Farmers Forum head office at 2450 Lancaster Rd., Unit 17, Ottawa, Ontario
Eastern Ontario Farmers Forum is an independent farm newspaper started in 1992 in Kemptville, Ontario, south of Ottawa, as a retirement project for Kemptville College communications instructor Terry Meagher. The project grew too large for his basement and soon found office space in town. The newspaper continued to grow and moved again to its current location in Ottawa’s east end and now has a circulation of more than 14,000 in 18 counties.
Farmers Forum launched the Western Ontario edition in March 2012, with a circulation of 26,000+ in 10 counties. We serve Essex, Elgin, Kent, Lambton, Middlesex, Huron, Perth, Oxford, Waterloo, and Wellington Counties.
Farmers Forum unearths the issues that affect farm life and presents the news in a meaningful way to local farmers. We are dedicated to supporting the farm community.
THE CAST
Publisher/editor Patrick Meagher
Publisher Patrick Meagher
Farmers Forum publisher and editor Patrick Meagher is an author and award-winning journalist who has navigated the world of agriculture for several decades. Meagher co-founded Farmers Forum in 1992 with his father Terry Meagher, who taught at Kemptville College for 22 years. Patrick Meagher returned to the newspaper in 1999. He launched the Western Ontario edition in 2012.
Meagher has had a long career in journalism. He has worked as an associate editor of Mercatornet.com, an Australian-based social commentary website, business editor of The Bermuda Sun, managing editor of Toronto-based Catholic Register and news producer at CKRW radio station in Whitehorse, Yukon. He also worked for the Guelph Daily Mercury, Ottawa Citizen, Kingston Whig-Standard and CBC radio in Quebec City. His articles have appeared in numerous magazines and newspapers, including the Globe and Mail.
Meagher grew up in Kemptville, Ontario. He is the founder of The Landowner magazine and the author of Perhaps, I Love You More, a collection of anecdotes about Pope John Paul II. He lives in Ottawa with his wife, Alba Pascual, and their seven children who speak Spanish at the dinner table.
Sales manager Bryce Douglas
Bryce Douglas
Farmers Forum sales manager Bryce Douglas is an Algonquin College business marketing graduate. Over his sales career he worked for Frito Lay, Pepsi and Marketplace Newsletter before settling in at the Farmers Forum in 2011.
An avid sports fan, he played junior hockey, baseball and got into boxing. He was born and raised on a Hackney Horse farm in Osgoode, Ontario. He continues to show horses with his family at the local fairs in and around the Ottawa Valley, finishing the show season each year at the Royal Agricultural Winter Fair in Toronto.
He resides in Osgoode with his wife Morgan, who also has a farming background, growing up on a Black Angus farm in Mountain, Ontario. They have two young children, Clark and Saige.
Co-founder and editor emeritus Terry Meagher
Editor emeritus Terry Meagher
Terry Meagher taught communications at Kemptville College for 22 years, retiring in 1991. He immediately went on to start Farmers Forum newspaper where he earned a reputation as the Don Cherry of farm journalism. A former Minister of Agriculture once called him up and asked, “Why are you giving me such a hard time?” He replied by switching into interview mode and printed their conversation in the next issue. He has since retired four times. The third time he retired from the newspaper he was asked by his son and business partner, Patrick Meagher, what that meant, exactly. “I don’t come in on Wednesdays,” he said. After the indefatigable Meagher retired for the last time, he immediately came out of retirement to launch a book publishing company, Veterans Publications, from his home office in Kemptville, Ontario.
Meagher grew up in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, and lived on both sides of the Canso Causeway. He was one of eight children and the son of a train station master. He grew up hunting and joined the army to fight in the Korean War in 1952. It was a time he rarely talked about until many years later. He spent months on the front lines, one of the longest serving Canadians in this battle of taking hillsides and the coveted Hill 187. One of his responsibilities was to go into the valley at night to look for Chinese tanks using infrared goggles, a telephone wired to a box to call back seven miles for artillery, and a German Shepherd to sniff out the enemy. He returned to Korea with the Learning Channel to film a documentary. They drove to the front lines, still guarded by North Korean and South Korean soldiers.
Meagher died in Ottawa at the Perley-Rideau Veterans Hospital on January 26, 2022. He was 88.
