Five people will be added to the Ontario Agriculture Hall of Fame in June.
They are Senator Rob Black, Scott Graham, Brian O’Connor, and the late Dr. Helen Fisher and the late Percy Hodgetts.
Black is chairman of the Senate’s committee on agriculture. He was named a senator after serving as the founding chief executive officer of the Rural Ontario Institute, program director for the Advanced Agricultural Leadership Program and transitioning 4-H Ontario into an independent charitable organization.
O’Connor is EastGen’s founding general manager which he helped create by merging Gencor with Eastern Breeders Inc.
At Gencor he set up Gencor Foods to take over a Kitchener beef-packing plant to provide a market for cull cows which were banned from their traditional markets in the United States because bovine spongiform encephalopathy turned up in Alberta. He also used EastGen to support the revival of Thornloe Cheese. Both businesses subsequently folded.
Scott Graham was chairman of Egg Farmers of Ontario marketing board and was instrumental in developing an egg quality assurance program and a quota transfer system. He became a marketing board director when his father retired.
Dr. Helen Fisher helped Ontario grape growers to transition vineyards from labrusca to vinifera grapes which have earned an international reputation for wine excellence.
Percy Hodgetts spent 41 years at Ontario’s Department of Agriculture and 35 as the first director of the Ontario Fruit Branch, transforming household orchards into a thriving commercial industry. He was Ontario’s first specialized apiarist and entomologist and he establishment the Horticultural Experimental Station at Vineland.
He standardized box packing, cold-storage infrastructure, and “Big O” brand, conducted many training programs, provided growers with vital knowledge and laid a strong foundation for the industry’s resilience and adaptability even during the Great Depression of the 1930s.
