Redfern, Ray Bev - Brandon, 2004

RAY AND BEV REDFERN FAMILY, Brandon, Manitoba

Ray was born at Grenfell, Saskatchewan, July 9, 1947. My earliest recollections are of the farmyard and the time I, at about 4 years of age, “accidentally” started the farm tractor while it was attached to the grain grinder with a belt drive engaged. I had to run into the barn, where the parents were completing the afternoon milking, to admit that I was in a fix -that I was sure had happened all by itself. I also recall freezing my mouth to the double tree draw pin when I unthinkingly used my mouth to attempt to help un-attach it from the sleigh.

Life was school with recess games, 4-H and marching together at the Brandon Summer Fair before getting to attend the evening grandstand show. It was walking the ½ mile to where the car was parked in winter or taking horses several miles to a neighbor’s farmyard, as there was no all-weather road to our farmyard. It was holiday meals with the Johnstons and the daily trials of using Rusty, the pony, to travel to school. There were the summer horse rides as a teenager with friends –girls too, including cousin Dennis and then the use of his ‘family’ Volkswagen packed full to attend the drive-in shows at Virden.

I recall that when arriving in Winnipeg to attend university, the city and campus too seemed immense. I first lived with an elderly lady and helped with her special needs mentally and physically handicapped adult son. He taught me much about the qualities and needs of these unique individuals. I later was able to travel to an international agricultural student function in the USA, and then attended the 1967 Montreal Expo with Bill Anderson and Bill Day, which was a real life experience too!

I joined Imperial Oil after finishing school after several other options including work in what was then still Rhodesia did not work out. I was able to travel throughout western Canada and then moved to Red Deer, Alberta, where I also met the lady who was to become my life partner (Bev). I had to leave Esso to return to Rivers, Manitoba to establish my own farm input retailing organization in 1972, before I saw that Bev was essential to my life and dragged her to small town prairie life and the trials of marriage to a ‘Redfern’.


Our business which is now celebrating 32 years of life and has grown immensely since it’s beginnings, has been a demanding master, consuming our life and requiring much continual risk taking and sacrifice, - and at the same time has provided many very broadening life experiences, travel, and friendships too. It is named Redfern Farm Services Ltd and is a crop input agri-retailer products and services supplier with 13 locations throughout south western Manitoba. We provide support for the complete range of fertilizer offers available, for crop protection products, seed products, and a host of custom type services, and consulting activities to farmers.

I have been able to participate in many activities over these past 30 years. I have been involved in many community groups, industry associations and other organizations, usually finding myself as the chair which broadened one’s horizons and necessitated travel too so that some of our holidays were organized around such activities. There was the International Study Exchange however, only a few years after marriage, where I went to Australia for 8 weeks leaving Bev at home to help baby-sit our business. I have been able to travel to Africa while serving as head of a small global development NGO who partnered with a Ugandan community training and development NGO.

I also have been able to experience large capital fundraising campaigns, and learn a little of the reality of intervention in families and their children, while acting as president of the not for profit, Child and Family Services. It is mandated by government to provide for the care and security or intervention on behalf of children in western Manitoba. While working as the chair of our National Ag Input Industry Association (Canadian Association of Agri-Retailers), I’ve learned of the need of standards for responsibilities of industry members while dealing with government and the public. These and many other activities, including church responsibilities and some sports activities have made life interesting depending when and who you ask.

The stork didn’t seem to bring any children to our door but adoption has very clearly made our world meaningful and complete. Our children have been everything to us although we probably do not readily acknowledge that fact to them! These two infants who arrived 7 years apart have begun to grow into real people - they might say “in spite of their parents”. I can only thank their mother for unwavering dedication to them and for ensuring that they are the centerpoint of our life.

Dustin is now 22 and has a Diploma in Agri-Business. He is now employed in our firm and earlier had a period of performing administrative functions for experience although he would much rather still be out operating the biggest equipment we use and ‘doing real work’. He is, however, now directly involved in other farming roles after the regular days’ agri-business retail activities end. He played some sports as a youngster including hockey where he was subjected to a father helping as coach. He loved his 4 wheelers and had the good fortune to have a huge playground immediately adjacent to our shops at Rivers complete with trails and hills and jumps too that enabled him to hone his skills over those earlier years. While out there, he also actually learned some responsibility and self-discipline. He now enjoys those male adult toys of snow machines for winter and personal watercraft for summer recreation when he finds the occasional moment outside the reality of long hours of work in an agricultural services firm. His special car and now truck too, and his girlfriend and friends do round out his life.

Jordana in now 15, and works at understanding the importance of acting as is expected of a teenager. She is a precocious reader and writer and poet too. She enjoys school band and Chorale group singing experience. She has done well at dance and so it has been fun for her as it has for her cousins too. She has excelled at drama and been invited to roles in musical/play productions. She experienced a summer horse skills camp one year and returned for a second year of a weeklong Circle Square Christian youth camp. She loves her cats that are part of our home and her friends have become important to her life.

Bev does hold our family together and keeps us all grounded in reality too. She is truly the engineer in our home and the handyman and interior designer. She enjoys her yard and renovation projects too. We purchased an old, long vacant, house shortly after marriage and completed extensive restorations to maintain the character of the unique older style home. After the growing family made this home obsolete to our needs, we moved to another newer home and also again completed upgrades. Several years ago we arrived in Brandon and now have another house that has undergone extensive renovations before we could call it our home.

Our family has been truly blessed with the fortune of being part of a special extended family –both Bev’s and my siblings and parents –even if Bev may think that ‘my’ family is huge and seems to always be congregating in big groups. My parents, both Eleanor and Henry, had a remarkable influence on each of their children by their own life’s example. Unwittingly, we were shaped by their integrity, strong work ethic, interest in the larger world around us, and in commitment to family and pride in their efforts and ongoing support even when we disappointed and failed ourselves. We can only hope we can impart a little of their example to the next generation too.

The Scott family has provided a legacy of family in which we should all take great pride. They were the uncomplaining pioneer stock who gave our family the heritage that will help our own children through all the challenges of modern life and it’s distractions from the things that are really and truly important –integrity by example –and family ties.

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