The Rural Voice, 2006-08, Page 42In the days when harvest depended on muscle -power, many young Ontario boys headed west to help with the harvest.
THE HARVEST
EXCURSION
It was once a goung man's adventure to go west on
the harvest excursions
By Ted Bannon
Those of us who have grown up
on the farm here in Ontario
prior to the last war will
remember what the phrase,' "harvest
excursion" meant.
It was a well-known phrase in the
rural parts of Ontario, and in the rural
parts of Quebec as well, and it simply
meant that the railroads had this
harvest excursion in the late autumn
of every year for those young farm
stalwarts who wanted to go west for
the wheat harvest. Excursion trips
were common enough years ago with
38 THE RURAL VOICE
the railroads, who sold round-trip
tickets at reduced rates to some
distant city or locality where some
particular event or celebration was
taking place. This harvest excursion,
though, was a farm institution, as
they say, that had lasted for several
generations until mechanization on
the farm finally caught up with it and
it came to an end.
Usually there was a lull in the
farm work here in Ontario when the
harvest was over — fall ploughing did
not begin until later so many of the
farm boys simply packed up a
suitcase and headed west for a month
or more. Not only was it a good
adventure but for the most part a very
lucrative one as well with many
returning with hefty wallets in their
pockets.
Quite a few of these wheat farmers
in the west would be waiting at the
station of these small prairie towns
and when the train pulled in they
would recruit their hired hands right
on the spot. Accommodations varied
at many of these farms and ranches
with some having bunkhouses and at
other places, they were supplied with
blankets and slept in the hayloft.
They had their meals in the
farmhouse, of course.
Kathleen Strange, in her book
about the west, With the West in her
Eyes, has given us a very accurate
description of some of the farmhands
who came to their farm during the
harvest excursion.
"That first summer we quartered
our men, like ourselves, in granaries
and tents. Later, when we had the