Robert Hugh Bradley (1931 – 2012)

Hugh Bradley was born in Lacombe, Alberta to Margaret and Morley Bradley.¹⁾ In the early 1950s, he was a student studying field crops. During the summer of 1952-53, he worked at the old Dominion Experimental Farm at Mile 1019, near Haines Junction. He checked experimental plots farmers were growing for the Department of Agriculture and got to know the Wilkinson family at Pelly Farm. In 1954, J.C. Wilkinson decided to sell the Pelly River farm and he approached Bradley. Hugh contacted his brother Dick, a graduate of the Olds Agricultural College, and they bought the farm with two friends. Dick Bradley arrived at the farm in April 1954 and Hugh joined him in early June after achieving his B.Sc degree in agriculture from the University of Alberta. They had $2.53 between them, and they started raising pigs with one sow and a boar. For about five years they sold milk to pay for groceries until their herd of cattle was built up. The Bradley’s raised only Herefords for years, wintering about fifty and butchering the rest for sale. Salmon, garden produce, and berries provided more than 500 jars of preserves each year. Chickens and rabbits augmented their food supply and eggs, potatoes, and garden vegetables were cash crops. They grew fields of oats, wheat, hay and rye for farm use, and had experimental plots of wheat, oats, and barley for the Experimental Farm at Beaverlodge, Alberta after the experimental farm near Haines Junction closed down. They drove twenty-six miles from Minto and freighted everything across the Pelly River until 1967 when they built a thirty-two-mile bush road from Pelly Crossing. Mrs. Bradley gave a presentation with this information to the 1979 YHMA annual convention and concluded “We never got rich, but we had a good life being poor!”²⁾

Hugh Bradley and local nurse Wenda Hickmott were married in 1997. Hugh was a mentor to many Yukon farmers, and he was influential in the development of Yukon agriculture. He monitored a climate observation station at the farm for fifty-eight years and handed the station over to his nephew Dale in 2012.³⁾ The first Yukon Farmer of the Year Award was given to Hugh Bradley in 1999.⁴⁾ In 2011, Hugh Bradley received the University of Alberta’s Honour Award at a ceremony in Edmonton.⁵⁾

The Bradley family collection is held at the Yukon Archives, Yukon Archives, Bradley family fonds, acc # 78/1.)