Independent Studies | University of Waterloo

Eugene Bourgeois, BIS '71, is the first recipient of the BIS degree. The diversity of Eugene's interests and work embody the nature of the IS program as it was then in 1969 at its beginning and as it is now.

Eugene provided the following comments about his work...

Philosopher’s Wool evolved in response to the major recession of the early 1980's in a farming environment very similar to today's global economic recession. Farmers who had been encouraged to expand their operations now found themselves holding debt greater than the value of their assets. Even when current in their payments, creditors called in loans, creating what was then called the Farm Debt Crisis in Canada.

My wife and I own a micro-sheep farm in Ontario, Canada which I designed and built to provide us with the basic needs of food, shelter and a modest income that would cover fixed expenses, such as property tax, insurance and utilities. Ann taught elementary school part-time as I built our farm and was house-husband. Our farm was designed in such a way that each waste product would become the feedstock for a new product with the ultimate aim of growing exotic wild mushrooms on pasture from our manure compost.

We first purchased sheep in 1980 and soon discovered that our fleece wool returned below cost returns. It cost $CDN .70 per pound to shear the sheep and we received $.32 per pound for our fleece from the co-operative. At the time, I would occasionally shear sheep with our shearer and we all wondered how we could manage to be paid fairly for our fleece.

Philosopher’s Wool grew from these concerns, beginning informally in 1983 when I had some of our fleece processed into yarn, and formally in 1984 when we decided to see how we might expand this program to the farm community as a whole.

Between then and now we have purchased as much as 5% of the fleece wool in Ontario and devised a payment scheme that rewards farmers for producing clean fleece while rejecting those who do not. We buy wool on a clean-yield basis rather than a fleece-weight basis, and have paid farmers an average of $CDN 1.93 per pound as the market price for fleece declined to about $CDN.10 per pound.

To do so we have developed patterns and knitting techniques that place our finished product near the top end of design while pricing our knitting kits near the bottom end. I believed that it was only by making our product affordable to ordinary working people that we could develop a sustainable and viable market for the farmers from whom we purchased fleece.

Contrary to conventional wealth management advice, we decided to pay ourselves last, instead taking inventories and capital structures as our payment while covering our living expenses by traveling to sell and demonstrate our products. Our goal as a business has been to enrich everyone along our supply chain in the belief that this will ultimately reward us richly.

Philosopher’s Wool is that sustainable success story.

Eugene welcomes your comments and ideas for the work he does, and naturally, your support for his labours as a community environmental activist.

Time and Consciousness

Panel Discussion

Wild Mushrooms

Fish Populations and Their Collapse Near the Reactors/a>

Health care and this EIS

Terrestrial Environment TSD deficiencies

4 Concerns About Fire Training and the Bruce Power EIS April 14, 2009

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Eugene Bourgeois This page was last reviewed on August 20, 2009