Every fall, the small town of Brigden, Ontario has an “agricultural fair”:https://www.brigdenfair.ca/ from Friday to Monday on the Thanskgiving weekend. If I’m in the area, I always attend as it is one of the best I’ve been to. There are food exhibits and competitions for baking and growing, livestock competitions, horse competitions, tractor pulls, photography, quilting, and on the Saturday morning, a parade. The fair is always well-attended. As we drove up Courtright Line into town we could see the helicopter taking off for the helicopter rides. The theme this year was “Celebration of Rural Life.”
The parking is free and you pay your $10 entrance fee as you enter the grounds to park your vehicle. Entrance is free for Elementary School aged children and younger. Handicap parking is available near the exhibition buildings. Tractor pulled wagons continually drive around the parking fields to give people rides to and from their vehicles if you choose.
We arrived just after the parade had finished and settled down to have some lunch (October sausage and chips) by the horse competitions. The weather was quite warm for October and very windy. My aunt’s chips blew away in the wind! Last year we left when we got too cold. This year we were too warm. We watched some horse jumping (although, I must say the jumps were quite low) and then headed out to the exhibition barns.
There are also a lot of stalls selling various wares from sheets to clothes to fudge to honey to jewelry. We recognized many of them from the previous year and in the same spots as well. Being fall, there were many stalls selling apples: apples by themselves, apple cider – hot or cold, apple fritters, caramel apples, and, my aunt’s favourite, candy apples. I looked at the chocolate covered apples but realized I just wanted the chocolate.
In the midway we ran into my cousin’s family. Her four year old grandson had been to the fair on the Friday with his school and was back the next day with his family. They tried to get us to go on some of the rides but we passed. We had fun watching them on the rides instead.
No doubt we’ll be back next year. Maybe the weather will be just right!
