Residents of St. Jean Baptiste notice a gap when they look around their community on the banks of the Red River.
The grain elevator, which had stood as a fixture of the town’s landscape for 70 years and was still standing at the beginning of October, is missing.
“The St. Jean skyline feels empty now and it will take some time to get used to,” said an Oct. 15 Facebook post by NuVision Commodities Inc., which owned the building, a day after the historic elevator went up in flames.
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Why it matters: St. Jean Baptiste was the location of a dramatic grain elevator fire Oct. 14.
The facility caught fire early in the morning Oct. 14, drawing some 80 firefighters from a ring of neighboring community fire departments. Some residents of the community were evacuated as a precaution.
“We thank God for watching over us and keeping everyone safe,” the company wrote later on Facebook. According to the post, the area was under a boil water advisory the next day.
History
The elevator opened its doors in August 1951, author George Bruneau wrote in his 1982 centennial history of the region, “Reapers of the Valley.”
In 1951, a group of farmers approached the president of Manitoba Pool to request construction of the elevator. According to Bruneau, St. Jean Baptiste already had three elevators, and Manitoba Pool’s president at the time, W.P. Parker, wasn’t keen on the idea.
“The delegation tried to convince Mr. Parker that many farmers were delivering their crop at the Pool Elevators in Letellier and Morris,” Bruneau wrote.
Letellier is 16 kilometres down the road, an 11-minute drive in modern times. The equation was different in early post-Second World War days, when road systems were less developed.
The farmers, who formed the Co-operative Elevator Association headed by Simeon Marion, gathered 94 signatures, guaranteeing that 20,000 acres worth of crops would be delivered to the elevator each year. The group also put down a deposit of $20,000.
Parker was convinced.
Newly built, the elevator held 40,000 bushels at a time, according to the Manitoba Historical Society. Bruneau added that, in its first year, the elevator handled nearly 440,000 bushels.
The next year, a 60,000-bushel annex was constructed. Still, Bruneau noted, the elevator ran out of capacity throughout the 1950s, forcing farmers to deliver to other towns.
In 1965, a further 90,000 bushels of capacity was added.
Manitoba Historical Society records show a full renovation in 1971. By the time Bruneau wrote his book, the facility was handling more than a million bushels of grain per year.
It was further expanded with three steel bins in 1991, and its track capacity was expanded in 1994, the historical society reports.
The elevator was built when the Manitoba countryside was in flux.
“Rising expectations, improved roads and mechanized farm equipment accelerated [rural depopulation],” wrote Brian Wittal in a 2020 Grainews article.
Throughout the following decades, farms became larger and fewer and rail companies no longer found it profitable to maintain all the small branch lines that had previously picked up grain from small-town elevators. The end of the Crow Rate in 1996 led to further rail line abandonments, Wittal wrote.
To stay profitable, grain companies revamped their strategies.
When Wittal wrote in 2020, there were 354 elevators operating across the Prairies, “a massive rationalization of an industry within a 90-year time frame – a 94 per cent reduction in numbers.”
In 1998, Manitoba Pool and the Alberta Wheat Pool amalgamated to form Agricore Co-operative Limited, and the new entity closed the St. Jean elevator in 2001. A Western Producer article from the time indicates the company closed at least a dozen elevators that year in a bid to cut expenses.
Later that year, Agricore merged with United Grain Growers to form Agricore United. In 2007, the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool took over Agricore United, forming Viterra.
Local marketing firm NuVision Commodities bought the elevator in 2003 to use for bulk storage, and it was still in use when it burned.
“She was strong and stubborn until the end,” the company wrote on Facebook. “We are proud to have owned and operated one of the last few wooden grain elevators.”
People replied to the post with some of their own reminiscences.
“I remember in the back pit area by the stairs, there was a wood spout with a lot of employee names and dates,” wrote a former employee. “There was 30-40 I’d say and lots dated back to the 80’s and earlier. Sad to see this piece of history go down this way when it was in working condition.”
“It’s a sad sight seeing such a useful classic crumble,” wrote another poster.
NuVision Commodities declined to be interviewed.
