Robert Dawson

The naming of a select strain of wheat as “Dawson’s Golden Chaff” honoured Robert Dawson, a farmer in Galt, born in Aberdeenshire Scotland, who was responsible for its development.

In 1881 Dawson, living on land which became the Galt Country Club on Coronation Blvd., owned a field of storm-flattened winter wheat called Red Dawson. While walking in the field in the spring, he noticed standing alone one plant obviously unusually vigorous, that had withstood the adverse weather. He saved the plant and in a few years produced enough grain to seed his own farm and sell a quantity to a neighbour. The Ontario Agricultural College purchased some of the wheat, and on testing it in their plots discovered that it far out yielded all other varieties. They gave it the name “Dawson’s Golden Chaff.” This variety is, in 1972, still being used in test plots at Guelph to improve new varieties of wheat.