I kept a daybook diary from 1962 until last year when I thought it’s time to give it up. I seldom looked back through the years unless I wanted to check on an important event.
Well now, let’s take a look at the daybook of November 1963 to see when President John F. Kennedy was shot. I was in Grade 9 at Eganville and District High School and I recall my father came to get me as it was a Friday and the school was out at noon for a football game. There was work to do on the farm and I wasn’t interested in watching Eganville and another high school play football. On the way home in the Buick we heard on the radio that President Kennedy had been shot.
My daybook says: Friday, Nov. 22 had History and Business Practice classes in the morning. Football game afternoon. Dad came to get me at noon. We heard on the radio President Kennedy had been shot. We stopped on the way home to tell a neighbour (Wesley Fick) who was unloading logs by the road.
The daybook entry of Nov. 25 reads: President Kennedy’s funeral, watched the ceremony on TV at school. Math and Science exams today.
I was one of four Renfrew County delegates to attend the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA) annual convention, held Monday and Tuesday of this week in Hamilton. I’ve been a delegate many years since I first went in the 1980s. My trusty daybook was checked and there it was: November of 1984. Back in those years it was a three-day convention. We’d drive down Sunday and come home late Wednesday evening.
Monday November 25, 1984, the first day of the convention, the weather was summerlike according to my daybook. It was a record high of 65 degrees F.
The OFA president from 1979 to 1984 was Lanark’s Ralph Barrie. Harry Pelissero took over from Barrie and was president for two years and in 1986 was defeated by Brigid Pyke.
At last year’s OFA convention, Patrick Brown, Leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservative Party, spoke to delegates as did Andrea Horwath, Leader of the New Democratic Party of Ontario. Who would have thought a year ago that Brown would be forced to resign and that Rob Ford’s brother Doug would be elected premier of Ontario in June?
Because the convention is held in Hamilton this year, which is in the riding of Andrea Horwath, she was the opening speaker on Monday morning.
The Honorable Ernie Hardeman, Minister of Agriculture Food and Rural Affairs, was the closing speaker at 5 p.m.
There aren’t many of us old guys still going to the OFA convention who attended conventions in the 1980s. It’s now a convention of mostly young men and women farmers. And that’s wonderful.
