No Saskatoon Exhibition for first time in 135 years
Since before Saskatoon was a city and before Saskatchewan was a province, the Saskatoon Exhibition has been a constant.
It’s taken place each summer through two World Wars and the Great Depression. It was even held in 1889, the year the ferry cable broke but was repaired just in time to transport people back and forth across the river. The one challenge the Ex can’t overcome: COVID -19.
This year will be the first without the Ex since 1885.
In a decision made “with the heaviest of hearts,” Prairieland Park on Monday announced that the Saskatoon Exhibition will be cancelled for the first time in its 135-year history. With restrictions on public gatherings, and no date for when large-scale events can take place, Prairieland Park made the call it hoped it wouldn’t have to make.
“COVID-19 has changed everything for everyone,” Prairieland Park CEO Mark Regier said.
According to City of Saskatoon archivist Jeff O’brien, the Ex was originally a one-day agricultural fair held in the fall of 1886 on the land currently occupied by Nutana Collegiate. People came to the Ex, O’brien said, and showed off their farm produce and livestock, jams and jellies, moccasins and quilts for prize money.
The “point of it all was to show off what the district could produce, both to attract newcomers ... and encourage those here to stay,” he said.
By 1894, food was available to buy at the Ex. In 1895, it moved across the river — west-side farmers had long griped about getting livestock across the river by ferry, O’brien said — and was held from 1903 to 1908 at what is now Kinsmen Park. By 1909, when it was moved to its current location, “it was much more recognizably the Ex than it was before,” O’brien said.
It had become a three-day event, and there were kitchens where food was sold by the women of local churches.
A big change had taken place in 1907: the Ex shifted to the summer, when the weather was warmer and people were more likely to attend. There were “sideshows and diversions and a few rides,” O’brien said. That was also the year they first turned on the electricity, he added, so the festivities could continue into the evening.
In the local newspaper, the event was declared “a real city Exhibition!” — differentiating it, O’brien said, from the little country fair it had once been.
According to O’brien, in 1932 — a year in which one in five Saskatoon residents was collecting relief — attendance was 160,000, or 50,000 more than in 1928.
The Ex now employs around 600 people and attracts around 215,000 patrons annually.
Cancelling it this year was a “difficult decision” made with “the health of our community in mind,”
Regier continued.
Nearly all annual summer events in Saskatoon — from the Saskatchewan Jazz Festival to the Fringe Festival to Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan — have been postponed or cancelled as a result of the pandemic.
Saskatoon Exhibition manager and Prairieland Park special events manager Susan Kuzma said officials did not feel the ban on mass gatherings would be lifted by mid-august.
Moving the date of the Ex isn’t feasible, she said, because entertainment acts and the Midway attractions are booked long in advance.
As far as events set for September and beyond, “we’re still in a waiting game,” she said.
Prairieland has every intention of bringing the Ex back next year, Regier said.
“Prairieland has been around a long time,” he said, and “we will be here when this is over.”