Fawcett Wright Ransom was born in Bedford, England in 1882, emigrating to Canada in 1897 to the Mountainside district of Manitoba. In 1909, he married Mabel Arde. They raised two children.
Ransom was keenly interested in the need to improve conditions of the rural people. Thus he worked constantly for better educational facilities and standards by serving on local boards, on the Educational Commission, Board of Governors of the University of Manitoba and the Advisory Council of the Canadian Association for Adult Education.
Co-operatives were his main interest. He was associated with the local Grain Growers Association, Manitoba Wheat Pool (later called Manitoba Pool Elevators), director and vice-chairman of Manitoba Co-op Wholesale, director of Interprovincial Co-ops, president of Red River Co-op Supply, vice-chairman of the Co-operative Promotion Board and secretary of the Provincial Study Group Committee.
His many radio talks on the merits of the co-operative movement and pamphlets on soil conservation, as well as co-operative promotion, encouraged others to write similar publications on their own fields of interest. He worked with the Manitoba Federation of Agriculture; promoted Camp Wannacumbac at Clear Lake; and won the Award of Merit for work in credit unions both provincially and nationally.
His ideas were many but with one goal — to improve the living standards of the common man, especially in the field of agriculture. It was his belief that the farmers were the backbone of the nations.