Five on-farm fatalities in Ontario in 2023

OTTAWA — On-farm accidents took the lives of five Ontarians in 2023, down from 12 in 2022 and below the 10-year average of 7.8 on-farm fatalities in the province each year since 2014.

Farms are reputed to be the most deadly workplace, but great strides have been made in recent decades. An average of 29 people were killed annually on Ontario farms each year between 1990 and 2008. Nationwide, the average was 104 during the same period, but declined to 60 by 2012, according to the Canadian Agricultural Injury Reporting.

As counted by Farmers Forum, Ontario’s on-farm death toll does not include farm-related fatalities on public roadways or other off-farm tragedies connected with agriculture. By that measure, there were no on-farm deaths in Eastern Ontario last year. All occurred in Southwestern Ontario.The data is gleaned from police reports and media coverage, including our own.

• Jonathan Vander Zaag, 24, was fatally injured on March 31 after becoming trapped in a piece of equipment at his parents’ Alliston-area potato operation. He died in hospital after emergency crews responded to P&K Vander Zaag Farms around 12:30 p.m. Kevin Brubacher, general manager of the Ontario Potato Board, described the loss as “an extremely tragic accident that has rocked the whole industry.”

• Kevin Stewardson, 59, was killed Sept. 22 when the side-by-side utility vehicle he was operating rolled over at a Wyoming, Ontario, beef farm. Stewardson, a longtime Lambton Cattlemen’s Association board member, died at the scene. According to the OPP, the farm employee was checking fences around a pasture when the rollover occurred that evening. A passerby noticed the collision on the Confederation Line property.

• Paul Allen, 65, was killed while operating a tractor to haul logs from his farm woodlot property, north of Thorndale, on Oct. 23. Police described the Oct. 23 accident that took his life as a farm fatality. The grandfather of three was known for keeping game birds and was a 46-year employee of concrete-mixer manufacturer London Machinery.

• Construction worker Roger Siple, 20, fell from a height at a Thamesford-area dairy farm on Dec. 7 and succumbed to his injuries. Siple was working for Henry Van Ginkel’s Construction on a project for Bolton Manor Holstein LTD.

•James Bailey, 27, a beef farmer and married father of four young children, died Dec. 11 when a hay bale fell on him as he operated a front-end loader northeast of Guelph. First responders were called to the scene around 4:30 p.m. on Eramosa-Garafraxa Townline road. Bailey and his wife, Amber, operate A&J Bailey Farms and produce pasture-raised beef, pork, lamb, chicken and free-range eggs.

2023 did see additional fatalities in the realm of agriculture that didn’t involve on-farm accidents per se. Ryan Laarman, 18, was fatally injured March 15 after losing his footing and getting caught in an auger at Elgin Feeds in Aylmer. Glengarry County farmer Roger Leblanc, 69, was killed Sept. 6 while driving a tractor and attached hay wagon on the road; the tractor’s front forks abruptly caught the asphalt, ejecting the farmer onto the roadway where he was struck by a falling bale. Retired beef farmer Jack McMullen, 99, was fatally injured Oct. 5 when his 1947 Ford tractor rolled onto him inside a garage at his rural property east of Lindsay. And in a strange coincidence, two seasonal farm workers from Jamaica, both in their 30s, died in their sleep in separate incidents at two southwestern Ontario farms. According to media reports, Kemar Campbell, 32, and Daniel Brown, 35, were both found dead in the bunkhouses at their respective farm workplaces — Campbell died in May at a Niagara-on-the-Lake farm and Brown died in October at a Simcoe potato farm.