Four Mormon Trail towns host travelling road show
Four Southern Alberta towns that form the backbone of the historic Mormon Trail are stepping back in time to both entertain and inform by presenting an inaugural fourday travelling road show.
In the late 1800s, Mormon settlers were invited to make the trek north into Canada from Utah where, it was hoped, their skill in farming and irrigation would transform the area of semi-arid land known as the Palliser triangle in what would become Southern Alberta.
They succeeded and built the first irrigation canal of its kind in this country and developed the towns of Cardston, Magrath, Raymond and Stirling, which formed the basis of a successful agricultural industry for the century to come.
Their long path north became known as the Mormon Trail with many of the newcomers putting down roots in those same towns where their influence and heritage exists to this day.
To mark that historic event those four towns have joined together to organize the Great Chautauqua Revival tour — a throwback to the travelling shows of a century ago.
The event will visit each of the four towns in turn: Stirling on Aug. 10, Magrath on the 11th, Raymond on the 12th and Cardston on the 13th.
Sandra Nelson, who chairs the Chautauqua organizing committee, recalls as a young girl that her parents talked about the fun they’d had at Chautauqua.
“At at the end of the 1800s and the beginning of the 1900s the Chautauqua was a travelling road show under the great tent and they would come with their speakers, their entertainment, their snakeoil salesmen — that sort of thing,” she says. “They’d perform in one community and then it was off to the next.”
“Both my parents are deceased now but I remember them talking about going to a Chautauqua years ago and the fun time they had, so I just thought perhaps this would be something unique that would draw people.
“It is an opportunity for people to gather together and have fun together and learn. It will be built on the original four pillars of a Chautauqua — education, cultural arts, recreation and religion,” adds Nelson.
Although the backdrop to the event is the Mormon Trail, she notes that the travelling road show will be non-denominational in spirit.
“There is some Mormon flavour because of the communities themselves but no, this is not about religion in that sense. There is an aspect of some of the classes you might choose to take such as why did the Mormons come, but really that is more focused on irrigation and settlement of this area,” she says.
The Cardston Civic Centre is staging an original musical about those early days in Southern Alberta — called Are We Not All Strangers — which runs for the four days of the Chautauqua. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased online at cardstoncommunitytheatre.com.
Many of the other events at all four locations will be free.
“We will charge no entry fee for our first year. It is good family entertainment at almost no cost. You will not be nickel-and-dimed to death when you get here,” adds Nelson.
Full details of the travelling show can be found at: www.themormontrail.ca