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1930: William Rutherford, First Dean of Agriculture

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“The University of Saskatchewan...suffered a national loss”1 with the unexpected death of the Dean of Agriculture, William Rutherford, on 1 June 1930.  Rutherford had been Deputy Minister of Agriculture and had endorsed the idea that a College of Agriculture should become an integral part of the University–an idea unique in Canada at the time.   In 1909 Rutherford left the civil service to become a member of faculty at the newly established University.

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The College included a complete working farm.  Crops, poultry and livestock–sheep, hogs, beef and dairy cattle, and horses–were incorporated; crop development, farm management, and enhancing the breeding stock available to Saskatchewan farmers were all fundamental to the research, teaching, and extension work of the College.  In addition to the degree and certificate courses at the University, short courses, ploughing matches, seed grain fairs, etc. were held throughout the province; in 1914, The Better Farming Train “sent professors, livestock, and examples of machinery around the province to provide short periods of training in improved methods of farming.  In its first year some forty thousand people visited the train.”2

Rutherford unquestionably created a College of Agriculture that served well the people of the province, and “had more to do with the shaping of agricultural policies than any other man in Saskatchewan.”  He served on numerous Royal Commissions: on
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conservation, on technical and industrial education, on lands for soldier settlement, on drought areas, on wheat marketing.    Rutherford was considered “a great teacher, thorough and explicit,” with “a rare gift for friendship.”  “His special knowledge was always at the service of Canadian farmers.  His main task was to make the college of agriculture at Saskatchewan a potent influence in the dissemination of accurate knowledge and the improvement of farm methods.  To that work he applied his great talents as a teacher and director with conspicuous success.”3  “Above all,” Walter Murray wrote, Rutherford’s “deep interest in everything pertaining to the well-being of his fellow citizens enabled him to render a service, not only to Agriculture and to Education, but to national affairs that has rarely been surpassed in this Province.”4


Related Collections

College of Agriculture fonds, RG 2026.

Images

1930a: William Rutherford, 1920. Photograph Collection, A-2784.
1930b: Clydesdales in front of University Barn. Photograph Collection A-69.
1930c: The Better Farming Train. Photograph Collection, A-1423.

Sources

1. Faculty Biographies Collection, W.J. Rutherford file.
2. Hayden, 67.
3. Faculty Biographies Collection, W.J. Rutherford file.
4. Annual Report, 1929-1930, p. 9.

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