PRAIRIE ICONS
The Canadian grain elevator
The emergence of the Canadian grain elevator in the 1880s was closely connected to the settlement of the provinces, and the development of hardy strains of wheat in the west. At that time there was only one source of livelihood for most Westerners: agriculture. The increasingly overcrowded countries of Europe, unable to grow sufficient grain to feed themselves, looked to the New World to provide them with wheat, one of the world’s most important food staples. An ideal producer-consumer relationship arose almost overnight and in response, prairie farmers started to specialize in wheat production for export.
There were several obstacles, however, which hindered the movement of grain from the interior of the continent to the markets. The first was transportation. In 1876, 857 bushels of western wheat were bagged and loaded onto a steamboat, carried up the Red River to Saint Paul, Minnesota, and then shipped east by rail. For the next 10 years, the physical handling of wheat remained slow and awkward. Farmers would haul grain loose or in sacks to loading platforms along the railroad. After weighing, it would be shovelled or lifted manually into a rail car.
As each of the sacks (usually 2 bushels) weighed 120 lbs., it was back-breaking, slow work, and the grain was moved in extremely small amounts. The farmer might have to stay several days at the track site, or if he lived some distance away, it might take a week or two to fill a single boxcar, the capacity of which was approximately 650 sacks. This was needless time spent away from the farm.
By 1880, farmers who had previously eked out a meagre existence found their farms flourishing, and the amount of grain available for market began to far exceed what could be handled by these traditional methods at the track site. The railway company was rarely able to supply enough boxcars to the customers in a timely manner because it took so long to fill them. This began to seriously plug up the primitive system.
The second problem, then, was how could large amounts of bulk grain be stored at the rail site until boxcars were made available, and how could rail car loading be speeded up? Originally, farmers and the railway disagreed as to what kind of structure would be best suited for handling the grain at railway sidings. Most farmers wanted a small horizontal building, one that they could afford to erect themselves and that could store their crops separately until each farmer accumulated enough for a boxcar. The Canadian Pacific Railway wanted to erect a larger structure that, because of its size and design, would take advantage of the flowing quality of loose grain (especially when acted upon by gravity) and would consequently make the loading of grain cheaper, quicker. and less labour-intensive for the railway. The key to quicker access to boxcars, lower handling costs, and greater profits became obvious only when grain producers, shippers, and buyers all realized that they had to handle the product loose and in bulk. The quick decline of sacking in North America (and the resultant savings) meant that Canadian and American wheat was in greater demand than that of other countries.
The vertical type of warehouse that emerged was called a grain elevator (grain was elevated to the top of the building for distribution by gravity). It did not emerge out of thin air - the first quasi-elevator structure on record was built in Buffalo, New York, in 1841. Although structures like the modern elevator were already in use in the states of Minnesota and North and South Dakota by the 1870s, there were, as yet, no examples in the Canadian West. Thus, the first grain elevator in the prairie provinces was a unique rounded silo-like structure built in 1879 by Wilham Hespeler at Niverville. Manitoba. The first angular design, which was stronger and easier to build, was introduced at Gretna, Manitoba, by the Ogilvie Milling Company in 1881. It was short, square, and squat, with a storage capacity of 25,000 bushels.
The CPR, in 1881, the only western railway, was eager to play a role in the grain trade. Trains that had come west with settlers and their effects could logically be filled with grain for the return trip east, thus doubling profits. Although it built its own terminal elevators at Fort William in 1884, the CPR could not afford to construct the number of country elevators needed to start the grain rolling. It therefore encouraged private companies to build them along its railway. Free site rentals were offered to those who would erect a standard type of elevator, driven by a steam or gasoline engine, and who would use the proper machinery for elevating and cleaning grain.
In addition, the railway promised that its cars would not accept grain from anybody but the elevator agent. This guarantee excluded the farmer and so, until the 1899-1900 Royal Commission on the Transportation of Grain, the railway and the grain companies monopolized the grain trade.
Specifications for a “standard” elevator were adopted in 1913, and this was the main reason for the subsequent uniformity of elevator design for the next 50 years. Its dimensions were 31 x 33 feet with a 35,000-bushel capacity. Set on a concrete pad, it had a 15-horsepower engine for the elevating device. Other “non-standard” elevators had their own uniform specifications - the 45,000-bushel structure measured 34 x 36 feet, while the 55,000-bushel structure measured 36 x 38 feet. Metallic siding started to be used just before World War I.
Not surprisingly, elevators arose in exponentially large numbers alongside the railway. Occasionally, a town site determined where an elevator was to be located, but usually an elevator determined where a town was to be established. The structures were built eight to ten miles apart to facilitate grain deliveries from the producers. Originally, these deliveries were made by horse and wagon. A farmer had to be able to make one round trip per day.
The earliest businesses to take advantage of these incentives were flour and grist mill companies, such as the Ogilvie Milling Company, Lake of the Woods Milling Company, Ellison Milling and Elevator Company and Maple Leaf Milling Company. There were also many small farmer collectives (known as local unions) that built and operated one or two elevators for the farmers of a particular district. To be accepted to the system, however, there had to be 40 shareholders with a minimum $8,000 collected in membership fees.
Flour companies usually bought only enough wheat to supply their own mills. Other companies, however, purchased grain in large quantities to sell throughout the prairie region, or in even larger quantities to market to eastern Canada or export overseas. These firms prospered and expanded to become “line” companies, operating many elevators along a rail line. The first line companies included the British American Elevator Company, the North Star Grain Company, the Canadian Elevator Company, the Paterson Grain Company, the Alberta Pacific Grain Company, the National Grain Company, and the Northern Elevator Company. A line company, James Richardson and Sons, moved the first shipment of grain from an elevator in Winnipeg to the Lakehead in the autumn of 1883.
The number of elevator companies grew at a fantastic rate - by 1916 there were over 300 companies, a few British-owned, many more American-owned, and the majority financed by Canadians. They decided to form an association to compare notes, lobby governments, and set guidelines governing their relations with farmers. In July 1899, the Northwest Elevator Association was formed “for the purpose of formulating rules to govern transactions between its members in the handling and shipping of grain, with the object of reducing the expenses of handling the crop of the country to a minimum.” The association’s name was changed in 1901 to the Grain Dealers Association and in 1940 to the Northwest Line Elevators Association, but its concerns remained the same.
After the turn of the century prairie settlement increased dramatically and larger areas of farmland came under the plough for the first time. The second and third transcontinental railways - the Canadian Northern and the Grand Trunk Pacific – also encouraged the growth of line companies. In 1882, there were six elevators through the prairie provinces, but by the season of 1900-01, according to one estimate, there were 333 elevators in operation in Manitoba, as well as 88 in the Northwest Territories (Alberta and Saskatchewan), with a total capacity of almost 13 million bushels. By 1910, there were 707 elevators in Manitoba, 1,004 in Saskatchewan, and 285 in Alberta, with a total capacity of over 57 million bushels.
Because farmers were generally dissatisfied with the service they received from the existing grain companies, they began to form their own companies. The Grain Growers Grain Company (later called United Grain Growers) was the first in 1906; the Saskatchewan Co-operative Elevator Company, and the Alberta Farmers Co-operative Elevator Company followed in 1911 and 1913. With the inauguration of the three provincial wheat pools - Alberta in 1923, Saskatchewan and Manitoba in 1924 - the number of elevators soared again, aided by the consolidation of the Canadian Northern and Grand Trunk Pacific into Canadian National Railways.
Elevator growth peaked in the year 1938 with a grand total of 5,758 licensed elevators (The Canada Grain Act requires that an operator of a primary elevator hold a license issued by the Canadian Grain Commission). Then, due to consolidation and changes in the grain industry, rural depopulation, technological innovations, the growing dominance of highways over rail lines, it started its slow but steady decline. As of 1996 there were 1,190 elevators still serving farmers in the three prairie provinces.
The reasons for the decline deserve some explanation. When the Depression hit in the 1930s, many families packed up and left their farms, in some cases leaving whole townships deserted. After the Second World War, increased mechanization in prairie agriculture meant higher profits and larger farms. Consequently, the number of family farms declined and migration of the rural population to the cities and larger towns picked up. Many hamlets and villages became nothing more than elevator points, which were expensive for the railway companies to maintain in the face of the loss of passenger and freight business.
As well, the grain-handling system was becoming increasingly inefficient. The majority of the country elevators were constructed when grain was hauled by horse and wagon. The short distance from a farm to the elevator suited both farmers and elevator companies at the time. However, greatly improved roads and larger and faster grain-hauling trucks transformed the situation considerably.
The many half-empty elevators were not paying their way, were costing the elevator companies salaries and fuel, and were reducing their profits significantly. The railway companies were also losing their freighting business and, in turn, unofficially started to eliminate unprofitable branch lines that did not carry at least 30,000 bushels per track mile, a figure they considered to be the break-even mark.
After an extremely poor growing season in 1961, which reduced grain production in the prairie provinces by half, the elevator companies stepped up their policy of rationalization and centralization of elevator services. This involved abandoning worn out, small capacity, and uneconomical elevators or, in some cases, the physical relocation of elevators from potential ghost towns to larger centres to add to their storage capacity. The 1961 MacPherson Royal Commission on Transportation officially recommended that railways not be forced to maintain unprofitable branch lines without subsidy. This opened the way for further branch line abandonment, which the railways generally implemented in consultation with the elevator companies in order to cause the least inconvenience.
A further reason for abandonment involved the buying out or merging of grain companies, a trend that began as early as the 1910s and accelerated during the 1960s and 1970s. For instance, the Pioneer Grain Company acquired elevators from the Goose Lake Grain Company in 1922, the Saskatchewan and Western Grain Company in 1931, the Reliance Grain Company in 1948, the Western Grain Company in 1951, the Independent Grain Company in 1953, and the Inter-Ocean Grain Company in 1972. Parrish and Heimbecker bought out the Western Canadian Flour Mills in l940, part of the Reliance Grain Company in l948, and the Ellison Milling Company in 1975. The three Pools bought the elevators of the Federal Grain Company in their respective territories in 1972. Federal had already merged with the Searle Grain Company in 1967.
In addition to abandoning branch lines, the railways and other stakeholders invested in covered hopper bottom rail cars for grain transportation. These cars increased capacity from 60 tonnes to 90 tonnes per car as well as being easier and faster to load and unload.
The rationalization of the grain handling and transportation system has continued in the 21st century. As of November 1, 2025 there were only 336 licensed primary elevators in the entire network on the prairies. The total storage capacity of these facilities, however, is now about 273 million bushels compared to the total capacity of 190 million bushels 90 years ago.
The licensed primary elevator network in Western Canada is also highly consolidated, with the market dominated by essentially 6 major companies. These firms own and operate the vast majority of the high-throughput primary and terminal facilities: Bunge Canada Inc. (formerly Viterra), Richardson Pioneer Ltd., Cargill Limited, G3 Canada Limited, Parrish & Heimbecker Limited, and Paterson Grain.
Since 1980, a new generation of super elevators has been the trend in construction. They have rendered all previous elevators more or less obsolete. These structures employ slip-form construction, with continuous pouring of concrete throughout its six to eight day fabrication period, and display exposed elevating and weighing machinery on top (the exposed leg). They have a vastly increased capacity and serve a geographical radius of up to 100 miles. They can unload from trucks or load rail cars at a rate of up to 10,000 bushels of grain per hour, all operations controlled by computer. And as they can take the place of at least 4 and possibly 12 of the old country elevators, the grain companies had little incentive to keep those wooden incongruities in operation, and thus accelerated their abandonment and demolitionist tendencies.
These new investments in the system have resulted in a huge improvement in efficiency. Forty years ago the average turnaround time for a single boxcar was more than 22 days. Today it is possible for one 150-car loop train to make two complete trips (including loading and unloading) from Alberta to Vancouver in one week!
The appearance and number of our Prairie Icons has changed over the decades but even more so, the work they are able to do and the service that they provide has been multiplied incredibly.
Further information:
Grain Elevators - Disappearing Prairie Sentinels
Grain elevators of the Prairies Pt1
Grain elevators of the Prairies Pt2
G3's smarter path from farmers' fields to global markets
Sources:
Prairie Sentinel, The Story of the Canadian Grain Elevator, 1997, Brock V. Silversides
Getty Images, Grain Elevators, https://www.gettyimages.ca/search/2/image?phrase=grain%20elevators
Grain Elevators in Canada reports, Canadian Grain Commission, https://www.grainscanada.gc.ca/en/grain-research/statistics/grain-elevators/reports/
