Committee says it couldn’t reach a hosting agreement with IPM officials

Heather Wright/The Independent

The 2027 International Plowing Match will not be in Brigden after all.

In a news release today, the committee spearheading the massive event says it has withdrawn its offer to host the event which had the potential to draw upwards of 50,000 people to the Bridgen Fairgrounds in the fall of 2027. The local committee announced it would host the IPM in April 2025

“After careful consideration, the 2027 International Plowing Match and Rural Expo Local Committee has decided to withdraw its offer to host the 2027 IPM in Brigden,” said Dennis Bryson, Committee Chair in a news release.

“We were unable to successfully negotiate and finalize a hosting agreement that was mutually beneficial for all parties and have decided it is in everyone’s best interest to conclude those discussions and allow time for provincial event organizers to discuss alternative host sites outside of Lambton County.”

Doug Beatty, a volunteer with the local committee, did not want to get into specifics of the sticking points with the Ontario Plowmens’ Association. “The Plowing Match is a massive undertaking. It’s a multimillion dollar undertaking. I’m just looking at the organizational chart – there are multiple committees – it is a multifaceted undertaking, and we just got in a situation where we were not able to get the necessary approvals and to move forward to get planned for for a match in the next September,” Beatty tells The Independent.

The local organizing committee had recruited “hundreds of volunteers” who had been working for the last year on the event.

“We had some great expertise, and a lot of enthusiasm, and it is just unfortunate that circumstances are such that we couldn’t move forward with the hosting agreement for 2027,” Beatty says.

“Everybody at the committee level of participating in this, were kind of nostalgic for plowing matches, because we remember the old days of the plowing match,” he added. “Certainly there has to be a need to pivot to newer and different things…it’s certainly different in 2026 to organize this kind of event … than it was in 1991.”

Beatty says Friday’s announcement wasn’t a bargaining tool to move the OPA to an agreement. “We’re not going to go backwards from this,” he said adding the volunteers will likely turn their enthusiasm for plowing to other local events including the Brigden Fair.

St. Clair Mayor Jeff Agar is disappointed the 2027 IPM won’t be held in his community. “I’m disappointed, like everybody else is. I certainly wish it could have come, it would have been a great thing, but sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t. There’s not a whole lot that the municipality can do about it,” he tells The Independent.

St. Clair Township was a financial backer of the event, providing $100,000 over three years to help bring the tourist event to the area. Agar says $33,000 of that had been forwarded to the Lambton County group and he expects much of it will be returned.

The idea to host the massive event came together at the 2024 Brigden Fair as Sarnia-Lambton MPP Bob Bailey, Dennis Robinson of the Brigden Fair and Dennis Bryson of the Lambton’s Plowmen’s Association sat together after the scholarships from the International Plowing Match held in 1991 were handed out.

“Dennis Robinson sat on one side and I sat on the other, and we had his ear,” says Bryson.

There have been a number of organizing meetings and Tuesday, the IPM announced Lambton as the host this year for the event held on the third week of September.

The 2027 event would not have been Lambton’s first rodeo. The community hosted the International Plowing Match in 1923 on the land which Lambton College now sits and in 1973 when the McGugan family hosted the event in their field on Old Walnut Road. In 1991, the group came together again to host the IPM on what is now Plowing Match Road in Enniskillen Township.

At the time Brigden was announced as the host for the 2027 IPM, Tourism Sarnia Lambton officials suggested between $5 to $6 million in tourism revenue could be realized in Lambton in the week-long event.