By Tara de Ryk
July 23, 2010

Henry Elmer Laird: Son, husband, farmer, Second World War veteran, mentor, environmentalist, columnist, teacher, community builder, champion of many a "lost cause" and friend. Born Jan. 19, 1924 in Neville, Sask. Died July 17, in Davidson and District Health Centre of old age, at 86.

DAVIDSON-Elmer Laird, considered by many as Saskatchewan's "grandfather" of organic agriculture, died in the early morning hours of July 17 in a room in the north wing of Davidson and District Health Centre.

Pioneer is a word often used to describe Laird, mostly for his work as a staunch proponent of organic agriculture and as an environmentalist. He was best known for his work promoting and supporting organic agriculture.

Since foregoing chemical herbicides and pesticides in 1969, Elmer became a vocal proponent and defender of organic agriculture. He stopped using chemicals for economic reasons, to save money. He soon became a convert to organic agriculture and one of its staunchest supporters.

A progressive-minded person, Elmer possessed a pioneering spirit.

His formal education ended after Grade 8, but he was a lifelong learner. He valued research, study and policy so he and others could make educated decisions.

Elmer was the only child of John and Martha Laird, and was raised on the family farm near Wymark, Sask.

In 1930 he started school at Spring School, a one-room country school that had 21 pupils. When he completed Grade 8 in 1937, the school had nine pupils attending. Elmer took Grade 9 by correspondence, but failed because he did not pass his French exam.

In the 1930s, during the Depression, Grade 8 was an acceptable education for young men, who were then expected to go to work on their fathers' or neighbours' farms.

In 1939 and 1940 Elmer worked at a summer resort, Darlings Beach, on Lac Peltier. In the fall he went harvesting on other farms. In the fall of 1940 his cousin Norma and her husband Allan Heyd of Duncan, B.C., invited him to travel with them to Duncan to see if he could get a job in the lumber industry.

The war had started and jobs were opening up because young men were being drafted or volunteering with the armed services. After his school years, he worked on farms in Saskatchewan and Alberta and logging camps and sawmills in British Columbia. He joined the Royal Canadian Air Force in 1942, serving three years as an airframe mechanic in Canada, England and Germany.

He returned home in 1945 and got a job as a switchman for the Canadian Pacific Railway in the Swift Current railway yards. While in Germany, he decided he wanted to farm and in 1947 with a $6,000 grant under the Veterans' Land Act, bought 320 acres of land at Davidson, where his uncle Robert Laird and family lived and farmed. He gradually acquired more land for a total of 1,120 acres.

In 1950 Elmer joined the Saskatchewan Farmers Union and in 1952 he was elected director of District 10. He served two five-year terms. He was also on many committees. In 1960 he organized and was president of the irrigation policy committee of the South Saskatchewan River Dam.

According to Elmer, at that time, there was a lot of opposition to irrigation and as it had to do with farm policy, Elmer, as an SFU director for the district, said, "Let's do some investigating."

About 10 people met in Outlook once a week for two winters to discuss irrigation. They worked with Saskatchewan Agriculture, brought in speakers, held public meetings and took tours of irrigation projects in Alberta to educate farmers in the Diefenbaker region so people would have enough knowledge to decide if they wanted to participate in the irrigation system proposed for the region.

"At that time there was opposition to irrigation. One guy told me, 'there would be blood in those ditches before water.' I thought it would be my blood," Elmer said. "I didn't care if they wanted irrigation or not. I wanted them to make an informed decision."

As a result of his work on the Saskatchewan River Dam project, Elmer's help was enlisted by a group of farmers and ranchers south of Davidson.

The group became known as the Squaw Creek Ranchers. They were concerned about effluent from the town's sewage lagoon running off and polluting their land downstream. Elmer became a member of the group and after studying the problem found a solution to irrigate cropland adjacent to the lagoon. Davidson became the first municipality in the province to deal with its excess wastewater in such a way. Other municipalities have since copied the method.

Elmer lived his life with a purpose: to leave this world a better place.

This attention included the land on his farm. The soil, Weyburn loam, due to poor agricultural practices, turned to dust and was badly eroded by wind during the drought of the 1930s. Laird spent decades tending this land, restoring the soil's health, making it suitable to grow crops.

Elmer, like many people who came through the Depression, possessed a social conscience.

In the 1930s, Elmer's parents lost their farm and after the war, they had little money and moved into a home in Swift Current.

"If I can't help my parents down there, I should work here to help out other people. One community was helping my parents and I should help out another community," Elmer had said.

The need for affordable housing for senior citizens in Davidson became apparent to him and in 1958 he became chairman of what would become the Arm River Housing Corporation. The initial group was made up of local fraternal lodges and local churches. In 1966 Prairie View Lodge (now incorporated into Davidson and District Health Centre) was opened. Elmer served 15 years as the housing corporation's chairman.

Meanwhile, in 1963, Elmer, at the age of 39, a self-described "career bachelor farmer", met Gladys MacKay. It was a chance meeting. Elmer, who had been doing some writing, decided, "if you were going to write something useful, you should understand the art of listening". So one day he went to the Provincial Library in Regina to ask for some books on the "art of listening". Gladys, a librarian, whom he'd never previously met, found some books and after a visit, Elmer invited her out to dinner.

Elmer later wrote, "I never really did find out if it was my interest in the art of listening that inspired her to accept my invitation. Perhaps she thought, 'Finally I have met a man that is interested in listening.' If it was, I expect that in the long haul, I was probably a disappointment. She no doubt found out that I probably only listened when I wanted to, like most other men."

They were married in Pennington County Court House in Rapid City, S.D., April 7, 1969.

Thus began a 30-year marriage that was a true partnership. "She was my inspiration, my advisor, my consultant and my critic," Elmer wrote.

Their beliefs and ideals complemented one another.

Gladys, Elmer said, was a staunch environmentalist. She believed nutritious food, vitamin and mineral supplements and sanitation and cleanliness were the keys to good health.

As a librarian, books and information were Gladys' main interest. She moved to the farm at Davidson in 1970. Gladys supported Elmer's decision in 1969 to stop using agricultural pesticides. While he did it for economic reasons, Gladys, through her skill as a researcher, sought information on the toxicity of pesticides. On the basis of this information, in 1972, Elmer sold the sprayer and with her support farmed organically for the rest of his life.

But he couldn't do it quietly. He spoke out about the need for research and support for organic agriculture. His was often the lone voice of dissent.

Don Robertson, a farmer from Liberty, met Elmer in the late 1960s after Robertson was elected as a director of the Saskatchewan Farmers' Union. Around that time there was a push to go national with the farmers union. At the National Farmers Union founding convention in Winnipeg in 1969, Elmer was one of 620 delegates from Saskatchewan in attendance.

At that time environmental issues never got to the floor of the convention. Most of the farmers were chemical farmers, however, Elmer said, there was always a few meeting at the back of the hall talking about the environment and pesticides. A couple of years later, after a conversation with a British sociologist on what a small group of environmentalists could do to develop an environmental policy, he suggested they set up their own research program.

In 1973 Local 614 of the National Farmers Union sponsored the Back to the Farm Research Foundation, with Gladys serving informally as its research director.
Robertson, who has farmed with chemicals all his life, acted as chairman at those founding meetings.

Robertson volunteered to help. "He needed at least one friend," he said of why he became involved.

He spent three decades serving as the Foundation's vice-president, backing up Elmer who was the Foundation's president.

"I was sympathetic to what Elmer was trying to do. He was getting quite a bit of flack," Robertson said.

Elmer had strong convictions and had the strength to stick to them even though they were unpopular at the time.

"He had very strong beliefs and he was very committed to them. It didn't matter if there was opposition to his beliefs. He stuck to them and he always followed up on them," Robertson said.

The Back to the Farm Research Foundation was established to: find ways and means of getting more farmers on the land and, to find ways of producing food without the use of toxic chemicals.

Elmer stayed true to these objectives for the next 30 years. Elmer was always willing to experiment and do policy research. The Grasshopper Harvester Competition of 1975 received national attention and is still recalled to this day.

The Foundation sponsored the Canadian Organic Producer Marketing Co-operative that had a cleaning, milling and processing plant in Girvin, the first in Canada. The Girvin Co-op, as it became known locally, was the first organization to market certified organic seed in the U.S. and overseas.

Gladys died Nov. 15, 1999. They never had children.

Elmer said they had considered adoption, but were advised against it due to their age. He never expressed regret over their decision to heed this well-meant advice.

So he enjoyed other people's children and had infinite patience with little boys who wanted to "drive" all the ancient tractors scattered around his farmyard. When all those machines had been sampled, he'd search for more equipment to amuse the child. He was always happy to balance a baby on his knee.

After Gladys' death, Elmer continued his work. He was a columnist for The Davidson Leader for over 20 years, writing about important environmental, political, social and agricultural issues.

In 2001 Elmer leased his farm to the research foundation, which then established an organic research, and demonstration farm, the first in Canada. The foundation continues to operate the farm, carrying on Elmer's work to demonstrate organic agricultural practices and to experiment with different growing techniques.

It was Elmer's wish that communities would become self-sufficient, producing healthy, nutritious food locally. He would have liked to see the garden spot at the farm used as a community garden. Another wish was for the development of pre-fab root cellars so that people could properly store food grown in their gardens. A third desire was for straw-bale greenhouses so fresh food could be enjoyed year round.

David Orchard, who started farming organically in the mid-1970s, viewed Elmer as a mentor.

Orchard said there were other organic farmers at the time, but recalled, "Elmer stepped right into the fray and waged battles that needed to be waged."

One such battle began in the late 1970s and lasted for six years. Laird took on the Saskatchewan Crop Insurance program because it would only insure his crop for a projected yield of six bushels an acre, much less than the amount of grain he planned to grow.

Provincial officials had claimed that Elmer's refusal to spray would lead to an abundance of weeds and less grains. In 1984 the battle was resolved with crop insurance giving into the farm pressure. Later, crop insurance policy was changed so that farmers using organic methods are insured on almost the same terms as conventional producers.

Elmer believed that access to healthy, nutritious food is a basic human right. He advocated that hospitals, schools and even the cafeteria on Parliament Hill should serve food produced without herbicides and pesticides.

Elmer also championed equal rights for women. He supported women and was impressed by their ability to raise a family, keep house and work outside the home. In 1968 he made a presentation to the Royal Commission on the Status of Women. In return, Elmer had many lifelong friendships with women.

He was an avid correspondent. The dining room table of his farmhouse was often covered in letters, periodicals and articles sent to him by friends and colleagues.

Elmer did as much as, or more than Davidson's Giant Coffee Pot to earn the community recognition. People from around the world would make a point of stopping in at the farm while passing through Saskatchewan. Many wanted to meet the man they had heard so much about. He especially enjoyed meeting young people interested in organic agriculture and organic food and would tour them around, driving them not only around the farm, but throughout the district, showing them points of interest. While he was a gracious host and tour guide, Elmer used the time to educate his captive audience, teaching them about the importance of a clean environment.

In 2008 Elmer was honoured by being the first organic farmer inducted into the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame.

He served as president of the Davidson Agricultural Society and served on the Davidson Branch of the Canadian Mental Health Society. In 1955 he was chairman of the Jubilee parade committee and was a member of the Davidson branch of the Royal Canadian Legion. He was a founding member of the Cataract Coffee Club that conducted daily meetings at Keepers Restaurant.

Elmer served on many committees in the community. On some committees he ended up as a reluctant chairman, only doing so because he saw a need and he possessed the will and wherewithal to accomplish a particular task.

He wasn't afraid to speak up. He did so at an all-candidates' forum at the parish hall in Davidson in 2006 organized by The Davidson Leader to give voters a chance to question an unprecedented 13 candidates running for town council.

Elmer, as a resident of the R.M. of Arm River, was unable to vote in the municipal election, so when he rose from his chair at the back of the room and shuffled through the crowd, some wondered what was on his mind.

He pointed out the obvious: a lack of a floor microphone for those in the crowd to use to put their questions to the candidates so that all could hear. Elmer then backed up his observation by brandishing a 50-dollar bill and immediately started a fund to buy a floor mic for the parish hall. His actions earned him chers of support and loud applause from the appreciative crowd.

A date has yet to be set for a funeral service for Elmer. The service will likely take place in August and people may be assured there will be an open mic on the floor.

The leaderonline is a division of The Davidson Leader, Davidson, Saskatchewan, Canada.