(21 March 1872-9 Feb. 1940), writer on agriculture. (E.A. Howes, Dean Howes) Born at Henry, Prescott County, Ont. (Henry is between Vankleek Hill and L’Orignal) Parents: Joseph Howes and his wife Sarah Jane McNally. Education: local school, Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute, Ottawa Normal School, Ontario Agricultural College, with some study also at Cornell, Columbia and Clark universities. Howes was a schoolteacher in his earlier years of employment, and also spent “two years in Northern Michigan lumber woods” (resumé 1914) He taught for one year as an agronomist at the University of Nevada, Reno, and he was principal of the School of Agriculture at Vermilion, Alberta, 1913-1915. But most importantly, he was dean of the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, from 1915, when he took the position as founding dean, till his death. A man of character, force, resourcefulness and influence, he established a wide reputation for himself, and made his school distinguished. As a sportsman, he was interested especially in boxing and wrestling. He served as president of the Canadian Society of Technical Agriculturists.

     Not quite a Glengarrian himself, Howes wrote a book of recollections about growing up at Henry, called With a Glance Backward (Oxford University Press, 1939; illustr. by J.E. Laughlin) which is an important document of the kind of farm life Glengarrians once knew. The book contains a few references to GC; also, the fair it spends a chapter describing is presumably the Vankleek Hill Fair, an important annual event for the people of northern GC. Extremely well written, being a work of literature as well as information, With a Glance Backward was based on CBC radio lectures Howes gave nationally some two years earlier, and apparently on the speeches and after-dinner addresses for which he, an accomplished raconteur, was widely known. Glengarrians could see themselves in passages such as, “Picture an up-and-coming lad, twenty-two rows from the nearest fence, in a cornfield, on a fine afternoon in the middle of June, with the blue mountains in a haze across the river, and the bobolinks singing in the old meadow;…” (134-135) Or in the passage on growing up and growing away, “Coming home from public school each night, coming home from High School each Friday, coming home at longer intervals, from farther and farther away,…” (195) Howes died in hospital in Edmonton. Presbyterian. Mason. He was married 1 Dec. 1906 to Nora Kathleen Lindsay, of Manotick, Ont. (three children) For careers with similarities, see also G.S.H. Barton (another “near Glengarrian” and student of Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute), and William C. McKillican.

Information from University Archives, University of Alberta, including Howes’s resumé 1914 of his career, in Presidents’ Papers * The Edmonton Journal 10 & 12 Feb. 1940, The Edmonton Bulletin same dates (portrait), Vankleek Hill Review 6 March 1940 (portrait) * tribute, note on his countrywide reputation and his CBC talks, The Country Guide (March 1940) 5 * Howes’s recollections of his Alberta years, The New Trail, 22:2 (Fall 1964) 5-10 (portrait), with reflections on dealing with the WWI veterans as students * biog. note on dustjacket of With a Glance Backward * Alan D. MacKinnon, ed. Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute (1990)