Plowing Match will return here
Local bid for International Farm Machinery Show successful
By Chris Fell - Express Staff

A delegation of more than 150 people from Grey County descended on Ottawa over the weekend to make a pitch to the Ontario Plowmen's Association for Grey to host the match in three years.

The first class bid presentation prepared by the county's team made by former Warden Al Bye and the enthusiastic response from the three bus loads of residents from Grey that made the long trek to our nation's capital made the decision easy for the Association.

Grey was awarded the rights to host the 2004 Match without a single question being asked or a concern being raised. Grey County supporters filled the elegant ballroom of an Ottawa hotel where the Association's annual meeting was being held and made it clear this county wanted the match and the people were ready to host it again. The last time the Plowing Match was held here was in 1987.

Bye wowed the crowd and the Association delegates with a terrific presentation that was brimming with new technology and all kinds of high tech goodies that combined to show off Grey and in particular Georgian Highlands where the match will be held.

The presentation put together by Debbie Fawcett of CMC Creative Marketing and Communications included a wonderful tourism video of Grey and state of the art computer graphics which showed a detailed computer generated model of the Plowing Match site and where each and every aspect of the major event will be held.

The presentation included speeches from current Grey County Warden Rod Knott, two of the three MPP's representing Grey County Bill Murdoch and Jim Wilson and one of the three Grey MP's Ovid Jackson.

Following the Grey presentation and the surprise move by the Association to immediately vote to award the Match in 2004 to Grey, county bid chairman Al Bye said the entire weekend had gone as he hoped.

"Everything went according to plan. The support we received from our people from Grey County was fantastic. The attendance of all these people here really made a difference," said Bye, who plans to step down as chairman to allow another person to step up and take the reins as the actual planning for the event begins. "Now we need to find a permanent chair of the committee, then we'll start with coming up with a marketing plan and a theme. Of course we'll continue on with "Grey County: the Natural Choice," said Bye.

The Grey bid was particularly strengthened by the presentation put together by Fawcett and her team of high tech wizards Bye noted.

"The presentation prepared by Debbie was leading edge and we broke new ground here today," said Bye, who was also proud of the mini-disk/CD Rom the county bid provided to all the directors and delegates at the meeting. The disk is packed with information about Grey County, its municipalities, its businesses, destinations and includes the video presentation that helped secure the Plowing Match for 2004.

"This is all new technology that we should be very proud of," said Bye, who admitted that even he was surprised by the Plowmen's Association's reaction to the Grey bid. "I thought there'd be a break and they'd talk about our bid and that there might be a couple of concerns," he said.

Grey County Warden Rod Knott was beaming following the decision to award the 2004 event to Grey.

"This is wonderful news and it's a real opportunity to display our county to the rest of Ontario and to the world," said Knott who spoke during Grey's presentation. "It was encouraging to have them make the decision immediately on the completion of our presentation. There's going to be a lot of good things to follow right up to 2004," said Knott.

With the bid now secured for Grey the real work to actually organize the 2004 event will begin. A successor to Bye, who retired from a long political career following last year's municipal election, will be the first order of business.

In addition organizers and county officials will begin searching for the thousands of volunteers required to put on the Plowing Match which will begin the third Tuesday of September 2004. More than 1,000 acres are taken up by the show with up to 100,000 people coming to visit and the show itself draws more than 600 exhibitors.

The host site will include a trailer/RV park, a tent city, hundreds of acres for the actual plowing competitions and displays, demonstrations and information about virtually every aspect of agriculture one can imagine.