FARM 2025: MacDonald brings provincial crown to Ripley for the first time
BY SCOTT STEPHENSON
Last year, when Ripley’s Hannah MacDonald travelled to Toronto to represent her community at the Canadian National Exhibition’s (CNE) Ambassador Competition, she brought with her a suitcase packed with an appreciation for agriculture, hometown pride and a true passion for parades. Even though she came well-prepared, MacDonald was pleasantly surprised when her name was called as one of the competition’s finalists. “I had a perspective going into the weekend that I was kind of there for the networking opportunity, I wasn’t necessarily ‘in it to win it’. I knew it was such a big competition, and I never really saw why I would be chosen,” she explained when she stopped by The Citizen office last week.
MacDonald really wasn’t expecting to win the whole competition, but that’s just what happened. “lt was shocking!” she exclaimed. “Shocking for me, for my family, and for my community, for sure. And not in a bad way or anything - everyone was super excited. Just no one from Ripley has ever won.”
She had everything the judges were looking for: compassion, confidence, and candor. The one thing MacDonald didn’t have was something to wear! “I had clothes for three days!” she confided. Winning was so far from the young advocate’s mind that she hadn’t brought anything extra. Right after her name was called, MacDonald’s father dashed back to Ripley to pack a second suitcase - one filled with outfits suitable to wear on a two-week whirlwind tour, during which his daughter would be meeting dignitaries and greeting fans as the newly-crowned ambassador of ambassadors. “My dad knew that he had a big responsibility,” she joked.
Before her father even made it back to the Big Smoke from Huron-Kinloss, MacDonald was thrown right into the role of Ambassador of the Fairs. “It was just craziness!… I met everyone from the CNE foundation, and probably 30 past CNE ambassadors.” Taking things in stride, she simply borrowed a pair of clean socks from one of her fellow competitors, and rolled with it. “The two and a half weeks in Toronto were a lot! I do the Royal Winter Fair, so I go for five days with beef cattle - it’s a totally different atmosphere! By the time I came home, I was ready for a week to myself… but I wouldn’t change the two weeks for the world.”
By becoming the Ambassador of the Fairs, MacDonald has assumed the same mantle of responsibility that the CNE carries - underneath all its bright lights and scandalous snacks - to nurture an awareness and appreciation of agriculture to all the people of Ontario, not just farmers. “I think that it is huge to see everything that goes on behind the scenes - people who have never been on a farm in their life can see ‘oh, this is what actually goes on, not the stories I hear on the internet’. I think it’s a good way to broadcast what behind-the-scenes farming looks like… to know where your food comes from.” Every child who walks away from the CNE no longer thinking that chocolate milk comes from brown cows was a victory for MacDonald.
It wouldn’t be a trip to the Ex without eating something a little bit out there, and MacDonald decided to try corn with queso and rainbow-coloured parmesan cheese. “It was definitely cool, and it looked good in photos,” she said. But if she had to choose, MacDonald would forgo all the fancy toppings for some plain old corn-on-the-cob. “It just tastes good, looks good. It’s cool to drive by a field and see - ‘oh, that corn is nice and tall, it’s growing good, healthy and strong.’”
As Ambassador of the Fairs, one of the most meaningful moments of that first fortnight was being invited to help welcome newcomers at a Canadian citizenship ceremony. “When I was there, 72 people became Canadian,” she recalled. “That was really heartwarming… stuff like that doesn’t happen here, so it was super cool for me to see!”
One of the factors that really made her stand out at the CNE Ambassador Competition was her unparalleled enthusiasm for every aspect of agricultural fall fairs. “I’m big into 4-H, so being able to go and show my 4-H project was definitely a huge highlight,” MacDonald told The Citizen. “And the parade! The parade’s always been a big one for me…. I’m for parades, for sure. Favourite thing. I love seeing crazy floats. I was always big into hockey as a kid, and the hockey team was always putting in a float.”
The 2024 parade was one that MacDonald will never forget. “The Ripley Fall Fair is the third weekend in September, so it’d just been, like, a month since I won. I hadn’t seen everyone, with me being at school, so when everyone saw me, they just screamed, or waved, or yelled and said ‘congrats!’ So that was pretty cool for me… you’re there, everyone’s watching you and waving at you, so you get to see everyone’s face light up. Definitely, being in the parade as CNE ambassador felt like a huge accomplishment for me!”
MacDonald comes by her love of fall fairs honestly - she comes from a family with deep ties to Ripley’s annual autumn celebration of agriculture. Her grandmother has always been a member of the Ripley Agricultural Society, and her great aunt and cousins were involved with organizing the Homecrafts competition. “I always helped set up for the fair, hanging all the kids’ stuff on the walls and everything like that.”
She also remembers how exciting it was to look through the fall fair book with her aunt every year. “We’d go to her house, we’d look at the fair book, and we would make every craft possible with the stuff we had,” MacDonald recalled. “Crafts were where I could be creative. I remember, always, we all made spoons. And I could kind of do what I want with the wooden spoon. Other stuff, where you kind of had to be more particular in what you were doing, with more rules, I didn’t like; I like to be myself when I do arts and crafts!”
MacDonald may be the first Ambassador from Ripley to take home top prize at the CNE, but she’s not the first person in her family to compete there. Her mother, aunt, and older sister all won the local Ambassadorship and represented Ripley at the CNE. Even though entering the competition was a bit of a foregone conclusion for MacDonald, she was more than happy to face the challenge. “I think it was an important role for me to take on,” she explained.
One of the things MacDonald values most about competing at the CNE was the way being exposed to the perspectives of other ambassadors broadened her own understanding of agriculture across Ontario. “When you’re the Ripley ambassador, you do a lot of stuff in the community - like helping out, and volunteer work,” she pointed out. “When you get to the bigger fall fair, you see that an ambassador is there to advocate for agriculture, because a lot of communities don’t have that… I think it’s a great program for young leaders to kind of step up, and take that role.”
After the CNE and the Ripley Fall Fair, MacDonald was pretty much free to advocate for agriculture in whatever way she found fit. “They leave it kind of up to me,” she explained. There’s some things I have to do, some places I have to be, but other than that I'm kind of there. I get to do what I want to do.”
One place that MacDonald went to was the Ontario Association of Agricultural Societies’ (OAAS) annual convention and general meeting. “I want to go every year,” she declared. “It’s kind of the one weekend where everyone gets to get together and to celebrate what Ontario agriculture does… it’s so motivating! I got a totally different perspective than the first year that I went, because the first year I was there, I was still learning, still meeting everyone. This year, I kind of got to be the role model for people. So that was huge, that people were looking up to me, and I got to help people out!” One of her favourite parts of this year’s OAAS convention was a keynote speech from motivational speaker Ian Tyson, who talked about the future of agriculture. “I sat there in disbelief at everything he was saying,” she recalled.
When she’s not out there representing agriculture, MacDonald attends the University of Guelph, where she is in her second year of Child Studies, working towards a Bachelor’s Degree in Applied Science. “I’m not a big city girl, so Guelph was kind of the school for me. I don’t feel like I’m in the city… I’m minoring in Linguistics. Working with kids has always been something I’ve been passionate about. I want to be a speech pathologist when I’m older, so that’s my main path,” she explained. “And then if that doesn’t work out, I’m always open to teachers’ college, behaviour therapist, anything that kind of helps kids.”
Something that makes MacDonald’s passion for farming extra inspiring is the fact that she didn’t even grow up on a farm at all - rather, her childhood interest was sparked by simply spending time around farms and farmers. “I grew up around farms in Ripley,” she explained, “so, very rural. I started 4-H when I was nine, with family friends, and from there on, I took on all the roles and responsibilities of a kid that would live on a farm. I started chores, I started rock picking, I started washing equipment. I got to learn everything from them… it’s not my farm, but I look at it as my farm.”
MacDonald feels that being an agriculturally-adjacent individual is one of her core strengths as an ambassador. “One of the huge things I advocated for was - you don’t have to live on a farm, you don’t have to grow up on a farm. You don’t even need to know someone on a farm to want to advocate for agriculture, and to show an interest in agriculture.”
She believes that successfully advocating for our farmers is all about keeping it real. “One thing I learned: be yourself always. Nobody wants to listen to a robot on the stage, nobody wants to listen to somebody who is trying to talk about something they’re not interested in. Fully be yourself, do something, talk about something you’re passionate about, don’t try to hide who you are from people you’re talking to… it’s always important to advocate! Everyone has their own opinions, but I think advocating and educating doesn’t have any harm to it.”
MacDonald can’t recommend the ambassador program enough - she thinks it’s a worthwhile endeavour for any and all young people out there who feel they have something to contribute to the promotion of agriculture. “I would say do it 110 per cent! If you’re comfortable in that position, if you know you can get up on stage, and talk, and go shake people’s hands all day long and smile, I would say do it! There’s nothing to lose. My confidence has really boosted since I’ve won, in any work I’m doing, whether it’s working with kids, doing my school work, talking about cows - I’m passionate and I’m confident when I do it! If I’m working in a group project now, I’m not scared to take the step up and be the leader. I think that being the ambassador has taught me all those skills.”
MacDonald is now entering the midway part of her year as the CNE Ambassador of the Fairs - soon, all the fields, from Bruce County and far beyond, will begin to show verdant signs of spring. Shoots and sprouts will grow tall and strong, becoming the food and fodder for our families and our livestock. As summer comes to an end and harvest-time approaches, MacDonald will return to the CNE, where she will hand over the title to the next worthy young person. And as for all the skills she’s learned and memories she’s made while in this adventure, those things she’ll carry with her always.