This past week Yorkton could have used one of George Morris' snow ploughs. Yorkton's first snow fall of the year dumped inches of heavy wet snow on the streets of the city, causing traffic problems and lots of heavy shoveling for its citizens.

Morris Industries, founded by the late George Morris, is internationally known for manufacturing farm machinery and fabrication, but did you know that at one time, the firm manufactured snow ploughs?

A news report in 1957 reported that Morris designed and manufactured a rotary snow plough which was sold to a group of Moosomin farmers.

The plough could travel at three miles per hour through drifts two to three feet deep. It operated on a somewhat similar principle of the old furrow plough giving the snow a rolling action for easy entrance to the 48 inch single blade fan. It cleared a six and half foot strip at one time and threw the snow 40 to 50 feet on either side.

The story of the Morris snow plough is further detailed in the biography of George Morris, It Was In Him, written by Dick DeRyk:

"George and Jack (Baron) designed the first snowblower so farmers could clear shallow hard-packed snow from their country roads. It did the job. It dug into the snow and ice, and two fans blew it away from the road. In fact, the fans worked so well that on the first test run on a road south of Yorkton, the ice chunks broke the windows of a nearby farm home.

"But another farmer convinced George he was on the wrong track. What farmers needed was a blower to get rid of deep snow. The result was a large scoop that gathered in the snow, and a fan, nearly five feet across, turned by the power take-off from the tractor, which threw the snow off to the side. His snowblower competed with a similar machine built in Saskatoon, which was more expensive.

"Three sizes of Morris snowblowers were sold throughout the area during the 1950s. Farmers in many districts got together to buy one for their joint use. Its performance was its best advertising, and to make sure people knew about his snowblower, George sent men out into the countryside to clear away six and seven-foot drifts after a storm, using an Allis Chalmers tractor on tracks instead of tires. And that, of course, also helped sell the tractors.

"Several hundred snowblowers were sold, nearly a hundred in the first summer when they were offered at a discount (just in case there was no snow that winter). The possibility of little snowfall made George decide he shouldn't become too dependent on this new product, but by the early 1960s sales began to lag anyway as roads improved and the rural municipal governments began keeping roads clear of snow in winter."

In the same report it was noted that a Costa Rica buyer, who had no need for a snow plough, discovered that Morris was the only place he could purchase a two-way hydraulic system for a certain type of tractor, one of Mr. Morris' earlier inventions.

Mr. Morris operated a garage and implement business in Bangor until he moved to Yorkton in 1949. Here he continued to manufacture the Morris rod weeder, a machine purposely designed for stony land.

His business flourished and expanded to manufacture a variety of farm machinery and other fabricated products, which are now exported internationally.