Funeral services will be held Saturday in Regina for farm journalist, author and former Country Guide editor Don Baron, best known as a vocal critic of regulation in the Prairie grain industry.
Baron, according to his obituary Wednesday in Regina’s Leader-Post, died “peacefully” Nov. 13 of unspecified causes. His funeral is scheduled for Nov. 20 at 2 p.m. at Regina’s First Presbyterian Church, 2170 Albert St.
Baron is considered to have played a significant role in the early 1950s in promoting corn and soybean production in Ontario, according to retired Guide editor Dave Wreford, who replaced Baron at the helm of the storied farm magazine in 1975.
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Furthermore, Baron “certainly foresaw the structural change in agriculture from a ‘lifestyle’ to a ‘business’ emphasis” as well as the need for technical education in the ag community, Wreford said in an email Thursday.
Baron’s work on the magazine, he said, also foresaw the “inevitable trend toward a market-based ag economy and away from government influence.”
Baron “made the Guide a great farm magazine and helped us all in our careers,” Harold Dodds, former editor of the Guide’s sister book Canadian Cattlemen, said in a separate email.
Baron was raised in Ottawa and graduated from the University of Guelph’s Ontario Agricultural College in 1949, entering farm journalism first at Toronto-based Farmer’s Magazine and then moving to Winnipeg in 1952 to become assistant editor of the Guide.
Dodds recalled that his father Ernest, an Ontario farmer, knew Baron at the time, and after Baron married Irene Jones in 1952, “Don often told the story of how their most unique wedding present was a 75-pound bag of potatoes from Ernie Dodds.”
Baron relocated twice with Country Guide as a field editor, first to Calgary and then to Toronto before returning to Winnipeg as the magazine’s editor-in-chief in 1962.
“When Don moved to Winnipeg to edit the Guide in 1962, Manitoba made everyone from Ontario retake (their driver exams),” Dodds said. “Handing in his Ontario license, Don failed his test and came home on the bus. His reputation was made forever and we shied from riding with him.”
Baron would later return to Toronto for a post with CBC Television in 1975 as the public broadcaster’s head of agriculture and resources TV.
He then switched to the ag policy arena, first by moving to Regina in 1979 to become executive director of the Palliser Wheat Growers Association, a pro-deregulation group that later morphed into the Western Canadian Wheat Growers Association.
He remained in Regina for his next post (1983-90) as a speechwriter for Saskatchewan’s then-premier Grant Devine, also serving as chief of staff to Joan Duncan, a southwestern MLA and cabinet minister in various portfolios including consumer affairs, revenue and economic development.
Baron would later publish four books including Battleground: The Socialist Assault on Grant Devine’s Canadian Dream (1991) and Beyond Rogues’ Harbour: The Epic Story of a Canadian Anglo-Saxon Family (1993).
He also returned to farm writing with Canada’s Great Grain Robbery (1997), a study of grain politics on the Prairies, and Jailhouse Justice (2001), an account of Prairie farmers jailed following a series of border-hopping protests against the Canadian Wheat Board’s export monopoly on Prairie wheat and barley.
During his career Baron also served stints as president of the Agricultural Institute of Canada, the Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation and the provincial farm writers’ and broadcasters’ groups in Manitoba and Ontario.
He also served on two commissions in Manitoba: a panel enquiry into vegetable marketing in the province and its Commission on Targets for Economic Development.
