Civil servant.
Born at London, Ontario on 23 July 1888, he came west temporarily in 1905 with a harvest excursion. He moved to Calgary, Alberta in 1910 and worked at a series of jobs, including assistant janitor at a school, until becoming manager of a Canadian Pacific Railway demonstration poultry farm in Strathmore, Alberta, in 1917. From 1923 to 1928 he worked as an itinerant poultry inspector for the Dominion Department of Agriculture.
In 1913, he married Janie Sing (1888-1979) and they had five children.
In 1929, he moved to Winnipeg to work as a federal employee with the poultry industry in Manitoba, which he did until 1954. In 1956 he joined the Manitoba Turkey Association as secretary-manager, and he served there until 1964. His autobiography, written with his son H. S. Ferns, was published in 1978 as Eighty-Five Years in Canada.
He died at the King Edward Hospital on 5 December 1983 and was buried in the St. John's Cathedral Cemetery.
Dictionary of Manitoba Biography by John M. “Jack” Bumsted, Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999.
Obituary, Winnipeg Free Press, 8 December 1983, page 68.
Obituaries and burial transcriptions, Manitoba Genealogical Society.
We thank Darryl Toews for providing additional information used here.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough.
Page revised: 29 February 2024
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