YORKTON - It was fair week in Yorkton and with that always comes a flood of nostalgia for this writer.
Summer fairs were my summer holidays for years as we showed livestock from Saskatoon to Prince Albert to Nipawin to Swan River and a number of other exhibitions large and small.
That all started more than a half century ago, and fairs were very different back then.
The difference was that decades ago summer fairs were largely focused on being showcases for agriculture with midways and grandstands sort of an add-on.
To get an idea of the difference as a youth I went in the show ring – often as a helper – to show cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and the memory making me smile, even chickens.
Today many of the fairs attended back then – if they even still exist – have few ties to farming.
Yorkton is a good example, thanks to 4-H they still have beef cattle – although long gone are summer purebred shows.
A light horse show remains, but long gone are the draft horses.
Gone too are sheep and goats and swine, and the once popular and extensive machinery row – a chance for farmers to look at and discuss the latest machinery releases.
It really hit home this year as I drove through the grounds past a swine barn where I spent so many summer shows, seeing the building now nothing but a storage shed.
A bit farther on and I had to look twice as I realized one of the old horse barns was gone. So much show history just lost, with only a gravel patch to mark its previous existence.
I immediately think of the cattle barns I just passed. They are closed up, looking forlorn as if they know their fate will soon be that of the lost horse barn.
Now I realize 50-plus years is a relatively long time – I recognize that most some mornings climbing out of bed with a creaking back – but I still lament the changes at times, never more so than fair time when I come face-to-face with the lost days of my youth.
Sure some of the lost elements are now at Harvest Showdown in Yorkton, but what of agriculture at the now gone Saltcoats Fair, or Golburn or Connaught, or Dauphin or dozens of others?
Farming changes year-by-year, as do communities and the interests of the populace, but I still find myself wishing I could spend just one more summer on the ‘show circuit’ with a trailer of stock going fair-to-fair.
