Mowat the Innovator Dies at Age 66
NEPEAN — One of eastern Ontario’s great farm innovators and entrepreneurs, William Mowat, has died. He was 66. His impact on the region around the Fallowfield-Merivale area of what is now the City of Ottawa is incalculable. He oversaw three major businesses: The family dairy farm, Momac grain elevators and a children’s farm and museum that draw thousands of school children and adults every year.
"We used to have what we called our union meetings," recalls his daughter Heather Brophy, co-manager of Valleyview Little Animal Farm and museum. We’d say to him: "We’ve come up with the ideas; you make them work.
"We always called him the organizer and supervisor. He couldn’t do the work, but he could get it done."
Heather co-managed Valleyview with Lynn Townsend after Robyn, his second wife and a former teacher, retired. His first wife Carolyn died from cancer. The museum and farm for tykes is a phenomenal collection of working equipment, including a washing machine working off a drive shaft, a milk delivery truck, a blacksmith shop and a wagon train that travels through a scaled down farm. But the grain business distinguished Bill Mowat in the farm community. He bought his first corn dryer in 1967 and this spring celebrated the 40
th anniversary of its purchase. He went into business for a while with Mac MacVicor, hence the current name of Momac for the grain company. His son Karl runs the elevators, the major processor of grain in Ottawa. His son Ross Mowat runs the dairy farm.What’s important to a man often shows up when disaster strikes. When a micro burst of bad weather brought down a 200 tonne grain bin almost instantly, he was impressed by the savageness of the storm but what impressed him most was the small army of people who descended on Momac with shovels and equipment to put things back together again.
His life is best summed by the former pastor of his United Church, Reverend Gordon Roberts. He says: "In the final chapter of John’s gospel, Jesus encounters a disciple who John refers to as Nathanael, a man whose name in Hebrew means ‘Gift of God’. Of Nathanael Jesus says…‘behold a man in whom there is no guile.’" In an interview, Reverend Roberts said: "Bill was a man in whom there was no guile. What you saw was what you got. He was as big-hearted a man as I have ever known."
His daughter, Heather, says her father suffered from rheumatoid arthritis but the cause of his death remains unknown. He went to hospital for an infection in his leg in September and there he died.