Emigrate to Canada for Work Experience on Farms

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PHOTO: FOTOLIA/DUSAN ZIDAR
Don't feel limited by national borders when you're searching for the right farming opportunity.

A little over a year ago, a small group of us here in Ontario decided that Americans – at least, MOTHER EARTH NEWS types – should be encourage to emigrate to Canada. We were hoping to find people who were interested in getting farming experience, and who might enjoy living and working in Canada enough to stay. Since our government wasn’t doing anything in that direction, we thought we ourselves might help a few good people settle in our county.

We felt that such a program was necessary because the rural areas of Ontario (Canada’s second biggest province) are rapidly becoming depopulated and the number of people farming in Canada is decreasing. Here, as everywhere else, too many young people are leaving the land for the big city. The situation can be summed up as “How ya gonna keep ’em down on the farm after they’ve seen the farm?” We really need a goodly number of Mother Earth’s children to keep small-scale agriculture alive in parts of this region . . . so we set out to bring them here. Little did we realize the enormousness of the project we were undertaking, or the range of joys and disappointments it had in store for us.

Our first move was to place the following notice in the “Positions & Situations” column back in the November/December 1972 issue of MOTHER EARTH NEWS:

I’ll help sincere, strong chicks who want to leave the rat race to find work and accommodation on Ontario farms, to start spring of ’73 or earlier. No charge, no strings. Must be willing to adapt to primitive lifestyle, to learn and to remain for the entire season. My object: to bring alternatives-oriented people to Canada, hoping they’ll stay. Write a letter about yourself to me.

Jim Bannister
Bolton, Ontario
Canada

  • Published on Mar 1, 1974
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