FEATURE STORY
Murray Gaunt Ponders His Next Career:
Retirement"
By Owen Roberts

With the third jewel in his Triple Crown almost complete, the guy who’s done it all in Huron County is finally going to stop doing it. Murray Andrew Gaunt, the perpetual voice of agriculture in Ontario’s breadbasket, will welcome in the new millennium by closing the books on the third of his illustrious careers – as of December 31, 1999, the affable farm boy from West Wawanosh Township who’s been associated with poultry farming, provincial politics and farm broadcasting in the Wingham area for 40 years, will finally retire.

Well, sort of.

He’ll still report part-time for Wingham-based CKNX, the station he began his broadcast career with as assistant farm director in October, 1959. And he hopes to keep writing his opinion piece for Ontario Farmer every couple of months. And he wants to keep chairing the Ontario Broiler and Hatching Egg and Chick Commission in Guelph, like he’s done since 1985. Oh yes, and he’d like to rejuvenate the European farm tour business he dabbled in many years ago. And then there’s curling, tennis, baseball and golf. He’d like to do more of that, too...in his “retirement”!

In occupations where turnover is almost a given, Gaunt has been the exception. From his earliest days as a farm boy on the family’s Hi-Hill Farm near Lucknow, to his lengthy stint as the MPP for Huron-Bruce from 1962 until his political retirement in 1981, to his renowned broadcasting career for CKNX, Gaunt has shown unique foresight, competence and “stick-to-it-tiveness.” In each case, success in one occupation has helped the next one prosper, serving as a model for those who admiringly watched his career path unfold.

Murray was born June 4, 1935, the only child to Andrew Gaunt, a shorthorn cattle breeder and strong Liberal, and Matilda Sherwood, a strong Conservative who encouraged her son in his many pursuits. Murray attended St. Helen’s Public School, a two-room schoolhouse, a two-mile walk from the farm. When young Murray wasn’t immersed in classes,he was involved in agriculture – working on the farm, getting involved in 4-H and taking part on the county debating club.

His news sense was developing, even though he didn’t recognize it at the time. Inadvertently, he’d sniffed out a huge story: that is, how agriculture was becoming very knowledge based. (That was particularly true in Huron County, Canada’s most productive agricultural county – with 1996 farm gate sales of $450 million.)

“You could see the industry was moving forward,” recalls Gaunt. “The war was over and agriculture was becoming more innovative, the turkey broiler business was in its infancy, poultry markets were starting to build, lots of new cropping practices and animal husbandry techniques were coming in...it was groundbreaking.”

Gaunt wanted to be on the leading edge – also known as the “learning” edge. So he set his sights on the University of Guelph’s diploma program and headed east. His dad wasn’t crazy about his son leaving the farm, and had an enticement ready for him when he graduated from Ontario Agricultural College in 1956 – a turkey broiler operation he could call his own. Commodity wise, this was a departure for a young man who had been involved in the Lucknow beef calf club since he was 12 years old, and who had won one of the most prestigious beef awards in Canada – the Queen’s Guineas, at the 1955 Royal Winter Fair.

But Gaunt and the turkey business were a good fit. It was new, exciting, and everything was on course for him to be a career poultry farmer...until CKNX farm editor Vaughan Douglas called in the fall of 1959, offering Gaunt the position of assistant farm director. “I said no,” he recalls. “I didn’t know anything about broadcasting, plus I had 7,000 turkeys in the barn and 8,000 more outside. How was I going to take on anything else?”

But Douglas was persistent. He saw Gaunt’s potential, knew he was educated, popular and knowledgeable. So on a wet, dreary October day when he couldn’t do much field work anyway, Gaunt went in for an on-camera test. “I didn’t want the job so I had nothing to lose and I wasn’t nervous,” says Gaunt. As a result, he had a wonderful, relaxed screen test. Seeing the results, the owner and general manager joined Douglas in trying to sign him. And finally, a few days later, they succeeded.

Those were hard years in the media. “It was a tough go,” admits Gaunt. “I’d be on TV that night, then on the radio the next morning at 7 a.m. helping with the markets.” One of the local news makers he’d often interview was John Hanna, who’d been the local MPP for almost two decades. One June afternoon in 1962, he interviewed Hanna after the politician returned from an early meeting of the pork producers’ marketing board. It would be one of Hanna’s last interviews – he died suddenly, just hours later. Gaunt heard of his untimely death on the next morning’s newscast. A by-election would be called.

Gaunt had no idea he’d be the one going on to fill Hanna’s shoes. But right out of the blue – much like the invitation to be a broadcaster – Gaunt had a call to run for the nomination. His response was familiar. “I said no,” he recalls. “I didn’t know anything about politics,” except for his mother’s warning: “It can be a dirty business.”

But it can also be a rewarding business when you get to meet people, know them and help them. Gaunt was drawn into the fold, won the Liberal nomination, won the by-election in 1962, then the election in 1963. Then he won again in the centennial year. And again in 1971, 1975 and 1977. Finally he retired from politics in 1981, after serving as Liberal agricultural and environment critic, serving on the Ontario Federation of Agriculture’s special task force on financial difficulties facing farmers and serving on the then-Beef Marketing Commission’s single-desk marketing agency initiative.

CKNX had always said it would take him back. They said it in 1962 when he was entering politics, and they said it again in 1981 when he retired. So it was back to the studio for Gaunt, where he became farm editor, developing a new format for the AM noon-hour program and later designing a half-hour TV show, “The Family Farmer,” which aired from 1987-92, at which time the television part of the station was sold and Gaunt’s professional obligations became focused on radio.

And that’s where he’ll be leaving from in December. The industry to which he devoted his life and drew accolades from his peers is changing radically, and Gaunt expects that to continue. “We’ll see more erosion in farm broadcasting,” he predicts. “Other stuff is seen as more appealing.” But new technologies such as Internet radio – which can be used to carry farm shows like never before – could turn that around...and prove that agriculture is STILL groundbreaking, just like it was in the ‘50s.

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