News from our rich agriculture history

One of the most well known cattlemen in Western Canadian history, James Thomas Gordon was the cofounder of Gordon and Ironside Company. He was born on December 24, 1858 in Tweed, Hastings County, Ontario to John and Sarah Gordon, who were Irish immigrants. Upon completing his education at Tweed’s public school he promptly took up the career of his parents- farming. In 1879 he migrated to Manitoba where he began working for a local lumber firm, Dick Banning & Company. Through this experience he was eventually able to strike out on his own and forge ahead in the lumber industry,

James Moffat Douglas was born in 1839 in Linton Scotland to a farming father. The family emigrated to Upper Canada in 1851, where Douglas would later pursue a lengthy education in Toronto. His education trained Douglas to be a minister in the Presbyterian Church, and he also received brief medical training from King’s College. He worked for many years as a minister in Canada, where he married and had seven children, before Douglas became a missionary in India and acted as chaplain to many soldiers stationed there. After his return to Canada he worked for several more years as a