Hadley Van Vliet was born in 1914 of immigrant Dutch parents on a farm near Quinton, Saskatchewan. He received a Bachelor of Science degree in Agriculture at the University of Saskatchewan, and a PhD at the University of Wisconsin. Van Vliet started his teaching career in 1938 as instructor in agricultural economics at the University of Saskatchewan. Students held him in high regard, and his influence on them was a profound. He served a term as president of the Saskatchewan Agricultural Graduates Association, and another as president of the Saskatchewan Agricultural Economics Society. In 1968 he was named a Fellow of the Agricultural Institute of Canada. He died suddenly in December 1968, two days after he had given the principal paper at a meeting of the Saskatchewan branch of the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society. Van Vliet was posthumously inducted into the Saskatchewan Agricultural Hall of Fame in 1973.
W. David Chandler