Plowing through time: The IPM in Lindsay

Just in Time local history series

A stroll by the Lindsay Community Gardens, located in the heart of Fleming College’s Frost Campus, will reveal many green thumbed residents quietly cultivating the soil as they tend to their plots. It seems fitting, then, that a little more than a century ago, this site – east of today’s Adult and Alternate Education Centre and west of St. Mary’s Cemetery – played host to the International Plowing Match. Here and in adjacent fields, somewhere between 60,000 and 75,000 participants and spectators gathered to watch furrows being cut through the land.

It was the fall of 1922, and Lindsay was at last on the plowing match’s revolving circuit of host communities – the first time since the IPM got off the ground in 1913. Then as now, planning and organizing for an event of this magnitude was an all-hands-on-deck affair. Planning got underway in February of that year – and not without some naysayers. “There are some of our citizens who claim that this event is of very little importance and will mean nothing to Lindsay if the association decided to hold the match here,” noted a Feb. 11, 1922 editorial in the Lindsay Daily Post. Yet, as the editorial continued, “any demonstration or event that attracts people to a town or city by the thousands is worth going after,” and went on to extol the economic benefits the IPM would bring to Lindsay.

Preparations for the event – which took place from Oct. 11-13, 1922 – were made in earnest, with multiple committees being formed to ensure that no detail was overlooked. One of the concerns voiced from the outset was over whether Lindsay had sufficient accommodation for the deluge of visitors expected from all parts of the province. Members of the Kiwanis Club stepped up to organize billets and established an information bureau on Kent Street. Hot meals were served up in the Armoury by the Ladies’ Aid of Cambridge Street Methodist Church, and young women were encouraged to sign up to help with washing dishes.

As with all large outdoor events, so much was dependent on the weather. “Last week it was feared that for really high class work the ground was going to be too hard, but the rains over the weekend have put an end to those fears,” the Post assured local residents. Just about everything was in readiness by Oct. 10. “Everybody was working and the scene was an animated one,” declared a local reporter. “Motor trucks loaded with farm machinery were being unloaded, while tractors were being set up and placed in position for the big demonstration.”

No plowing match would be complete without a turnout of dignitaries, elected and appointed. All of Lindsay’s previous mayors who were still alive and well in 1922 planned to compete, and Lieutenant Governor Henry Cockshutt (himself heir to a famous plow-making firm) put in an appearance.

But the dignitaries were of course vastly outnumbered by the farmers and former farmers who guided their plows along each furrow with their eye on one of the many prizes awarded in various classes. Indigenous peoples numbered among the participating plowmen, including eight from Deseronto and several from the vicinity of Rice Lake. Johnson Paudash, an Ojibwa veteran and skilled marksman of the First World War and a familiar face in Lindsay, was among those who signed up to showcase his skill behind a plow.

People of all ages participated in this plowing match. A pair of farmers from Argyle and Woodville, respectively, entered the class in sod for men aged 65 and older. Both gentlemen were in their eighties, and yet were more than up for the task ahead of them. The contestant from Argyle was described in The Farmer’s Advocate as having “an alertness and spring in his step that might well have been shown by a man sixty years or younger.” (Sadly, it would be his last hurrah, for after loading his plow into his wagon for the return trip to Argyle, this farmer got lost in a rainstorm, came down with pneumonia, and died shortly thereafter.)

Victoria County would host the International Plowing Match again from Oct. 12-15, 1948 – with the festivities being based at Jack Chambers’ farm near Cambray – and again between Oct. 13-17, 1970. The latter event must have been a welcome distraction at a time when much of Canada was watching with bated breath as the October Crisis unfolded in Montreal. Far from the Front de libération du Québec drama leaving decision-makers in Ottawa on edge, farmers from across Ontario were once more descending on the fields surrounding Lindsay.

Among them was Eugene Timbers, a native of Milliken, Ontario and a longtime participant in the IPM. Timbers, who farmed near Sunderland and eventually retired to Cannington, had achieved notable fame in 1952, when he competed in plowing matches throughout the United Kingdom and continental Europe. At 18, he was the youngest person from Canada to take part in a European plowing contest, where he won a gold medal for horse-drawn plowing. “The Ministry of Agriculture chose him to go abroad and plow,” says Timbers’ daughter, Jacqueline Timbers-Warvill with pride.

And it is with tremendous pride that Lindsay once more plays host to the IPM – the first time since 1992. Plow on.