Belgians have great interest in how Canadians operate farms

Daniel Pearce DELHI NEWS-RECORD
Wednesday June 27, 2007

The old Belgium met the new here Monday afternoon.
A busload of about 33 men and women from Belgium touring Ontario farms stopped at the
Belgian Club for lunch.
They were on their way from Stratford, where they had stayed for three days, to Niagara Falls.
Locals hosted a visit with them in the club’s basement. They sat behind long tables and ate
sandwiches together, drank Belgian beer, and spoke French and Flemish to each other.
"I met a man, his son lives in my village," said Marcel Follens of Delhi, who immigrated to
Canada in 1959 and became a tobacco farmer. "He lives so close to my niece."
The visitors included a man and his wife who once had a farm in Goderich but now live in
Belgium again.

"This is a good country, a nice country," said Herman Van Wynsberghe, who returned to
Europe after he seriously injured his foot in a farm accident. "We’ve traveled to many parts of
the world and this is the nicest place to live. The only trouble is the winter."
Waves of Belgian immigrants came to Ontario during the last century to grow sugar beets and
ended up in the Delhi area growing tobacco.
Some went to other parts of the province and became dairy farmers.
Group leader Mathieu Meers of Belgium has organized many trips to Canada for Belgian
farmers.
There is interest in how Canadians farm because 50 years ago Belgium imported cows from
this country, Meers said.
Farmers want to see where their breeds came from, he said, and to view the latest
technologies in milking and feeding.
Belgians coming to Canada to farm have fallen into one of two distinct groups - those who
succeed and prosper and those who go bankrupt, Meers said.
In many cases, they fail simply because they start up during bad economic times, said Meers,
who advises Belgians thinking about immigrating to Canada or the U.S.
"Farming is good here," he said. "The soil is good. The conditions are there to do it."
But, he added, Belgians have a hard time imagining living and farming in a country where snow
can pile up for months at a time and temperatures drop to -20 degrees Celsius.
The club hosts visiting Belgians "a couple times a year," said Frank Noorenberghe, who sits on
the club’s board of directors. "We want them to see the heritage of Belgians in Delhi."
The group planned to visit the falls in Niagara rather than visit farms.
"There are no cows in Niagara Falls, but you can’t come here and not see Niagara Falls,"
Meers said.