deal of attention. The rivalry of different sections of
Eastern Assiniboia was keen, and Grenfell, through Mr. B. P. Richardson,
made a big bid for the farm. At the time the deal was made the Bell
Farm Company's affairs were being administered by J. A. M. Aitkins,
Q.C. (ex-Lieutenant Governor of Manitoba), on behalf of the creditors.
The then manager of the farm was a Mr. Sheppard. The price paid by
the Government was twelve dollars and fifty cents per acre, or nine thou-
~and five hundred dollars for 680 acres. This was considered a good price
as land values were in 1887, even for land close to a railroad, and near
the facilities of a town. The soundness of Dr. McKay's judgment in
recommending this farm has been fully justified.
A few years ago Dr. McKay was appointed inspector of Western Ex-
perimental Farms.
Bibliography follows: