1939: Manitoba

Along with all Canada's western Provinces, Manitoba was blessed with an exceptional wheat crop in 1939, the largest in ten years. The Manitoba crop was estimated at more than 50,000,000 bushels. Winnipeg's storage and shipping facilities were strained to the utmost, as the bumper crop from Saskatchewan and Alberta flowed through this great center.

A dispute broke out in July between the provincial government under Premier John Bracken and W. D. Euler, Minister of Trade and Commerce in the Dominion Government at Ottawa, over a barter agreement between the Province of Manitoba and the German Government. The plan called for the exchange of Manitoba farm products for $300,000 worth of German electrical equipment. In reply to the Dominion Minister's objection that the agreement conflicted with the terms of the existing Canadian-German trade agreement, Premier Bracken declared that he was not going to permit 'anything to stand in the way of an opportunity to secure markets for farm products.' The plan, however, had to be abandoned when war was declared between Canada and Germany.