Ross Shantz of Waterloo has died. He was 81.
He was active in many Mennonite endeavours including the annual New Hamburg Mennonite Central Committee auction and the House of Friendship in Kitchener.
He was president of the Ontario Pork Congress in 1987-88 and a member of Waterloo County Pork Producers Association.
He saved Waterloo County Supplies Co-operative after investments in hog production soured; rather than sinking into bankruptcy, he felt horse-and-buggy Mennonite farmers who had invested in the co-op needed to have it survive.
He was dismayed about the waste of surplus milk so set up a drying business on his farm at the western border with the city of Waterloo.
There were times when tanker trucks delivered milk from processing plants whose pasteurizing had failed.
He gave frontage of his farm to a refugee who developed a tree business.
He planted hundreds of trees.
When hog prices plunged, he started Shantz Country Pork Family Restaurant in Waterloo at a time when the OntarIo Pork Producers Marketing Board started a restaurant in Toronto. Neither venture made a dent in pork demand and both closed.
He and his son expanded the milk-drying venture into a pork feed business.
When I was a reporter and columnist for the Kitchener-Waterloo Record, we often talked things over, in particular his concerns about Mennonite investors in Waterloo County Supplies Co-operative.
He was one of the nicest farmers I ever knew.
