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Following a short course for young farmers held in Woodbridge, Ontario in late February 1914, the class signed a constitution drafted by the Department of Agriculture to form the first Junior Farmers’ Improvement Association in Ontario. Over the next year, similar associations were formed in the counties of Durham, Peel, York, and Middlesex. In April 1944, delegates from each county and district in Ontario where Junior Farmers were active, came together in Toronto and voted to form a provincial organizational body, the Junior Farmers' Association of Ontario.

The first Provincial Junior Farmer Camp was held in 1947 on Lake Simcoe. In 1948, the camp moved to the YMCA Geneva Park facilities on Lake Couchiching and continued there until 1974. From 1975 to 1992, the JFAO Camp was at the Bark Lake Leadership Centre in Irondale. The JFAO camp was cancelled in 1994.

Kenneth McDonald and Sons Limited was an Ottawa seed and nursery company that spanned three generations. Founded in 1876 by Kenneth McDonald, management was passed on to sons John Alfred (J.A.) and Kenneth P. (K.P.) McDonald, who incorporated the firm in 1912. J.A.’s son John R., and K.P.’s son Stuart Edward (Ted), took over in the firm in later years.

McDonald and Sons Limited began as a supplier for the lumber industry, but the firm later shifted to carrying heavy farm equipment, clothing, farm seeds, and eventually vegetable seeds. Demand from rural and urban women for flower seeds prompted further expansion, which was followed by provision of nursery stock, lawn grasses, and garden sundries. At the height of the post-World War II boom, McDonald and Sons Limited staff grew to over seventy-five. Hugh Cairney was responsible for creating the firm’s bi-annual catalogues, along with the buying of seeds and correspondence with customers. In its busiest years, McDonald and Sons Limited sent out 65,000 Spring catalogues and 23,000 Fall catalogues.

McDonald and Sons Limited served a diverse range of customers, including small-town farmers in New Brunswick, the isolated Grenfell medical mission in Labrador, and even Prime Minister Mackenzie King. Affected by increasing government regulation and the vagaries of climate, McDonald and Sons Limited's profits diminished and the company dissolved in 1966.

The Letz Manufacturing Company was founded in 1882 in Crown Point, Indiana. The company made agricultural machinery that included feed grinders and roughage mills.

Located in Port Dover, Ontario, the Lighthouse Festival Theatre (LFT) was founded by the Artistic Director of Carpet Bag Theatre (Brantford) Sara Staysa in 1980. Staysa's own company was looking for a home theatre, and she knew of the old Town Hall in Port Dover. The historic building which held a 350-seat auditorium with flawless acoustics was inspected and found to be structurally sound but in need of a new roof. Staysa gained community support for the project, and the necessary work was done to occupy the building. Lighthouse Festival Theatre was chosen as the new name to differentiate it from the Carpet Bag Theatre.

Under the Artistic Direction of Derek Ritschel, in 2012, Lighthouse and the Showboat Festival Theatre in Port Colborne, Ontario, became sister theatres, and each flourished under the new arrangement. In 2021, Lighthouse Festival assumed responsibility for managing the theatres in Port Dover and Port Colburne and began offering plays year-round.

Artistic Directors of the Lighthouse Festival have been Sara Staysa (1980-1987), Simon Johnston (1987-1998), Robert More (1998-2003), Chris McHarge (2004-2010), Derek Ritschel (2011-2024), and Jane Spense (2024-).

The Local Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee (LACAC) is an advisory committee to a municipal council. Its responsibility is to recommend heritage property designation under the Ontario Heritage Act. LACACs were established in 1974 by the Ontario Heritage Act and over the years these committees have expanded their work to include cultural and natural heritage, in addition to buildings. LACAC later became known as Municipal Heritage Committees.

The Louden Manufacturing Works, based in Fairfield, Iowa, was founded in 1868 by William Louden (1841-1931), who invented a hay carrier in 1867. In 1887, Louden and his wife, Mary Jane, formed the Louden Machinery Company. Joined by his brother Robert B. Louden (1857-1939), who became the company’s president when it incorporated in 1892, William Louden continued to invent and manufacture new products, including a flexible barn door hanger (1895), barn litter carriers and tracks (1898), all-steel cow stalls (1907), individual automatic watering bowls for cows (1912), an Easy Feeding Hog Trough (1914), and an industrial line of Overhead Carrying Equipment (1917). The company expanded in the early 1900s, opening factories in Canada (1900), Minneapolis (1903), Albany, New York (1912), and Chicago (1915). A Louden factory was built in Guelph, Ontario in 1902. It closed during the Great Depression of the 1930s, and the factory was taken over by the Beatty Brothers Limited of Fergus.

In 1906, the Louden Machinery Company also established an Architectural Department to design barns and stables. The company’s product line continued to expand in the 1920s and 1930s as well, adding products such as barn cupolas, exhaust and intake hoods and louvers, fans, valves, pulleys, power hoists, concrete mangers, a patented garage door hanger, playground equipment (including slides, see-saws, gym sets, "swing bobs," and "whirl-arounds"), and thermostats.

After William and Robert’s deaths in 1931 and 1939, the company was led by William’s son, Robert Bruce Louden (d. 1952). Another of William’s sons, Arthur Clare Louden (1881-1956), served as president from 1952 to 1953. In 1956, the Louden Machinery Company was purchased by Mechanical Handling Systems, Inc. of Detroit, Michigan. Some of Louden’s farm equipment continued to be manufactured until 1965, and the company’s overhead handling equipment division was taken over by the American Chain and Cable Company.

The Lyceum Opera House and Theatre, located at 79-87 Frank Street in Strathroy, Ontario, was established in 1891 by local citizen and banker Herbert Rapley. He was instrumental in bringing Gilbert and Sullivan operas to town which opened up opportunities for locals to become involved in some of the productions. The opera house saw its last production in 1940.

Sources:
Township of Srtathroy-Caradoc, "Historical Walking Tour: Strathroy, Ontario." https://www.strathroy-caradoc.ca/en/resourcesGeneral/heritagewalkingtour.pdf.

Strathroy Age Dispatch, "Sitting on a piece of history." https://www.strathroyagedispatch.com/2014/10/29/sitting-on-a-piece-of-history.

Strathroy Museum, "Hometown Heroes: Charlotte Rapley." https://www.strathroymuseum.ca/en/whats-on/resources/Hometown-Heroes/hometown_heros_charlotte_rapley.pdf.

The Macdonald Institute of Home Economics opened in 1903 on the Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) campus in Guelph. Established through the efforts of Adelaide Hoodless (1858-1910), educational reformer and creator of the Women’s Institute, OAC President James Mills (1840-1924), educational philanthropist and tobacco magnate Sir William Macdonald (1831-1917), and Sir Macdonald’s adviser, Dr. James Wilson Robertson (1857-1930), a former dairy science professor at the OAC, the Macdonald Institute offered three-month short courses and one and two-year training programs for young women in domestic and food science, nutrition, manual training, housekeeping, nature study, and domestic arts. During the Second World War, the Macdonald Institute was taken over by the Royal Canadian Air Force to train army chefs. With the addition of a four-year degree program in 1948, the Macdonald Institute soon became the premier home economics school in North America.

In 1964, Macdonald Institute became one of the founding colleges of the University of Guelph, and in 1969 it became the College of Family and Consumer Studies (FACS), which included the Departments of Family Studies and Consumer Studies and the School of Hotel and Food Administration. In 1998, FACS joined with the College of Social Science to form the College of Social and Applied Human Sciences.

The MacDonald Thresher Company, known originally as the MacDonald & MacPherson Company, was founded in Stratford, Ontario in 1876 by Alex MacPherson, a mechanic, and John P. Macdonald, then a bookkeeper for Glasgow, MacPherson and Company, of Clinton, Ontario, and his brother, James Macdonald (1831-1911), a farmer. In 1878 they started the Dominion Agricultural Works and first build “Standard” threshing machines with conventional apron or canvas type side shake shoe, but by 1884 they adopted an end shake shoe to improve grain-separation, the first of their “Decker” threshers.

In the 1890s, after MacPherson had died, the business carried on as the MacDonald Manufacturing Company. In 1905, the company began manufacturing Decker steam traction engines. When James died in 1911, the company was renamed the MacDonald Thresher Company and was under the leadership of his two sons, Peter and John., until 1931.

Daniel Massey (1798-1856), a farmer who came to Upper Canada from Vermont with his parents as a young child, opened a farm implement workshop, named the Daniel Massey and Company, in Bond Head, near Newmarket, Ontario, in 1847. Massey moved his operation to Newcastle, Ontario in 1849. Known as the Newcastle Foundry and Machine Manufactory, Massey designed and manufactured some of the first mechanical threshers in the world. When Daniel died in 1856, his son Hart Almerrin Massey (1823-1896), who had joined his father as a business partner in 1853, changed the firm’s name to H.A. Massey and Company and grew business significantly by adapting American-designed implements to suit Canadian agrarian conditions. By 1870, when the company was renamed the Massey Manufacturing Company, it was producing threshers, plows, seed drills, wheelbarrows, harrows, and cutters. Outgrowing it’s Newcastle factories, Hart moved the business to Toronto in 1879, located on King Street West at Strachan Avenue. During the 1880s, the Massey Manufacturing Company continued to expand, becoming one of the most well-known brands in Canada. The company also began selling its products internationally, including in Argentina, Australia, and Europe.

Alanson Harris (1816-1894), originally from Ingersoll, Ontario, ran a steam-powered sawmill and mechanical workshop in Beamsville, Ontario. He purchased a foundry in 1857 and began manufacturing farm equipment with his son, John Harris (1841-1887). A. Harris, Son and Company moved to Brantford, Ontario in 1872. They were best known for their Brantford self-tying binder.

To streamline manufacturing and cut production and distribution costs, the Massey Manufacturing Company and A. Harris, Son and Company merged in 1891 to form Massey-Harris Limited. The company also acquired several other companies in the proceeding decades, including the Bain Wagon Company (1896), Patterson Brothers & Co. (1891), J.O. Wisner, Son and Co. (1891), W.H. Verity & Sons (1892), and the Johnston Harvester Company of Batavia, New York (1910). With their focus on harvesting machinery and tractor design, Massey-Harris became the largest agricultural equipment manufacturer in the British Empire. Massey-Harris products from this era include the Sharp Sulky Rake, the Toronto Reaper Binder, and the Toronto Light Binder, and in the 1930s the company began manufacturing tractors, starting with the Massey-Harris GP 15/22 in 1930. The company would go on to produce the world’s first commercially successful self-propelled combine harvester in 1938, and also one of the world's first four-wheel drive tractors.

In the 1920s, Irish-born agricultural inventor and engineer Harry Ferguson (1884-1960) transformed the agricultural industry by utilizing the weight of soil on top of the plow to improve tractor pull and through his revolutionary 3-point hitch system. In 1953, Ferguson joined with Massey-Harris to form Massy-Harris-Ferguson, although he resigned as chairman and sold his shares in 1954. The company shortened its name to Massey Ferguson in 1958. A year later, in 1959, Massey Ferguson entered into an agreement with F. Perkins Ltd, a diesel engine manufacturer, to produce all of their engines. By the late 1960s, Massey-Ferguson was regarded as the largest farm tractor manufacturer in the world.

Following a period of decline in the 1980s, Massey Ferguson was purchased by the Verity Corporation of Toronto in 1987 and was acquired by American-agricultural conglomerate AGCO Corporation in 1994, which continues to produce Massey Ferguson tractors in France.