By Peter Christensen

Op-Ed Commentary

There is a phone call from Johnny and Wendy, they are at Fairmont for a little get away, celebrating 50 years of marriage. They ask about dropping by for coffee on Saturday afternoon. We grew up together near a small rural community in Central Alberta. Our parents were farmers, we went to the same school from Grade One until Grade 11, we attended the same church, drank our first illegal beer together.

Johnny knew he was going to farm from the time he was old enough to drive a tractor. He’s retired now and rents his farmland to the Hutterites, says “they are good farmers.” Wendy was a talented artist.  After their kids were on their own she devoted more time to her artwork and became a fine artist and in-demand workshop leader.

Old friends are the best friends! and not just because we are still alive although that does have something to do with it!  And here they are, Johnny and Wendy, on our doorstep! My goodness, it’s 50 years later. Wendy gives me a big hug and says, “Fifty years, how did that happen?” We are in our seventies now. I want to hear about the home place, about classmates!

Johnny always took an interest in people and was never a big talker. He claims it was because he was a bit nervous, like his Mother, so rather than talk he interviews people: wants to know what they did, where they worked, how things came together or didn’t? “It’s how you learn things.”

I don’t know if it was habit or where we were brought up but both of us are a bit stoic, slower talking than most, even have a bit of a rural drawl. That means it can take a while to get a conversation going and with Johnny being the one who wants to do the interviewing and me having to answer his questions, I felt a bit overwhelmed after they left.  I had not talked that much in a long while. (They are interested and interesting people, rare enough these days!)

The next day, after their visit, I thought I should have insisted on asking more questions. There were lots of things I wanted to know but I talked so much that at one point I could not find my breath and had a spell of double vision! I am exaggerating a bit.

Johnny did talk about how the farms have grown much larger, you had to expand to survive. Alberta agriculture is not backyard Harrowsmith gardening; either you spend the winter studying commodity markets to figure out what to grow and finance to determine what price to pay for cattle or you go broke! It was agri-business. A bit of luck with weather helps.

They both had a confidence about them that I don’t remember. They are a successful team, proud but gentle and humble. I asked Johnny what did he actually do, on a daily basis, when he was farming?

He said something about how it seemed people around him just liked to work. His older brother, a helicopter mechanic, moved back to the farm and fixed and welded for 18 years before he’d had enough!

As for himself, Johnny laughed and sat back and said he drank a lot of rum and cokes.

– Peter Christensen is a Columbia Valley-based writer and poet

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