TURTLEFORD, Sask. – Maybe it’s the location.
Or maybe it’s tradition.
Perhaps it’s because other local fairs have died.
Or perhaps it’s magic.
Whatever the reason, the Turtleford Fair keeps growing and thriving, seemingly solid proof that country culture is very much alive.
On a recent sunny Saskatchewan weekend, about 2,500 people here were listening to fiddlers, watching draft horse competitions, eating burgers and hot dogs, and enjoying perfect weather for a fair named the second best in Canada by the national agricultural fairs association.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers agree to AgriStability changes
federal government proposed several months ago to increase the compensation rate from 80 to 90 per cent and double the maximum payment from $3 million to $6 million
While fairs across the Prairies draw hundreds of participants and pull former residents back to town, this is no local event. The Turtleford Fair is a regional phenomenon, the summer fair for north-western Saskatchewan, a success story built over decades.
“We like to think it’s getting better,” said Ferne Nielsen, one of the organizers.
According to long-time fairgoers and exhibitors, she’s right.
“We didn’t have all this back then,” said 89-year-old Burnetta Gray, a former dairy farmer.
Now the show features a fashion show, a gymnasium full of arts and crafts, a fiddling competition, horse racing and stock competitions. From a one-day event, it has grown into three days, and the local population increases five fold at fair time.
It had the feeling of a summer fair, with clumps of friends and relatives wandering the grassed grounds, the smell of sizzling onions sharp above the background scent of burgers and fries, a milling hive of hundreds of people gathered to spend a happy summer day lazily looking at events and performances and displays they wouldn’t normally think about.
This fair is growing at a time when many small towns across the Prairies are dying, as rail lines are abandoned and the rural centres of gravity are absorbed by cities that were too far away before the coming of modern highways.
Turtleford faces an uncertain future, as the local rail line is expected to be cut within the next few years.
Alistair McDonald, 89, notes that Turtleford used to have five farm equipment dealerships, and “now there’s none. They all go to Lloydminster and North Battleford.”
But people at the fair said they think the town has a good chance of survival without rails, as a regional centre for the local oilfield.
And the consolidation of rural infrastructure that may see their line killed is also one reason Turtleford Fair is such a success.
McDonald said rural people from across the northern Saskatchewan grain belt and into Alberta flock to the fair as other local fairs die and they look for somewhere else to celebrate the rural way of life.
Nielsen attributes the fair’s success to hard-working people who often serve on the organizing committee for decades, and who participate and exhibit crafts throughout their lives.
Alistair and his wife Bernice are happy to see the fair surviving and thriving. It’s like a symbol and reminder of their marriage: their first date, back in 1937, was for the Turtleford Fair dance. They’ve been involved with the fair for most of the 60 years since.
Young people flock back too.
Nielsen said her 32-year-old daughter in Toronto tried to get plane tickets for herself and her children to fly back home for the fair, and was disappointed to miss it. Licence plates from across Western Canada reveal that others had better luck at getting to Turtleford for the fair.
And around the fair there was as much youth culture as there were oldtimers.
While ostensibly about showing cattle, the 4-H competitions seemed to be more about letting young rural people notice each other and flirt than to compare heifers.
At the fashion show, young and old watched as models strutted their country stuff down the cowboy catwalk, while at the petting zoo parents tried to hold on to children delighted and excited by young exotic critters they wanted to take home.
In the main event tent others sheltered from the summer heat and stored up energy for the coming hours.
“As long as we can keep up the enthusiasm and interest, and we’re physically able to do it, there’ll always be a Turtleford Fair,” said Nielsen.
