It’s not very often the Agassiz Harrison Observer gets asked to start a rallying cry. But that’s exactly what a twitter account called “Grambo Slice” wanted us to do.
The topic: corn. The rally?
The only reason Agassiz is only corn capital of BC and not of all Canada is because there's hills here and no hills in Alberta but if we CORN THE HILLS! IF WE GROW CORN ON THE HILLS, we WILL beat them. Let's make it happen @AgassizObserver start the rallying cry "CORN THE HILLS!"
— Grambo Slice (@GramboSplice) June 27, 2019
“CORN THE HILLS,” Grambo Slice proclaims.
Grambo was a few weeks too late to make “CORN THE HILLS” a reality for this year — although the tweet came out before the corn huts began popping up on local streets, the first varieties of our corn had already been planted. (The first corn is out now, as are the alleged corn thieves.)
RELATED: Alleged Chilliwack corn thief caught reselling ears on local Facebook page
Sadly for dear Grambo, we at the Agassiz Harrison Observer cannot fully support the “CORN THE HILLS” initiative, as we are rather fond of our hills the way they are, providing habitat and refuge for our local wild friends. But we can appreciate the difficulty of being a town that is a Corn Capital, while knowing that others out there maybe be slightly more, shall we say, corny than we.
Taber, Alta., for example, is also known as a Corn Capital, although like Agassiz its fame seems to be more unofficial than astutely documented. It too has an event celebrating corn: in its case, Cornfest.
Norfolk County, located on Lake Erie between Port Dover and Long Point in Ontario, says it grows more sweet corn than any other region in the country, and Chatham-Kent in Ontario claims to be the number one producer of seed corn.
Of course, if we really wanted to know the true Corn Capital of Canada, we could simply go through the Census of Agriculture town by town and compare the number of corn fields to the total farm acreage in each community. Then it would be a simple matter of taking a panel of impartial judges to each of the winning towns and discovering, once and for all, who really grows the best and most plentiful corn.
But that’s not really what Canada is about. And more importantly, that’s not really what growing corn is about either.
It’s nice to crown Corn King or Queen at each Fall Fair, and applaud them for their hard work and dedicated growing. And it’s nice to sit down to a summer meal with a plate of fresh corn cobs on the table.
Whether it came from an official Corn Capital or not? Well, it still tastes pretty good to us.
grace.kennedy@ahobserver.com
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