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| Local oilseed crushing expert to become Hall of Fame member |
| Wednesday, July 14, 2010 |
| By: /nipawinjournal.com |
A Nipawin resident who played a leading role in the development of Saskatchewan's rapeseed processing industry will be inducted into the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame at the end of this month.
Dexter Beach, who died in 2004, was an agricultural engineer and founder of the Agra Vegetable Oil Products plant in Nipawin. This extraction plant, which is still in operation as the modern day Bunge, was the first prepress/solvent plant in Saskatchewan and only the second of its kind in Western Canada.
Cheryl Silverthorn, one of Dexter's three daughters, said the family is very honoured that he will be recognized in this way.
"I know that my dad would have been extremely happy with it," she said. "He was very proud of what he did and he felt very strongly that it was a huge benefit to the area. Every time I drive by Bunge now I think of him and remember how it was at the very beginning with just a pile of sand and a concrete block building."
Beach will be one of five inductees into the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame for 2010. The induction ceremony on Sunday afternoon, Aug. 1, will take place at the Western Development Museum in Saskatoon. In addition to this ceremony, which is open to the public, there will also be an invitational banquet on Saturday, July 31.
The Nipawin Heritage Society was responsible for nominating Dexter to be initiated in the Hall of Fame.
"I think it's the first time we've done anything like that for an individual," Society President Doug Phillips said.
Celebrating the achievements of local people is part of the Heritage Society's goal to preserve the town's past.
"If we have people that have made real advances to this community in some way or other then we should highlight that," he said.
According to Phillips the nomination of Dexter was first proposed by the Society's former vice-president, Douglas Harrison, who is a local farmer and seed grower. The Society established an ad hoc committee to prepare the documentation for submission to the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame. The committee included people who knew Dexter and who could testify to his background and life.
"We knew that we would have to put forward a very good proposal," Phillips said.
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In addition to Phillips and Harrison, the other local members of the committee were Karen Grayson, Oren Robison, Joyce Christiansen (a neighbour of the Beach family) and Gerry Neumann, who was recruited by Dexter in 1965 to become Agra's general manager.
Other committee members were mechanical engineer and friend Sergei Doodchenko of Candle Lake, who worked with Dexter in 1991 and 1992 on the design and retrofit of oilseed plants in India, and Tom Smith of Pathlow, an agricultural engineer and friend of Dexter.
The late Gerry Kneeshaw, who was a founding member and treasurer of the Nipawin Heritage Society and a good friend of Dexter, also made an important contribution through his research that chronicled Dexter's life. However, his illness prevented him from continuing involvement with the project.
Phillips expressed his appreciation towards the members of the committee for their enthusiasm for the project and their dedication.
"This committee represented a group of individuals with many unique gifts, especially organization skills, writing and composing skills and perhaps, most importantly, vivid memories of neighbourliness and intimate working experiences with Mr. Beach."
Dexter Beach was born on April 15, 1916 on the family farm near Ernfold, Saskatchewan. According to daughter Cheryl Silverthorn he was deeply rooted to the province.
"He was always such a believer in Saskatchewan," she said. "He couldn't understand why anybody wouldn't want to live in Saskatchewan and do everything they could."
He took all his public schooling at the two-room school in the village of Ernfold. Grade 12 was not taught at the school, but he was able to complete it at a corner desk in the schoolhouse with the help of a teacher and some second-hand textbooks.
Between 1934 and 1941 he worked on his father's farm to help provide in the needs of the large family. During this time he was able to save some money and in 1942 he entered the University of Saskatchewan to study mechanical engineering. He graduated in 1945, when he switched to agricultural engineering.
In 1944 he married Margaret McConkey from Munson, Alberta, who was studying mathematics and physics at the university. After graduation the couple returned to Ernfold to help out on the family farm. A year later they moved to Munson, where Dexter farmed with his father-in-law. During the winter months he taught at the University of Saskatchewan and also conducted research into the lubricating properties of canola oil in internal combustion engines.
By 1951 he started to farm on his own. By then his family has grown to three young daughters. To make ends meet he shovelled coal at the Drumheller power plant in the winter of 1951/52. He also worked as an instructor with the University of Alberta during the following two winters to teach farmers how to use electricity on their farms.
After three years of failed crops due to weather conditions he began teaching fulltime at the University of Saskatchewan in October 1954. From 1958 to 1959 he completed a masters degree in agricultural engineering at the University of Melbourne in Australia. He studied the exhaust gases of diesel train engines and developed a theory that high-temperature sparks from locomotive engines caused fires in dry grasses and eucalyptus forests along the railway tracks. His research later resulted in the adoption of legislation by the Australian government to require the filtration of exhaust gases.
"He was quite proud of that," Cheryl recalled.
For the next three years he worked as a full professor at the University of Saskatchewan. During this time the Canadian government approved rapeseed oil for human consumption. This provided an impetus for Dexter and two university colleagues, Dr. Chuck Stewart and Ben Torchinsky, to establish Agra Vegetable Oil Products Ltd. in the fall of 1961 on a site one and a half miles south of Nipawin.
Dexter resigned from the university and moved to Nipawin in April 1962 to work as project engineer for the new venture.
After disagreements between the three partners Dexter resigned from Agra in January 1964. He initially worked as a special design engineer at the Wizewood Waferboard plant in Hudson Bay, where he redesigned many elements of the plant, and then took a teaching position at the University of Manitoba.
Due to operational difficulties he was asked to return to Agra. He came back in July 1965 as operations manager and got the plant running smoothly again. For Cheryl Silverthorn her father's work ethic is something she will always remember about him.
"When things went wrong out there he was digging around and grubbing around in the conveyors and stuff," she said. "He was always hands on. He preferred to be out there, getting grubby and grimy and fixing things and wondering why it didn't work and making it work."
Over the next few years he managed the design and construction of a $1.25 million refinery plant addition, which was commissioned in October 1968. He also oversaw the expansion of the crushing plant, which was commissioned in the fall of 1971. During the same year he became general manager of the plant and also vice-president of manufacturing of Agra Foods Ltd.
Another expansion took place in February 1973 with the addition of the margarine packaging plant. It doubled the Nipawin refinery's production capacity to 100 million pounds per year. During this time Agra entered the international market with the first major export of Canadian crude rapeseed oil to Chile as well as exports to Mexico and India.
Dexter resigned from Agra in 1974 to start a private consultant practice. He worked on numerous projects in the vegetable oil crushing industry, both in Canada and abroad. His expertise and contribution towards the industry was acknowledged when he received a life membership to the Association of Professional Engineers of Saskatchewan in 1987.
Despite being a workaholic, he was devoted to his family and friends. Cheryl said he was a very supportive father who always stressed education.
"He loved people, he loved to talk to people," she recalled. "He was interested in absolutely everything around him, whether it was geology or astronomy or farming or music. At the same time though he could never understand why everybody in the world didn't want to be an engineer. If somebody found his calling it was him."
He played trumpet and clarinet, sang in choirs and operettas, and enjoyed photography. He got his pilot's license at the age of 54 and took up downhill skiing at the age of 75. He served on the Nipawin town council for eight years and he was also a member of the Nipawin Union Hospital board of directors.
He died on Sept. 13, 2004 at the age of 88. He is survived by his wife Margaret, daughters Miriam Staffen of Regina, Arloa Beach of Saskatoon, Cheryl Silverthorn of Nipawin, 10 grandchildren, seven great-grandchildren, nine of his 11 brothers and sisters and their families.
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