The Rural Voice, 1982-06, Page 6PROFILE
Ken McKinnon, OMMB chairman
Cow stables and a stable milk market
are the first things on his mind.
A common birthday gift for many
sixteen -year-olds might be a good radio,
or a stereo. Or a rifle. Or a bicycle. Or
maybe even a car.
Kenny McKinnon got a farm.
It wasn't planned that way, but that's
how it worked out back in the spring of
1944 for the man who is now head of the
Ontario Milk Marketing Board.
Ken McKinnon was a grade -ten student
in Port Elgin when his mother arrived at
the school one morning and said, "Your
father is in the hospital, you'll have to
come home." He's been home ever since.
Arthur McKinnon, well-known mixed
farmer on a nice plot of land just east of
town overlooking the Saugeen River, had
been having some eye problems, but it
was a heart attack that landed him in the
hospital. His elder son Allan was just old
enough to join the war effort so he had left
home. Then there was Kenny, and four
years younger than him, a daughter
Katharine.
Ken McKinnon had shown an interest
in the farm, indeed he remembers doing
morning chores from the time he was
eleven or twelve. But that had hardly
groomed him for the role that beckoned
now.
"I went to see my father at the hospital
and he told me two things," McKinnon
remembers. "First he said, 'We don't
have any wood cut yet; you'd better get
somebody to help you do that.' And,
second. 'If you want to buy that tractor
you'd better get it bought because there
are a lot of crops to put in.' "
Young McKinnon was quick to make his
first major deal. He swapped the farm's
four horses for a little Ford tractor and a
two -wheel spreader, one of the first
two -wheeled spreaders in the area. On the
other end of the transaction was Bill Kidd,
who was able to combine his barbering
business with the town's Ford auto and
implement dealership. Since the time
Kenny McKinnon first needed a haircut
the two had been good friends, so the
trade went smoothly.
"Quite frankly," McKinnon says today,
"I was not a horse lover. I can't recall that
I said it but 1 think I had it in my mind that
unless 1 got a tractor I wasn't going to
come home and try to run the farm." He
had previously told his father that he could
PG. 8 THE RURAL VOICE/JUNE 1982
by Dean Robinson
Ken McKinnon: "The
board.
have ten acres of land worked in the time it
took to harness and then bed down the
horses.
Arthur McKinnon didn't stay in
hospital long. In fact he managed to chalk
up thirty-five years as clerk -treasurer of
Saugeen Township. But the damaged
ticker did restrict his duties around the
farm and in body, at least, his second son
was the youthful man in charge.
As a youngster, and because of the
farm's proximity to Pork Elgin. Ken
McKinnon mixed primarily with the town
kids. He played minor hockey and softball
with them; he was one of the few farm kids
to do that. As a rightwinger, he started
playing intermediate hockey when he was
fifteen. It seems he was able to mix rural
and urban life almost at will.
McKinnon was married in September
1950, and wife Freda immediately became
involved in the farm operation. She did the
chores when her husband was away
playing, coaching or refereeing hockey
world wasn't made in a day. Neither was the milk marketing
games. She practically lived in the barn
the winter the town's sports director
resigned and her husband was asked to
replace him. "I knew every kid in Port
Elgin for years after that," says
McKinnon. "It's amazing, I still get
Christmas cards from some of them."
But not all of "McKinnon's kids" were
in Port Elgin. At his own farm there was
Jim, born in 1951; Joanne, born in 1952;
Bob, born in 1954; and twins Susan and
Paul, born in 1959.
It was Ken who brought the first
purebred dairy cow to the McKinnon
farm, but for years he and his father
continued to mix their moderate dairy
operation with some beef cattle. some
cash cropping and some custom work.
Near the end of the 1950s Ken began to
look seriously at specializing, and his
thoughts leaned to an expanded dairy
operation. All things considered, it
appeared he would need a herd of about
forty cows. This was not an overnight