Buchanan takes the reins

Wednesday, October 16, 2013

by BETTER FARMING STAFF

This month, Premier and agriculture minister Kathleen Wynne nominated Elmer Buchanan as head of a revamped Ontario Racing Commission. It will be Buchanan's job to lead revitalization and re-invention of horse racing in Ontario.

Buchanan, a former provincial agriculture minister and a frequent appointee to government panels concerning agriculture, is no stranger to farming. Nor is he new to the horse industry – he was one of three assigned to a horse industry transition panel whose final report on how to save the industry was released last week.

But many in the province’s horse industry might not be familiar with Buchanan’s involvement in the industry. So we’ve dug into our archives and found this excellent profile by Bernard Tobin published in 1995 by the former Farm and Country magazine.

Tobin spent three years covering Buchanan's dealings as agriculture minister and penned this story just prior to the 1995 provincial election that saw the New Democratic Party lose power to Progressive Conservative Mike Harris and his Common Sense Revolution. Harris would then go on to establish the slots at racetracks program, which was dismantled by Dalton McGuinty's Liberal government in 2012.

Tobin, as you may remember, won this year’s gold award for monthly press reporting at the Canadian Farm Writers’ Federation annual awards for his Better Farming feature profiling the impact of the ending of the racetrack slots program. BF

Behind the wheel with Buchanan