He failed English in Grade 11, and then became one of Manitoba and Western Canada’s most well-known and highly-regarded agricultural journalists.
On a sunny morning in July, Harry Siemens is relaxing in Winkler’s immaculate Bethel Heritage Park, built on the former site of the hospital where he and his future wife, Judy Froese were both born; she in 1945 and he in 1946. While Judy angled for a professional career and eventually became director of nursing at that same hospital, Harry seemed destined to stick with family tradition and become a farmer.
They dated, they made wedding plans, and Judy made one thing clear, says Harry: “She told me she didn’t mind marrying a farmer, but she wasn’t going to marry a dumb farmer.”
At her urging, he completed his high school diploma, and then entered an undergraduate program at the University of Manitoba. He was unsure of where this new path would lead, but decided to include three different German courses, improving his ability to communicate in the language of his and Judy’s Mennonite forebears.
Harry completed only two years of the U of M program, and then came home because he and Judy wanted to get married. That was when his dad pointed out an ad posted by a local radio station.
“He said, ‘Harry, there’s an ad for a radio station at Altona, looking for a farm broadcaster. Why don’t you apply?’ That’s where it started.”
In joining CJOV in 1971, Harry launched a broadcasting career that would expand from radio to television and to print journalism, with a focus on farming.
Within that time, he had become ordained in the Mennonite Church, switching later to the Baptist Church, where he continues to serve as a chaplain and a preacher, including officiating at weddings and funerals.
He played baseball, he umpired, and he sang tenor, developing a distinctive voice known throughout southern Manitoba and into areas of the United States where listeners could pick up CJOV’s signal and hear Harry’s regular farming report, Siemens Says.
He recalls a time that and Judy had been travelling in the US and had stopped at the customs office in Pembina, North Dakota.
“I went inside, and I raised my voice a little bit, not too much. I said, ‘Where do I pay,’ and a guy facing the wall, without turning around, he said, ‘That’s Siemens Says.’”
The instant recognition certainly broke the ice with the official, although it didn’t come with any break in the fees due, says Harry.
Alongside his accomplishments within his journalism career, Harry became deeply involved in professional organizations including the US-based National Association of Farm Broadcasters as well as its Canadian affiliate and the Canadian Farm Writers Association. He took various offices, including serving as vice-president, then president, of the NAFB and, when he wasn’t busy, served as a motivational speaker and did committee work in various other organizations.
It all started to crash in the mid-1980s. Harry and Judy were both working hard in their careers and in the organizations with which they were affiliated. The meetings and travel, including two trips to Europe, were getting to be a bit too much.
“In 1984, I burned out. I didn’t want to lift a finger, I just wanted to hide.”
He decided to quit all his committee work and has never accepted another position, except to join the board of his condominium association.
As his journalism career advanced, Harry found himself being recruited in the mid-1990s by a Leduc-based publishing company, MSA Publishing, whose co-founder Susan (Blackman) Abma was looking for an ag writer. They struck a deal and, in 1996, Harry joined the team at a new magazine, Prairie Hog Country. He stayed on when advertising manager Laurie Brandly bought the magazine in 2003 and has never missed an issue.
Brandly said she was already familiar with Harry’s work through their earlier involvement with Western Dairy Farmer.
“Harry is a valuable member of the PHC team,” says Brandly.
“Harry has been with PHC right from the start, that first edition back in 1996. Not even a quadruple bypass (in 2007) could stop him.”
Then, in the spring of 2018, Judy fell ill and was taken to Boundary Trails Health Centre, where she died on May 18.
On this sunny summer day, a little more than five years later, Harry is having a meal of wiener schnitzel at Ralph’s German Restaurant in Winkler. It was Judy’s favourite, and it was at Ralph’s that they had their last meal together. But when Harry speaks, it is clear that Judy is still with him, encouraging, advising and supporting him as always. •
— By Brenda Kossowan
