In 1948, John Willard “Jack” Wade (1905-1980), a grain buyer for the Canadian Consolidated Grain Company at Lac du Bonnet, launched a business to buy wild rice (Zizania aquatica). Two years later, he built a rice processing plant beside the grain elevator and, in 1975, was joined in business by local resident Harry Arseniuk (1923-2022).
Wade sold the business in 1968 to Indian Head Wild Rice of Spooner, Wisconsin. At that time, Arseniuk began learning every facet of the renamed Indianhead Wild Rice Company. He purchased the aquatic grain from Indigenous harvesters, oversaw processing, and sold the finished product. In 1975, he bought the company from its American owners and operated it for the next 36 years.
Through the 1970s, Indianhead produced and processed an average of 20,000 pounds of wild rice annually. Production rose into the 1980s and, in its best year, the company processed 200,000 pounds. By the 1990s, however, the amount of harvested wild rice began to decline. In the 2000s, farmed wild rice from the United States increasingly undercut Manitoba's wild-harvested crop. Arseniuk retired and put the business up for sale in 2011.
Indianhead Wild Rice Building (August 2019)
Source: Rose Kuzina
Company logo on the Indianhead Wild Rice Building (August 2019)
Source: Rose Kuzina
Indianhead Wild Rice Building (March 2022)
Source: George PennerSite Coordinates (lat/long): N50.26479, W96.05100
denoted by symbol on the map above
Logs and Lines from the Winnipeg River: A History of the Lac du Bonnet Area by Lac du Bonnet Pioneer Club, November 1980, pages 250-251. [Manitoba Legislative Library]
Arseniuk Wild Rice, CompanyListing.ca.
Obituary [Harry Arseniuk], Sobering Funeral Chapel & Crematorium.
This page was prepared by Rose Kuzina, Gordon Goldsborough, and George Penner.
Page revised: 3 April 2026
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