James Fitzgerald McGuigan (November 9, 1923 – March 5, 1998) was a

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking ...

in Ontario,

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

. He was a

Liberal Liberal or liberalism may refer to: Politics * a supporter of liberalism ** Liberalism by country * an adherent of a Liberal Party * Liberalism (international relations) * Sexually liberal feminism * Social liberalism Arts, entertainment and m ...

member of the Legislative Assembly of Ontario from 1977 to 1990.

Background

McGuigan was educated at

Ontario Agricultural College The Ontario Agricultural College (OAC) originated at the agricultural laboratories of the Toronto Normal School, and was officially founded in 1874 as an associate agricultural college of the University of Toronto. Since 1964, it has become affili ...

, and worked as a farmer. He served as the president of several farming organizations, including the Kent County Vegetable Growers Association, the Kent County Federation of Agriculture and the Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers' Association. He also served as chair of the Raleigh-Harwich Public School Board, and was an executive member of the Ontario Federation of Agriculture from 1973 to 1977. McGuigan was known as an agricultural innovator. He pioneered the use of plastic greenhouses for

tobacco Tobacco is the common name of several plants in the genus '' Nicotiana'' of the family Solanaceae, and the general term for any product prepared from the cured leaves of these plants. More than 70 species of tobacco are known, but the ...

production. He also experimented with the production, pre-cooling and shipment of strawberries to markets in Ontario and Quebec. Together with his wife Mona, they raised four children on their farm in Cedar Springs, Chatham-Kent,

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central C ...

Politics

He was elected to the Ontario legislature in the 1977 provincial election, defeating Progressive Conservative Don Luckham by 641 votes in the southwestern Ontario riding of Kent—Elgin. In the 1981 election, he defeated PC challenger Wes Thompson by 337 votes. The Liberal Party made an electoral breakthrough in the 1985 provincial election, and McGuigan was re-elected by a significant margin. Following the election, the Liberals were able to form a minority government with support from the

Ontario New Democratic Party The Ontario New Democratic Party (french: link=no, Nouveau Parti démocratique de l'Ontario; abbr. ONDP or NDP) is a social-democratic political party in Ontario, Canada. The party currently forms the Official Opposition in Ontario following th ...

. During the next five years he was appointed as

parliamentary assistant In UK politics, a parliamentary assistant is an unelected partisan member of staff employed by a Member of Parliament (MP) to assist them with their parliamentary duties. Parliamentary assistants usually work at the House of Commons in the ...

to several ministers including the Energy, Natural Resources, Transportation and Agriculture. Ontario's electoral map was redistributed before the 1987 election, and McGuigan was forced to face NDP incumbent

Pat Hayes Patrick John Hayes AAAI Fellow, FAAAI (born 21 August 1944) is a British computer scientist who lives and works in the United States. , he is a Senior Research Scientist at the IHMC, Institute for Human and Machine Cognition in Pensacola, Flori ...

in the new riding of

Essex—Kent Essex—Kent was a federal electoral district in Ontario that was represented in the House of Commons of Canada from 1979 to 1997. It was created in 1976 from parts of Essex—Windsor, Kent—Essex and Lambton—Kent ridings, and initially ...

. McGuigan won by 1,113 votes, as the Liberal Party won a landslide majority across the province. The NDP defeated the Liberals in the 1990 provincial election, and Hayes defeated McGuigan by almost 6,000 votes. He retired from politics after his defeat.

After politics

In 1992, he was inducted into the Kent Agricultural Hall of Fame. He died at Chatham Public General Hospital in 1998.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:McGuigan, Jim 1923 births 1998 deaths Ontario Agricultural College alumni Ontario Liberal Party MPPs People from Chatham-Kent