Swine researcher remembered as an industry visionary
Thursday, October 23, 2014
by JIM ALGIE
Some of his former University of Guelph students remember the late Gordon Bowman as a stimulating lecturer. Hog industry officials remember him among the best known swine production commentators of his era.
An animal scientist by training, Bowman was best known among Ontario farmers for swine production research and extension work. He died, Oct. 16, at 85 years of age at Rockview General Hospital in Calgary, Alberta, a memorial notice posted at the website of McInnis and Holloway Funeral Home says. A celebration of his life is to be held, Friday, Oct. 24, in Calgary at Foothills United Church.
Born Sept. 6, 1929 in Whitehead, Sask., Gordon was the second of five sons of Percy and Ella Bowman. He worked for 10 years at the federal government experimental farm in Lacombe, Alberta after graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture from the University of Saskatchewan. An online history of the Lacombe Research Centre identifies Bowman as a “key member” of the centre’s animal science sector during a period that ended in 1962. One notable achievement of that period was development of the Lacombe breed of hogs.
Following a graduate degree at the University of Alberta and a PhD from Oklahoma State University, Bowman received an appointment at the University of Guelph where he spent 30 years teaching, researching and consulting, most notably in matters of swine production.
Former Ontario government swine specialist, Jim Dalrymple, said Bowman was among the best known hog industry figures of his day.
“I think every, single pork producer in Ontario would have known him,” Dalrymple said of a time when there were as many as 30,000 hog farmers in the province. “He spoke at many, many events,” Dalrymple said, Wednesday, from his home in Brighton. He recalled annual Peterborough Pork Conference events where Bowman was always a featured speaker who was also “admired and respected by the industry.”
“I would classify him a visionary for the pork industry through the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s,” Dalrymple said. Dalrymple was also a former University of Guelph graduate student who worked with Bowman as a student and later as a provincial swine specialist on numerous pork industry committees.
Another former student, Stewart Cressman, recalls Bowman as a stimulating, provocative lecturer.
“He had a way of stirring the pot and making people think,” Cressman said Wednesday. One Gordon Bowman truism has stuck with Cressman during his subsequent career in livestock farming from a base in the New Dundee area.
“He said the biggest problem with a farmer is that he is a manager as well as the worker,” Cressman said, paraphrasing a comment from 30 years ago. “The manager says. ‘This is what we should be doing;’ the worker says ‘I don’t have time for that now; I’ve just gotta get this job done.’”
“I have thought of that many times as a farmer that what I intended to do and what I do are at odds,” Cressman said when asked to recall his former teacher. “He was very unconventional but he would make you think,” he said.
As a consultant to government and to farm groups, Bowman participated in various reports and studies which helped inform hog industry policy. Dalrymple recalls warnings from Bowman of changes to hog production which ultimately came to pass, notably the dramatic decline in numbers of hog farming units.
He worked on a Future of the Industry study in the late 1970s, a controversial study of a proposed, supply-management plan for hogs, and a subsequent pork industry improvement study.
“Gord was very knowledgeable and he wasn’t afraid to say what he thought about production,” Dalrymple said. “He told things as they were.”
Bowman survived two wives, Betty and Jean, and is survived by his wife Agnes, three sons and a step son as well as two grandsons. Condolences for the family may be posted on the website of McInnes and Holloway Funeral Homes. BF