A page from 19th century Binscarth history

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 04/06/2020 (2171 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Manitoba Agricultural Museum obtained digital copies of the Nor-West Farmer and Miller for the year 1886 from the Manitoba Cooperator, which is a successor to the Nor-West Farmer. The Nor-West Farmer in the mid 1880s ran a monthly series called Among the Farmers in which a reporter simply named as R.W.M. visited various agricultural ventures and communities in Manitoba and reported on their progress. The Manitoba Agricultural Museum will be using individual reports as a basis for interpretative press releases.

“Among the Farmers – The Binscarth Herd” ran in the March 1886 NorWest Farmer. The Binscarth Herd was owned by the Ontario, Scottish and Manitoba Land Company, a land company that owned three townships in the Binscarth area. The Order in Council authorized sale of land owned by the Dominion Government to land companies allowed for the sale of even numbered sections to land companies or the sale of both even numbered and odd numbered sections. Generally, even-numbered sections were held for homestead lands and odd numbered sections were held for railway land grants. There were almost 30 land companies active on the Prairies in the 1880s, but it appears only several land company had tracts in Manitoba, the Scottish, Ontario and Manitoba Land Company (SO&M) being one. The Binscarth herd and it’s owner the SO&M, are interesting topics so this release will run in two parts. Part One, presented here, is the actual Nor-West Farmer article on the Binscarth Herd. Part Two covers the SO&M and the topic of land companies.

AMONG THE FARMERS: THE BINSCART HERD BY R.W.M.

The Nor-West Farmer has had a long standing invitation to visit Binscarth, which but for the distance might have been earlier responded to, but having taken up the topic of beef cattle raising, as practiced in Manitoba, we felt bound to enquire whether Binscarth with its fine lot of high grade Shorthorns had anything noteworthy to add to the experience of the less pretentious cattle ranches we have already visited. The fifty mile drive from Moosomin, very pleasant perhaps in July or October, but not so attractive in January, was made even less pleasant and much more tedious, owing to the trail being blown over by recent snowdrift, and we spent thirteen hours doing in what in fine weather might have been got over in 8 or 9. We found the nose in particular a troublesome and too prominent feature, and, philosophically speaking, very much out of harmony with its environment. But we got there all the same, and after an hour’s general thawing out at the stove, and a substantial supper, went out with a lantern to the cattle barn, where we saw a sight good for sore eyes, and one not likely to be soon paralleled in the Northwest. Of course, even at Binscarth everything is not superlative: there was in one corner of that big barn a batch of young steers, whose history is an exceptional one, and explained further on; and which our friend Mr. Adamson would at once dismiss from notice as “verra or’nar brutes.”

Binscarth itself is very unlike an ordinary Manitoba farm, and before we speak of its buildings and cattle we must shortly explain why the whole came to be there.

The Scottish, Ontario and Manitoba Land Company with its head office in Glasgow and Mr. W.B. Scarth, then of Toronto, as its commissioner in Canada, had, by his advice in 1881, after a pretty long journey throughout the province, elected as most suitable for agricultural immigrants, three townships in all, two at Binscarth in 19 and 20 of range 28 and one near Shoal Lake in range 25, and with the object of turning this to account, Mr. Smellie, the present manager at Binscarth, was sent up in June 1882 and took up with him several Ontario settlers, who still remain there on their homesteads. He built a small barn and broke a few acres on some likely sections near it, as an inducement to probable purchasers of these lands in the following spring. On going east to Toronto for the winter, he asked to take the management of the land business of these two townships, and as an advertisement and attraction to further settlement, to find a local center and go into the cultivation of wheat. For it had already been clearly demonstrated, as far as figures could do so, that a man could buy virgin soil at $10 per acre and pay for it out of the profits of the first year’s crop. Mr. Smellie could not see his way to the attainment of such prodigiously satisfactory profits from raising wheat, but suggested that the money might be better employed in raising a good class of stock from which to supply settlers, whose limited means would prevent them from importing good breeding cattle on their own resources. This prudent suggestion found favor with the directors of the company, and Mr. Smellie was set to work collecting good grade heifers and one or two pedigree Shorthorn bulls to start the future herd. He came up in the middle of May, 1883, with 100 head of high grade caste, including ten head of pure bred Shorthorns and a few horses. The grade heifers cost, delivered, $75 a head, and considering their quality, were not too dear. A few of the thoroughbreds were already in calf, and one of these calves was the bull, Binscarth Chief, which captured the first prize for his age at St. Boniface, and may be heard from again, as soon as possible. Lumber was procured from Minneapolis and a large and substantial barn was built, compactly and conveniently fitted up for cattle below, and for grain and hay above. This barn for which the site was excavated on the bank of Silver Creek, measures, with a recent addition, 50 ft by 250 ft, and accommodates 200 head of cattle and 20 horses.

There are several other buildings, such as store, post office and blacksmith shop, a small church, hotel and an implement shed. Altogether $22,000 were spent on buildings at Binscarth, making a very complete business center for the Scottish Ontario Co.’s colony, through not perhaps an immediately lucrative investment. There is really no nonsense about these buildings, they are well planned, substantially put together, their only fault is that they have cost a deal of money, owing to have been built when both labor and lumber were high priced. It is rather difficult to boom a colony and secure at the same time a big return for its investments, and we return to our cattle, with the comfort so far that more real good has been done, and less loss incurred through their means, than in growing a great breadth of wheat and oats fifty miles from market. The cattle breeding may very soon be able to pay its own way, besides conferring a substantial and permanent benefit on the Province, grain growing, in the season just past, would have done a great deal worse. Cattle breeding here has not been a showy and expensive experiment, and being well out of the way of the Pulman car tourist, has not been made ridiculous by exaggerated and premature estimates of its pecuniary and practical results.

A summary of these results, as concise as possible, we now offer to our readers. As already intimated, the thirty or forty steers of the first year’s crop did not amount to much. Some hay had been stored on the outlaying townships forty miles southeast , and these calves were driven over in the winter of ‘84 to utilize it. There was no water except from melted snow , and the calves came out badly from such treatment, (in Mr. Smellie’s absence, down in Ontario). They have never got well over it, and show very conclusively that good animals once spoiled by improper treatment can never be effectually restored. The heifers of the same year are in good shape and some of them are in calf. Also year’s calves are good, and a few very high grade calves six months old have been sold at $40 each and gave great satisfaction to the purchasers. The herd as a whole is of a high standard not yet reached elsewhere, and the long list of their well deserved victories at the late St. Boniface show, proves that they were wonderfully well bought and have been handled well since. The cows have a special merit not always found in well-blooded Shorthorns. Many of them are very good milkers, having been selected with an eye to milk as well as butcher’s meat. After they have suckled their calves, they are dried up in batches of half a dozen at once, but not till they have been milked some time for the sake of keeping them accustomed to milling as well as suckling, and thus be sold at any time as good dairy cows. Such a cow bought young and in calf to a Binscarth bull might prove worth as a milker all the money she cost, whole her calf if a male would prove a great acquisition to a farmer who could never afford to buy a pedigreed bull. Another thing to be specially noted is that on the ranches out west high grade bulls of this strain may be worth buying at a fair price to improve the half wild stock there, and this is a matter that western ranchmen will not be slow to lay ahold of, once they are made aware that there is within convenient distance a herd which can be raised by wholesale, young bulls better worth paying for than many of their own would be worth taking as a gift. For breeding purposes within the Province, thoroughbred bulls ought always to have the preference, and there are here both variety and number enough of such animals to satisfy the local demand. The fine young bull from this stock now at Glendurham, will probably prove a better investment to his owners than a coarse brute at half the cost, and if fortunate will prove the very best advertisement of the herd from which he sprung. The premiums offered at the Provincial show are not such as to induce the owners to travel so far to exhibit, but a few good young animals of either sex scattered over the Province will induce intelligent farmers to enquire more particularly after the stock from which they are raised. Mr. Smellie has just secured one of the very finest bull calves of his year in Ontario, and the quality of the herd is not likely to go down in his hands. We therefore submit that it is fairly proved that as breeding stock, the Binscarth herd is a great benefit to the country, for the raising of superior dairy and beef stock, and likely in its present hands to become still more so. On the day we left we brought to mail replies to several letters from farmers both east and west enquiring for both young heifers and bulls, and these enquiries confirm our estimate of the importance to the best interests of Manitoba of this and similar herds of less size, to be afterwards noted.

The present strength of the herd is 185, and with the older steers cleared off and a round of 200 breeders only, may be as many as the immediate wants of the country will bear. Binscarth is not so suitable as other places east for the profitable raising of pure bred cattle. There are too few swamps and hay costs to get $2.50 per ton, which would become still dearer if this kind of work were extensively gone into.

The advantage to its owners of this whole undertaking must be looked for more in the enhanced value of the very fine townships of which it is the centre, than in the profits from farming, but on this cattle department Mr, Smellie hopes to be very soon in a position that will show a very fair balance sheet, which is seldom the case in similar undertakings either at home or in Canada.

The situation of this place is very fine, the surrounding country much more picturesque than the average of Manitoba, and the soil very good, and well adapted for mixed farming whenever more favorable harvests warrant freer ventures in that way. Next year will see the railway alongside and full access to the markets. The first survey of the main line of the C.P.R. ran through this very district and its subsequent removal forty miles further to the south has been much against the full development of these choice lands and we hope that their new railway facilities will be the means of giving them the publicity which they so well deserve.

The Manitoba Northwestern will in a few months be opened through this township and bring it properly into connection with the outside world.

The Manitoba Agricultural Museum is open year round and operates a website at http://mbagmuseum.ca/ which can provide visitors with information on Museum. As Manitoba celebrates 150 years as a province, tell your story of Manitoba agriculture! The Manitoba Agricultural Museum needs you to contribute your farming story by showcasing yourself, one of your ancestors or someone you know and telling your/their story! More information on this project can be found at http://mbagmuseum.ca/farmersofmanitoba

» Alex Campbell is a volunteer and member of the interpretation committee at the Manitoba Agricultural Museum.