Travel

More Than a Hill of Beans

In Bow Island, the lowly bean is a lofty legume and a welcome addition to the local economy   

- By Wes Lafortune

The smell of dill wafts through the warm air. A quaint shop on main street is packed full of exotic foods, and nearby fields are brimming. Down every road I look, there are beans. I’m in the town of Bow Island, in the southeast corner of Alberta. I soon discover this community of 1,868 people is clearly not an island in the literal sense, but is also not alone in the world, thanks to its reputation for lofty legumes.     

At 96 years old, the “Bean Capital of the West” is one of Alberta’s oldest small communities. It is happily located within an irrigation district that is home to a diverse range of agriculture, thanks to the 40 Mile Coulee Reservoir. This 11- kilometre long body of water – which is also a popular campground for boaters, water skiers and fishers – is the lifeblood to all who live here. Integral to the St. Mary River Irrigation District, 40 Mile Coulee Reservoir delivers a fresh supply of water through a sophisticated irrigation system that was first extended to Bow Island in the mid-1950s.  

With more than 2,500 hours of sunlight annually, crops of spearmint, dill, tarragon, and many varieties of beans, thrive. For your choice of dry edible beans, you can stop in at Viterra Alberta Bean Division, and pick up a 10-kilogram bag for a reasonable price. Owen Cleland, manager of operations for Viterra, grew up with the business. His father moved to Bow Island in 1962, became one of first bean experts in the area, and Owen wouldn’t have it any other way.

“I like the small town life,” he says. “The climate’s good here and there’s lots of hot sunny weather.”

Viterra processes nearly 57 million kilograms of the six main varieties of beans that grow so well around here: the Pinto, Great Northern (white), pink, red, black and yellow. The undisputed king in this rainbow lineup is the Pinto, which takes up approximately 65 per cent of Bow Island’s total production. These tasty legumes are shipped to the United States where, among a variety of other dishes, they are made into refried beans, a vital ingredient in many Mexican dishes.   

“They mainly go to the Spanish-speaking part of the population, to the southwest region of the U.S.,” says Cleland.

I take a stroll through the commercial area of downtown Bow Island and am immediately reminded of the South American connection at La Casa Mexicana, which at first seems startlingly out of place in small-town Alberta. Then I discover there are more than 100 Mexican Mennonite families living in Bow Island, the vast majority of whom work in agriculture, in the fields, or at Spitz, the local sunflower seed plant. Many of them have dual Canadian and Mexican citizenship and travel between Alberta and the state of Chihuahua, in northern Mexico, depending on peak work cycles. 

La Casa Mexicana’s owner, Isaak Koethler, is a proud Mennonite who works on a farm at Bow Island and travels once a month to Mexico to bring back supplies for his store, which is stocked with a fantastic array of products such as real vanilla, chocolate, Azteca leather work boots and refried beans that, very likely, started out in the fields of Bow Island. They have made a serendipitous journey back, to be consumed by some of the same people that likely first tended to them during the long, sunlight-filled summer months. 

“I’ve lived in Bow Island for 18 years,” says Koethler, whose wife and seven children also help out at the shop. “We liked it here and stayed.”

But that’s enough idle chatter; I’m ready to eat. So I leave La Casa Mexicana and walk to the Rolling Pin Bakery, where owner Russ Dueck laughs when I express my desire to sample local legumes. Although Bow Island beans often make it on to their restaurant menu, today is not one of those days. As a consolation he proffers the soup du jour, with a whole wheat bun on the side. As I dip my spoon into the steaming bowl and lift it to my mouth, I glimpse what I came for. Delicately balanced on my spoon, a perfectly shaped black bean. I swallow greedily, and think how true my first impression was: all roads in Bow Island really do lead to beans.   

When you go

Be sure to stop in at the Bow Theatre and check out a live, rocking blues show. A non-profit society, Blues at the Bow,  staged its first show at the old theatre in 1994. Past performers include Roy Rogers and the Delta Rhythm Kings, Duke Robillard and Texas Flood with Jerry Doucette. Great sound, great seats and internationally acclaimed blues music mean the Bow is the place to be. Call ahead and see who the Bow is hosting this summer: (403) 545-2340.

Other activities include golf, fishing and hunting. And no visit to Bow Island would be complete without a snapshot of town mascot Pinto McBean, a happy, cowboy-hatted giant bean statue in the centre of town.