Fair week nostalgia

July 10, 2025

key points from this story:

• Fairs once centered on agriculture
• Livestock shows spanned many Saskatchewan towns
• Modern fairs have fewer farming ties
• Yorkton fair lost many traditional elements
• Old barns now closed or repurposed
• Writer longs for past show circuit

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.