Another Season's Promise: Hope and Despair in Canada's Farm Country

W.J.C. Cherwinski is a professor of history and Canadian Studies Program
supervisor at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He is the co-author
of Lectures in Canadian Labour and Working-Class History.

Boyens, a producer with the CBC television program Country Canada,
chronicles the trials and tribulations of farming by focusing on a
single farm family. The Wielers of Kane, in Southern Manitoba, consider
themselves progressive, environmentally aware businesspeople, yet they
struggle constantly to maintain a profitable operation while avoiding
damaging their environment further. Each chapter discusses a different
aspect of their lives as they attempt to cope with factors that, in
their totality, signal the disappearance of a way of life and the
communities it spawned. Rural depopulation has been a longstanding
problem, but the pace has accelerated due to the cost-price squeeze
created by international competition from highly subsidized agricultural
economies offshore. Governments and their corporate partners fail to
comprehend the gravity of the situation and to address it with
sufficient support.

The farm crisis has been described and analyzed many times but seldom
as well, or with as much empathy, as in this volume. As Boyens states,
“Canadian society has to decide what value it puts on the family
farm.” Unfortunately, the jury will likely remain out for quite a
while.