Kemptville College alumni keep traditions alive at Ottawa Valley Farm Show

Dedicated alumni continue to keep the memory and the network of Kemptville College alive.

A group of graduates from the agricultural college that closed at the start of 2016 got together, as they do every year, at the Ottawa Valley Farm Show.

They get together and share memories and work on keeping an alumni organization alive.

The organization bring people together for events other than the farm show. This year they’re hosting a luncheon to honour certain years – this time years one and six, says Cindy Dawson, president of the Kempville College Alumni Association and a 1983 graduate of the college.

The organization also hosts activities at the alumni association’s historical building at the Lombardy fairgrounds.

The alumni historical building houses artefacts from their years at the college, which was located south of Ottawa. The association also awards two $1,500 scholarships each year.

Kim Link, who graduated in 1969, says that the college created life-long friends, who still get together and travel together.

“You can relive your history from way back when,” she says.

The eastern Ontario agriculture education gap

The loss of Kemptville College has left a gap in agricultural technical education in the area. Some travel to Ridgetown College in southern Ontario, but often young people study in other places in Canada, such as Alberta at Lakeland College and Olds College.

Algonquin College created an agricultural management program that was based in Perth, Ont., but that program has since been transferred to the college’s Woodruffe campus in Ottawa.

“What Algonquin is doing is nice as far as a business program, but there’s not a lot of great technical education available,” says Joe Krol, a crop farmer and former dairy farmer, who graduated in 1980 and is the first vice president of the alumni association board of directors.

While the options aren’t what they once were, the Kemptville College Alumni Association will keep the memory of the former state of agricultural technical education in eastern Ontario alive.

“It’s mainly for reunion, trying to get everybody together, reminisce, renewing old friendships, making new friends,” says Link.

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