There were many columns in my 30-year career as a newspaper columnist that stirred up readers to respond by writing letters to the editor. In the 1990s, I wrote columns for a dozen publications and excerpts from the columns sometimes appeared in Southam News, Thompson publications and in What Canada Thinks, a weekly compilation of editorials and columns in newspapers across Canada.
I spoke my mind, never scared of offending farmers or farm groups and I never lost a job as a columnist because I was too controversial. The column that brought the most response from readers (in five provinces) was one written in 1994 entitled “Farm wives shouldn’t be choring with young children.”
I had written: “From 1977 through 1993, work-related incidents claimed the lives of 119 children under the age of 15 on Ontario farms. Approximately half of those victims were under the age of five. The barn is a dangerous playground for children.”
I wrote: “There are many articles in newspapers and in farm magazines about women who farm with their husbands and work from dawn to dusk. With so many modern conveniences, gadgets and push-button controls in most dairy and hog operations, you’d wonder why so many farm wives with young children are choring in the barns.”
“Actually, come to think of it, farm women today are not much better off than their grandmothers and great-grandmothers, who stood over a hot wood stove in the cookhouse during the summer months cooking big hearty meals for the men who laboured on the farm.”
I gave an interesting example of a woman with young children choring every morning at 6 a.m. and holding a full time job in town. The husband and her milk 27 cows and he couldn’t do that alone.
The papers published numerous letters from women who stated they enjoyed working in the barn, and yes, it’s a dangerous place for kids, so what. Readers said my column was incredibly sexist. Others told me “to get with it” as women are also farmers.
There were also positive letters. One woman wrote thanking me for writing on the subject. She said she is of slight build and had always worked with her husband in the barn carrying pails of milk, heavy feed and bales of hay. She said she spent so much money going to chiropractors and two years ago told her husband she wasn’t going to help in the barn anymore. She had to convince him she couldn’t do a man’s work in the barn. Now I don’t have achy bones and haven’t been to a chiropractor in over a year, she wrote.
I used excerpts what the readers said and made another interesting column. A few weeks later I ran into an old school buddy in a store and he wanted to know what the heck was wrong with me. He said, “First you tell women they shouldn’t be in the barn working. You get socked on the chin from women across Canada and then you write about how they took you to task for your views. How stupid can you be?”
If Allan happens to read this he’ll probably wonder if I lost my marbles resurrecting this story after all these years. Well, my editor from an agricultural publication suggested I write about the two columns that brought the most feedback: good and bad. The funny one on Valley Expressions will have to be featured another time.
