The Rural Voice, 1982-06, Page 7decision and in the time it took to map out
a strategy "the world market went all to
pieces and my whole plan went out the
window." Upon re -calculation, McKinnon
found he now required sixty cows to get
the same kind of income that he would
have received from forty before the
bottom fell out of the milk pricing
schedule.
He went ahead with the expansion but
"that's when 1 started to get interested in
the marketing situation. I thought if
you're going to put all your eggs in one
basket you'd better be taking a little more
time to consider what is happening to that
product and how it is being marketed."
Something else happened to Ken
McKinnon about that time. He was
persuaded by a neighbour to sit on the
local committee of the Ontario Concent-
rated Milk Producers Association. The
neighbour was stepping down and he was
keen to have McKinnon take his place
because, as McKinnon remembers him
saying, "we need somebody to handle
Walter Miller." Farm union was a
growing force in the province and it was
led by Miller.
McKinnon had never given Walter
Miller much thought, but he did agree to
take a place on the local. Two years later
he was elected to the OCMPA's board.
The election came at the annual meeting
in Ottawa in 1961. This time it was Bill
Tilden, of Harriston, who urged
McKinnon to seek board membership. In
the balloting McKinnon tied with Gordon
Walker, a producer from Springfield. The
deadlock caused quite a procedural stir
among those running the election. In the
couple of hours they spent trying to
determine just how such a situation should
be resolved, it was discovered that one of
the other newly -elected board members
was actually ineligible for office because
he was shipping fluid milk, not industrial
milk. "If they'd had to break the tie, 1'd
have likely lost," says McKinnon, "be-
cause there were very few milk producers
up in this area and there were far more
delegates there who knew Gordon than
knew me."
McKinnon worked his way up to first
vice-chairman of the OCMPA by 1964, the
year Ontario agricultural Minister Bill
Stewart announced the formation of the
Ontario Milk Marketing Board. Among
the dozen or so members the minister
named as OMMB members were the
chairman, first vice-chairman, and past
chairman of the OCMPA. And to make
sure he was on the right track he first
visited the farm of each potential board
member.
The new board officially came into
existence in 1965. "I think I saw it all as
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THE RURAL VOICE/JUNE 1982 PG. 7