DECEMBER 6, 1948 – FEBRUARY 24, 2017
Farmer; 4-H Club leader; life member and past-president of Erin Agricultural Society. Born Dec. 6, 1948; died Feb. 24, 2017 in Erin, aged 68.
Erin-area residents may have known Craig Switzer as the tractor pull announcer at local fairs.
June Switzer met her future husband “in 4-H, of course, showing cattle,” she recalled recently. At the time, Craig was among the University of Guelph’s first agricultural diploma students in farm mechanics. He commuted from his family’s Hillsburgh-area cow-calf operation. June and Craig subsequently ran this farm and had two children, Kris and Brooke.
Craig and June helped establish the Ontario Salers Cattle Association, which peaked at more than 50 members before the 2003 discovery of BSE in Alberta rocked Canada’s beef industry, June said. Craig also served as a Canadian director for the association.
He was a life-long member of Erin-area agricultural organizations. He had a passion for rural history and the farm community, where he was likely best known as “the guy who told jokes at the tractor pulls,” June said.
“Anything to do with International Harvester tractors and the farm community as a whole, cattle, agriculture and the history of his area – he just loved it … It just kind of drove him.”
Switzer family photo
Written by Jim Algie.
Originally published in the August 2017 edition of Better Farming.