Sydney Fisher was Minister of Agriculture in Ottawa during the years of Prime Minister Wilfrid Laurier, 1896-1911. Fisher, born in Montreal, was a graduate of McGill, also had earned a Bachelor of Arts in political economy and scientific agriculture from Trinity College at Cambridge in 1871. He was a farmer, and belonged to numerous associations such as Stock Feeding Association, Canadian Livestock Association, Dairymen’s Association, and others. In 1894, he accompanied Prime Minister Laurier on a trip to Western Canada. He consulted extensively with the American Secretary of Agriculture, Julius Sterling Morton, with whom he cooperated in tracking and reporting diseases in farm animals. He increased the livestock trade with the United States. Early in his tenure, he published a poster inviting settlers to Canada West advertising the possibilities of “Ranching, Dairying, Grain Raising, Fruit Raising, Mixed Farming.” Fisher is described as having done much to improve Agriculture in Canada.
In the history of agriculture in early Yorkton, there is much emphasis on agricultural events right from the start. Nathaniel Clark Wallace, president of the York Farmers Colonization Company, founders of Yorkton, was a member of parliament for York West in Ontario, and with the other company officials living in Toronto, they were close to all incoming information. They apprised themselves of the latest in agricultural methods to ensure the best farming and ranching information reached the settlers. The settlers were encouraged to establish an Agricultural Association and they did hold an Agricultural Exhibition one year after the start of settlement in 1883. They also held evenings of information and entertainment, such as the mainly Scottish settlement of Orkney near Yorkton were holding debates about rural life; “Farming versus Ranching.” There is every indication in our history that there was regular contact between settler, the founding fathers of the company and the Dept of Agriculture, under both the Conservative government of Macdonald and the Liberal government of Laurier. The only main complaint in those early years was the delay in getting a promised railway. And, that is another story to come.
Contact Terri Lefebvre Prince,
Heritage Researcher,
City of Yorkton Archives,
Box 400, 37 Third Avenue North
Yorkton, Sask. S3N 2W3
306-786-1722
heritage@yorkton.ca
