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COUNTRY LIFE IN BC • JULY 2017


BC agriculture vital part of Canada’s 150 years Growing locally is intertwined in the province’s history, and its future


Canada celebrates its 150th


anniversary of Confederation this year, but BC has often marched to its own drummer. Indeed, it got the jump on the


CANADA 150 by PETER MITHAM


rest of the country when, in 1866, the colonies of Vancouver Island and the mainland known as British Columbia (established in 1858) became one. When it joined


Confederation in 1871, BC could count agriculture among its key economic activities. This was because, just as today, it was largely isolated from the rest of the world by water, mountains and the US border. Agriculture wasn’t just part of the economy, it was a key to the province’s independence – what today we call food security. Confederation ushered in an era of interdependence, with Ottawa agreeing to


• BEEF • VEAL • BISON • LAMB • GOAT • DEER


shoulder the colony’s sizeable debts and connecting it to the national dream of steel and steam – the CPR. The railway connected BC to the east, and allowed thousands of new arrivals from there to take up property – agricultural and residential. Among the arrivals were


the Steves family, still active in Richmond, the Guichons and Swensons. The fertile lands along the banks of the Fraser River were cultivated, and in the Interior, deserts and grasslands gave way to ranches and orchards. These have proven among the most enduring agricultural ventures in the province, both in terms of how we see ourselves and where we see our future. The rugged Interior and


hearty appetites of prospectors and other settlers made ranching among the first kind of agriculture in the province. While the sector now pales next to the vast operations of Alberta and Saskatchewan, the historic


A cattle drive at O’Keefe Ranch near Vernon, circa 1945, that shows Mary Elizabeth O’Keefe, the daughter of founder Cornelius O’Keefe, in the background on horseback rounding up cattle. O’KEEFE RANCH ARCHIVES PHOTO


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On a mission


Settlement also brought civilizing influences, with missionaries keen to bear witness not just to immediate concerns but eternal ones,


names of Douglas Lake, Hat Creek, O’Keefe, and the BX still resonate. Despite being far from the province’s sophisticated urban cores, the ghosts of Smith and his Quarter Horse – celebrated in the works of Paul St. Pierre – haunt the grasslands of the Cariboo and Chilcotin country south through the valleys of the Thompson, Nicola and Okanagan basins.


too. Father Charles Pandosy, a member of the Oblates of Mary the Immaculate – a relatively new missionary order that sought to serve workers, labourers and the poor – arrived in the Okanagan in 1859 and is described as being “as much a farmer as he was a priest.” Pandosy’s homestead kept a number of animals and was home to the region’s first grapevine plantings – prophets of the region’s current viticultural boom that began in earnest with the founding in 1932 of Calona Vineyards, now owned by Ontario’s Andrew Peller Ltd.


Calona itself was a product of the Dirty Thirties, which was a reality check for the orchard industry among others. The industry had grown through the 1890s, and when the First World War ended the project of growing fruit seemed like a great way to employ and rehabilitate returning veterans. The orchards of BC became famed for their apples but the economic downturn of the late 1920s saw growers – and even the BC Fruit Growers Association, not to mention Country Life in BC – face unprecedented financial pressures. Calona was


Since 1919 Helping B.C. Grow Since 1919


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