11/28/2025
Quilter unknown, attributed to Ethel Heron, Heron farm prize ribbon quilt, circa 1935, cotton and ribbon, 90 x 75 inches, courtesy Craig Krogan, Saskatoon, SK
Word around the wood stove is this quilt was made from only a few of the prize ribbons won by the Heron family farm at the many livestock fairs and exhibitions hosted throughout western Canada throughout the 1920’s and 1930’s. The Heron family, parents William and Ann and their four children Ethel, Jennie, Euphemia (Effie) and William, moved up from North Dakota in 1886 to Ontario and then out west to Regina in 1907. William was a Farm Instructor and Assistant Principal at the Regina Indian Industrial School, a residential school located north-west of the city which operated from 1891-1910. Later he farmed and bred livestock near Huntoon, SK, which is located within the triangular landmass between Weyburn-Estevan-Stoughton.
He was a prominent and well respected breeder Clydesdale horses and Hampshire and Oxford sheep and
did much to improve the registration systems of those breeds. William was president of the Saskatchewan Sheep Breeders Association, the Livestock Breeders Association and later president of the Dominion Sheep Breeders Association, a position he held when he was 80 years old. His eldest daughter took some of the shoeboxes full of ribbons and sewed this quilt which then hung in his bedroom until his death in 1939.
In the 1980’s there was a wave of regional historical tomes produced, looking to document the breadth of
homesteading and nation building stories that dot the Saskatchewan landscape. The following quote is from one of those volumes cataloguing the settlers stories from the Huntoon area:
“A blanket of ribbons made of some of his ribbons is in the museum in Regina now, along with many of his
pictures. The blanket has been on exhibition several years at the time of the Regina Summer Fair. I felt that was the place for it. I have pictures of it and of the Honour Roll. I believe the museum these things are to be displayed in has been sidetracked for the time being. The man (a friend of my father’s) who was in charge of that museum died lately. After my father’s death in September of 1939, Alfred and I (Effie) carried on the sheep business.”
-Exerpt from "Huntoon, Sask. and area, 1900-1983: Hope, Home, Happiness", editor Fern Clara Knibbs, 1983.
This is the last week to see "New Bedfellows, Narratives in Contemporary Quilting", currently on display until November 29, 2025.
Canadian Western Agribition
