JANUARY 2017 • COUNTRY LIFE IN BC
Former politician awarded lifetime
achievement John van Dongen honoured
by DAVID SCHMIDT
VANCOUVER – In 1979, John van Dongen was one of the youngest people ever elected as a director of the Fraser Valley Milk Producers Co-operative Association (Dairyland). In 2016, he became the youngest person to receive the BC Dairy Industry Achievement Award.
Former BC Milk Marketing Board chair Jim Byrne presented van Dongen with the prestigious award on behalf of the BC Dairy Historical Society during the BC Dairy Conference Gala Banquet, December 1. “John has been relentless in his dedication to producers and the dairy industry,” Byrne said.
Still only 67, van Dongen
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has already accumulated a lifetime of accomplishments. A graduate of UBC with a BSc in Agricultural Economics, he started his first dairy farm in Dewdney in 1975, soon after moving to Matsqui. During his tenure as an FVMPCA director (vice- president in 1991-92), van Dongen also served on the BC Dairy Foundation and the BC Federation of Dairymen’s Association (where he served a term as president) and on the Farm Debt Review Board. In 1995, he was elected as a Liberal MLA in an Abbotsford by-election and re-elected in 1996, 2001, 2005 and 2009, making him one of the longest-serving MLAs when he completed his final term in 2013. He served as Minister of Agriculture for about four years and held several other
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Former BC Milk Marketing Board chair Jim Byrne, left, presents the BC Dairy Industry Historical Society lifetime achievement award to former Matsqui dairyman and BC agriculture minister John van Dongen. DAVID SCHMIDT PHOTO
cabinet positions during his tenure in government. Perhaps his most notable contribution to the dairy industry was in resolving the dissident shipper issue in the 1980s.
“It took us 10 years to resolve this issue,” van
Dongen recalls, crediting Ben Brandsema for being “my partner in this.”
He called his time at Dairyland a “learning experience" and former FVMPCA president Jim Waardenburg his mentor. “I have had the privilege of
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knowing, representing and working with three
generations of dairy farmers, van Dongen said, stressing his aim has always been to “do what I could to support supply management. It has been and is sound agricultural policy.”
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