News from our rich agriculture history

Martin Burrell was not the first Federal Minister of Agriculture. But he was, importantly, the first Minister of Agriculture to be a farmer himself. Burrell was born in Faringdon, England and immigrated to Canada in 1883, intending to work as a fruit farmer in the Niagara Peninsula.

Burrell lived in the peninsula for a short time and then settled down outside Grand Forks, British Columbia. He did, however, achieve his occupational goal. Burrell’s fruit farming enterprise was quite successful and he became a member of the B.C. Board of Horticulture as well as the

Clarkson Freeman was born in Trafalgar township, Halton county, Upper Canada on February 26, 1827. His grandfather William was resident of Elizabethtown, New York until the American Revolution, in which he fought for the British and subsequently lost all of his property. The Freeman family emigrated to Canada in 1800 alongside many other United Empire Loyalists, and were granted land outside of Ancaster where they took up farming. Clarkson’s father Isaac fought under General Brock against the Americans in the War of 1812, after which he settled on a farm on concession 1, lot 16 of