One of the advantages of small town Saskatchewan is that most places have their community events. They are the big gatherings that happen annually that get everyone in the community involved, whether they’re part of the group putting it on or someone attending. Go in any direction in Saskatchewan through the summer months and you’re bound to stumble upon something unique that a community is doing, events like Englefeld’s Hogfest, which happened this past weekend, or The Great Saskatchewan Bacon Festival in Kipling.
The Yorkton Exhibition Summer Fair is interesting because it straddles the line between small town get together and a fair in a larger center. It’s big, it can get in relatively big acts and attractions – The Dead South is getting international attention – but it still does have a small town feel, because it’s pulling from every edge of the community.
As much as people like to talk about Yorkton being small it’s not a community that tends to come together for one event. Yorkton has many events that are tailored to specific groups of people. Most events in the city are focused on doing one thing very well, and that makes for excellent events that are worth attending.
The fair has a different focus, making it feel like the entire city is part of the same event. There are deliberate choices that do that. Putting on a parade on Saturday makes the fair geographically quite large, because it’s stretching the entire city. The deadline for Broadway resurfacing being based around the parade schedule is a good example of how important that parade is to the city overall.
Another choice is making the fair itself a bit of a grab-bag. There aren’t many events where you can do goat yoga, watch a horse race and then see local musicians. Small town events can’t really manage this – note how the two mentioned earlier are all about meat – but small towns don’t have to, because there are only so many people to entertain. Yorkton is large enough that there are a diverse range of interests, so the fair has to have something for everyone in order to make it feel as though the entire city is celebrating.
That they’re still able to do that while the city grows is an accomplishment. No other event in Yorkton is quite like the fair, and at this point no event even can be. Its roots are in the small town get-togethers, from back when Yorkton was that small town. That has kept it unique, and makes it a rare thing, a big event that still feels a bit like a small town celebration because you can’t be in the city without feeling the fair happening.
