YORKTON - Mixed in among the static tractor displays at the recent Threshermen’s Show and Seniors’ Festival in Yorkton were two tractors that seemed out of place yet were also to my mind a herald of what Western Development Museums must jump on.
The line of equipment was generally old and rusty with near forgotten company names such as Rumely Oil Pull.
The old iron is great to see, more so if you are of a certain age. My grandfather would have been most familiar with most of tractors there. My dad less so but interested. Myself as a reader and journalist that I maintain a level of interest. My son simply has no reference point past what I may have told him.
That holds even for younger adults growing up on a farm these days.
But then there were the two anomalies in the line-up – a pair of old four-wheel drive Versatile tractors.
Versatile is a Canadian agricultural machinery manufacturer. The company was founded in 1963 by Peter Pakosh and Roy Robinson in Winnipeg, and at one time it had some 70 per cent of the 4WD tractor market.
It is significant in terms of Canadian Prairie agriculture history that Versatile was founded in Manitoba and highly successful in the farm marketplace.
But consider for a moment a tractor rolling off the production line in the mid 1960s –that is some 60 years ago – and wonder how many still exist at all, knowing even fewer are still operational.
Why is the WDM not actively gathering such tractors before they are lost forever?
And of course Versatile are hardly the only example of Canadian Prairie agriculture implements which should be preserved.
Where are the early Morris rodweeders and Bourgault cultivators, and Schulte rock pickers or Brandt augers or the Roto Thresh combine.
The last one is of some added interest as it really was a combine ahead of its time.
The first Roto Thresh combine harvester rolled off the production line in Saskatoon in 1974, offering higher harvesting capacity and reduced grain loss. Only fifty machines were built, however, before production ceased in 1978.
And it doesn’t take much of a leap to ask where the now near forgotten pull type combines are.
And certainly the earliest direct seeding equipment, and agricultural technology leap forward of which Canadian Prairie manufacturers were leaders.
If museums are a repository of history and in the WDM’s case Prairie agriculture history is of particular importance, then collecting can’t stop. That means gathering as we move forward, and there seems much that should be added that is out-of-date today but of significance in terms of our farming past.
In the process another generation might walk the line with a new level of interest based on actual experience.
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