1936 plowing match memories still fresh for some COmmunauté • COmmun i ty
FRANCIS RACINE francis.racine@eap.on.ca
Farms were smaller and so was the Inter- national Plowing Match (IPM). But the event was still very important for area resi- dents, when Stormont, Dundas &Glengarry hosted the event in 1936. Garfield MacLennan, having been 91 years on this earth, was only 11 years old when the first IPMwas held in Eastern On- tario. The tented city and most of the plow- ing at that historic match were held on his grandfather’s farm, located on South Branch Road north of Cornwall. Being only a boy, some memories are more vivid than others. “It was the horses,” he remembers fondly. “I remember looking out and seeing the horses plowing.” He also recalls seeing very few teams hauled in by truck and reckons many would have been driven to thematch.The plowing alternated, he says, plowing a grain field one day, then working a sod field the next. “We always had 10 to 14 horses around before we had tractors, “he says. “And my father always had a driving horse.” The 91-year-old still remembers how interesting it was to see so many visitors attend the IPM. “When you were a kid back then, you didn’t get too far fromwhere you lived,” he says. Having thousands of visitors arrive in the old Cornwall Township was amonumental event. He also recollects how excited the adults were, leading up to the 1936 match. Because he was in school at the time, he spent only two days at the match, one day watching the horse plowing competitions and one day looking around the tented city where vendors and equipment dealers dis- played all manner of goods. “Water pumps, farm implements, anything of interest to farmers,” he explains. “That was my first exposure to tractors.” The IPM legacy, the lasting economic impact for the host county, varies fromyear to year, but for Garfield’s grandfather and the other farmers on the South Branch, it was significant. “My grandfather got electricity on his farmbecause of that plowingmatch,” he says. Electricity wasn’t available outside the city, but in preparation of the 1936 match it was brought out. It wasn’t too long after the match that the neighbouring farmers got power as well, he says. What now re- quires more than 1,000 acres took place on hundred-acre strips of land fromone corner of the concession road to the next. By the time the IPM returned to Stormont County in 1958, farming had changed con- siderably. The rubber-tired tractor had, for the most part, replaced the horse for field work. By the time Garfield stopped milking cows in 1985, theMacLennan farmwas 400 acres, plus a couple hundred acres of rented
91-year-old GarfieldMacLennan still fondly remembers the International PlowingMatch of 1936, whichwas held on his grandfather’s land.
land. He still owns 180 acres of land. It would bemore than a decade after that first match in 1936, with the Second World
War behind them, that Garfield would attend another IPM. Nomatches were held between 1942 and 1945 due to war time restrictions.
But he’s been to just about every one since.
Nouveau président de la campagne de financement pour Centraide
FRANCIS RACINE francis.facine@eap.on.ca
en très bonne et forte santé financière », a déclaréM. Murphy. Selon lui, l’organisation aurait terminé l’année avec plus de 700 000 $ en actif. Le président du conseil d’administration, Danny Aikman, n’a pas manqué de rappelé que rien ne serait possible sans l’aide de bé- névoles dévoués et d’employés travaillants. « Nous mesurons le succès par les fonds que nous sommes en mesure de partager
avec les organismes que nous finançons », a-t-il précisé. M. Aikman a aussi profité de l’occasion pour annoncer que Nolan Quinn, président des campagnes de financement depuis maintenant deux ans, cèdera sa place à Michael Galvin. « Nolan et son équipe ont travaillé très fort et avec l’incroyable soutien de la communauté et des bénévoles, ils sont très près d’atteindre leurs objectifs » .
Centraide S D et G est en très bonne santé financière, selon IanMurphy, auditeur de l’organisation. C’est lors de l’assemblée générale an- nuelle de l’organisme, le 16 juin dernier, que les finances de Centraide ont été examinées de plus près par les membres. « Elles sont
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