SNOBELEN: Remembering my cousin Mike Snobelen for blazing a trail

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I’ll confess. I was nervous.

It was back in the mid-1980s. I had just finished building — with a lot of borrowed money — a truck garage. It was a risky venture, but I figured to grow our business we needed a modern facility for our trucks and the people who kept them on the road.

With the building finished, I faced one final inspection. An old man with a wooden leg parked in front of the building, hauled himself out of his pickup and proceeded to examine every nook and cranny of the shop. When he was done, he looked at me and said, “There’s not much wrong with it.”

High praise. That old guy was raised on a depression-era farm, lost a leg as a young man while salvaging a bridge deck, built a series of businesses from grain elevators to feed mills and, finally, was a pioneer in hog farming. He was tough, smart and a born innovator. He was my uncle Blake.

My father had passed away a few years before that shop inspection and I’m sure Blake came by to see if I needed to borrow a cup or two of wisdom. I was glad for his company. Big decisions rest heavily on young shoulders.

My cousin Mike, who was a few years my senior, also lost his father at a young age. His young shoulders couldn’t wait to carry the load.

He got on about the business of farming. Local farmers needed storage to reduce trucking costs, so Mike bit the bullet and bought a couple of grain bins. And, then, a couple of more.

When that expansion was manageable, he stretched further, eventually building a multi-location business serving a lot of Ontario farmers. Along the way, he got plenty of advice from Blake.

Entrepreneurs like Blake and Mike know this path well. Expanding a business is not as easy as simply buying more land. It’s figuring out how to add value, having the courage to invest and the tenacity to make it work.

Mike built Snobelen Farms into a family business that ships Ontario soybeans around the world. He did some crazy things that worked, like turning a contaminated Second World War airfield into productive farmland and using a robot to automate grain handling.

It was always comforting to have Mike blazing trails. We were in different businesses, but it was good to know that a fellow traveller was a few years ahead of me taking risks, finding opportunities and creating innovations.

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A few weeks ago, I asked Mike if he thought he could build Snobelen Farms again in today’s economy. He said he doubted it would be possible.

Finding money to build and expand rapidly wasn’t easy 50 years ago, but now, with relationship-based banking a distant memory, capital is even harder to source.

And government is more burdensome in 2024 than it was in the early 1970s. The volume of approvals required to build, hire people and make a business run crushes the spirit essential to building a company or a country.

Canada needs leaders like Mike and Blake. We would be wise to honour them by clearing the trail for the next generation of innovators. There are plenty of young Canadians who, with a little encouragement, are ready to build a better future.
Mike Snobelen is no longer blazing a trail. He passed away last week, leaving his legacy in the capable hands of the next generation. I’m going to miss him.