John Milton Bell (1922-1998) was born in islay, Alberta. He joined the faculty of the Department of Animal Husbandry at the University of Saskatchewan in 1948. He served as Department Head from 1954-1975, then as Associate Dean from 1975-1980, and finally as the Burford Hooke Research Chair until his retirement in 1990. He earned a BSc in Agriculture at the University of Alberta in 1943, an MSc from McGill University in 1945, and a PhD at Cornell University in 1948, specializing in nutrition. Bell was an active member of a small team of plant breeders, nutritionists and chemists that developed canola as a major crop for Canadian farmers. His work with rapeseed, begun in the early 1950s, involved basic nutritional research but also branched into toxicology and the mechanism of action of goitroigens and glucosinolates in swine and mice. Bell worked co-operatively with plant breeders and other animal nutritionists in defining the detrimental characteristics in rapeseed, which eventually gave rise to the development of canola and the effective utilization of canola meal in livestock rations.
Bell served as president of the Canadian Society of Animal Science in 1952, also serving on the editorial board of the Journal of Nutrition, the Canadian Journal of Animal Science, and the Journal of the European Association of Animal Production. In recognition of his many contributions, he received more than twenty major awards including Fellow of the Agriculture Institute of Canada (FAIC), Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (FRSC), Doctor of Science (McGill University), and Officer in the Order of Canada. He was invested into the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame. Bell’s dedication to the field of animal nutrition was demonstrated by his response to receiving the James McAnsh Award from the Canola Council of Canada. Bell, the first recipient of this award, chose not to accept the cash award, and directed that the money be used to establish the J.M. Bell Post Graduate Scholarship in Animal Nutrition at the U of S. Bell died in Saskatoon in 1998.
