Will carved on tractor remains legal oddity
Bob Hannay is the last living connection to a 65-year-old legal case known worldwide, but he’d rather talk about the tractor than the dying wishes a Saskatchewan farmer carved on its fender.
“I hadn’t thought too much about it until recently,” Hannay said in a recent phone interview. “I suppose it’s unique. When you’re 15, you don’t pay attention to too much detail.”
In 1948, then-15-year-old Hannay and his father were enlisted by neighbours to help rescue Cecil George Harris, who spent 10 hours trapped under his tractor.
Hannay and the other rescuers didn’t notice the 16word will Harris had carved on the tractor’s fender: “In case I die in this mess I leave all to the wife. Cecil Geo. Harris.”
Harris died the next day in a Rosetown hospital, but his will, one of the most unique wills in the world, survives as legal lore.
The only case that might come close involves a will written on an eggshell.
The fender is on display in the library at the University of Saskatchewan’s college of law, which hosted Hannay, 80, and others for a discussion of the case on Friday.
“In a way, every will is a story and this will is set in a context that symbolizes Saskatchewan,” said U of S law Prof. Doug Surtees, noting the case is regularly cited in law classes here and around the world.
“It’s a way to bring up about a half- dozen topics, and it’s a piece of Saskatchewan history.”
When the will was discovered the day after the rescue, it was cut out of the fender and brought to William Elliot’s law office in Rosetown. He knew the case was unique and readied his arguments for the court.
Elliot had to prove several things about the holographic (handwritten) will, said Geoff Ellwand, a Calgary lawyer who spoke at the U of S event. He wrote an upcoming Saskatchewan Legal Review article about the Harris case.
The handwriting had to be matched, it had to be argued that Harris was sound of mind when he wrote it, and a condition in the will — “in case I die in this mess” — could be contested because he actually died a day later in hospital, Ellwand said.
“What went through his mind under the tractor? Clearly, he was contemplating death,” Ellwand told reporters. “There was no doubt about his wishes. The court accepted it without question.”
The judge ordered the fender and penknife to be put in the court record and stored at the Kerrobert courthouse. When the courthouse closed, the items were moved to the U of S.
Hannay has a theory about how Harris got stuck. He was likely hooking up his tractor to a “one-way,” an old tiller. With the tractor in reverse, one of its metal wheels might have caught his foot. Panicking, Harris might have pulled the tractor’s control clutch and, forgetting it was in reverse, the wheel and its big V-shaped lugs crushed his left leg, Hannay said.
But it’s a just a theory. The only thing people can be sure of is the farmer’s dying wishes.
“It was a pretty brave thing to do, really,” Hannay said. “He was there alone all day.”