County fairs are a labour of love for Villemaire
I fell in love at Richmond Fair,” said Claudia Villemaire who has been reporting on farm fairs for The Record for over 40 years. Villemaire, and her partner Mike, met 37 years ago when the agriculture reporter was making her rounds of barns and stables.
Since then, not much happens at the fairgrounds that she doesn’t hear about, on and off the record. This year, Villemaire restricted her coverage to interviews with presidents of the local fairs. That’s not to say she wasn’t worried all the bases would be covered by rookies in the newsroom in her absence.
She very subtly pointed out in one of her many check-ins, she wasn’t confident any of the current Record editorial staff knew the business end of a cow, so we decided to touch base with her.
(For the record, paginator and 4-H member Samantha Young knows her way around a barnyard and was on hand to make sure no glaring errors were made)
“It’s been a slice, I tell ya,” Villemaire said. “I don’t know why I love fairs so much. Must be genetic,” she said, referring to her grandmother who used to show butter and knew which judge liked a pinch more salt than the others.
During the year her grandmother would make butter and bring it into town by horse and buggy to sell for $0.25 a pound.
“She said she used to have a fast horse,” Villemaire said, admitting that according to the rest of town, her grandmother was a wild driver.
When her grandmother got older and couldn’t move around the way she used to, Villemaire said the family started a new tradition. Her mother would make a blackberry or blueberry pie, and then they would head to the fair and park near the entrance. People from the fair would come out to the car to visit with Villemaire’s grandmother, share some stories, and have a slice of pie.
Maybe that’s where Villemaire’s interest started in getting all the fair news. Or maybe it was earlier.
“My first recollection of fairs was the Sherbrooke Fair, holding my aunt’s hand. All I saw was legs. I didn’t see much of the fair,” she joked.
“Sherbrooke Fair was an amazing experience. The grandstand was out of this world. It was a real notch in your belt, you were a classy person, if you attended the Sherbrooke Exhibition,” commented Villemaire.
Villemaire began showing at Richmond Fair in the 1950s, with chickens, she said. She recalls pulling up in the family’s 1931 Model A Ford, back when the fair was held in August, wearing boots and two coats because it was so cold and rainy.
“I headed straight for the poultry barn. That was my favourite place.”
Villemaire continued showing for 23 years, mostly light horses, saddle horses and Belgians.
In 1978, she began working for The Record but her first assignment was a long way from the farm.
“Jim Duff, who was editor at the time, sent me to the courthouse in Sherbrooke to cover a double murder trial.”
Being the social butterfly she was, Villemaire ended up at lunch one day with the judge. It was decided Villemaire’s talents might be better suited to covering fairs.
“I really don’t know who came up with the idea,” she said.
George Maclaren had just bought the paper and the first fair they sent me to was Brome, in the hopes, no doubt, her fence-mending skills could be put to work.
Apparently, The Record had offended someone over there, and the locals were so upset they wouldn’t let The Record reporter through the gate.
She returned with a bottle of gin and a bottle of rye. “We warmed up to each other,” she said.
“When I started writing about fairs, most of the buildings were dilapidated,” Villemaire recalled.
“All of them were struggling except Brome. Watching them come up from the bottom of the barrel was quite the adventure for me,” she said. For nearly 40 years, Villemaire bore witness to the evolution of the county fair from contests and entertainment, to the best practices in farm management and production.
“Safety standards didn’t really exist when I started,” she said. “In the early days, cows were milked by hand. You would set the pails on a bench in the barn, some with no lid. The cat had a drink and the flies had a swim.”
“Horses were lined up tail to tail in the barns. When it was time for new buildings, safety was very much a consideration.” Bulls brought to the fairs now are only allowed up to three-yearsold, another safety measure that has been implemented. There is increased awareness that these animals can see and hear and the commotion at a fair is unsettling.
“Can you imagine when I was at the fair showing my first batch of chickens, if someone told me one day cows would be milked by robots?” she wondered.
“Animals today may look the same, but they are a far cry from what they were 50 years ago. Beef cattle had shorter legs and more fat. The loin eye wasn’t in the spotlight. It took a while to realize consumers were worried about consuming fat.”
“Today, a dairy farmer with an outstanding milker has a lot to consider before heading to the fair,” Villemaire continued. “He’s got to milk that cow, and it goes down the drain. That represents a lot of money.”
“When I started, politicians didn’t come to the fairs much. The only place you would see VIPS was at The Royal in Toronto.”since then, Villemaire has met prime ministers, several premiers, and MNAS “like crazy”.
“They realized food production is a very important aspect of them being in office.”
Some of Villemaire’s most memorable fair memories were captured on her old Yashika camera. And most of the time she was able to be in the right place at the right time, outshining The Record photographers in tow. But on one occasion, when she went to a barn to interview beef exhibitors they told her to come back in a few hours. They farmers got their cattle cleaned up and brushed, and put on their show whites while Villemaire boasted about knowing a trick or two about taking pictures of four-legged animals. “Never take a picture from the front or it will look like their head was cut off their body and stuck back on in the wrong place,” she explained.
After choosing a good backdrop, the beef exhibitors paraded their cattle out one by one for Villemaire to photograph, a real coup, she thought.
It wasn’t till she got back to the office that she realized there was no film in the camera.
To this day it is a running joke, with multiple generations of farmers. Villemaire can’t show up at a fair without at least one person asking, “Hey Claudia, got any film in your camera?”
Then there was the time at Cookshire Fair when a bull got loose.
“There’s always one animal that thinks it has been tied up too long and decides to go for a romp,” Villemaire said.
She also remembered a three-horse horse pull once, and the horse in the middle wasn’t broken. He gave a heave, broke the hitch and took off.
“Nobody got hurt,” Villemaire said, explaining the other exhibitors all help each other in a time like that.
“It never fails to amaze me,” Villemaire said, that with so many people and animals in a small place, that there aren’t more accidents. She credits attention to safety measures, experienced producers, and animals familiar with the drill. “The exhibitors are always watchful for people who know nothing.”
And years of experience have shown that the grand entrance is not always the best. Like the time at Ayer’s Cliff, when a big music star wanted to make an entrance on horseback, but fell off and broke her leg.
Agricultural fairs have been a Townships’ tradition for over 175 years and all have risen to the challenge of finding new ways to generate additional income, like rental of the grounds for other events and storage.
“I’ve watched Coaticook struggle to become a fair,” she said, pointing out that a show needs to include five different breeds to be considered an agricultural exposition.“they get their classification, but it’s not that much of a fair as we know it.”
“At one point Cookshire went down to no prize money. Richmond Fair got so bad, they had to sell shares to keep it going. They moved from the centre of town. It threw them for a loop.”
According to Villemaire, fairs are important in communities because they not only remind townsfolk how food gets to their tables, it’s good for business.
“A county fair, let’s say Richmond or Ayer’s Cliff, how much money do you think comes in from exhibitors and visitors? That’s an economic plus that can’t be ignored,” she said, referring to local businesses, restaurants and shops as well as feed dealers, who provide careful nutrition leading up to show time.
According to Villemaire, fairs are a valuable experience for consumers, and the education system should, “get wise and start teaching where food comes from.”
She has seen more than one person step into a barn at the fair, and then back out because they don’t like the smell. Villemaire said she has all the time in the world to talk fairs and animals, but no time for bleeding hearts. She said she heard of a fair visitor once who filed a complaint because a calf seemed thirsty.
“What do they know? Cows are bawling all the time,” she said, explaining that with the regulations and safety standards in place, hearing an animal moo doesn’t mean it is suffering.
At Ayer’s Cliff fair, Villemaire said animals are brought out of the barn, and a handler interacts with visitors and asks, would you like to know more about this animal? “One little boy had his hand on a beef cow’s flank. He was enjoying the softness and warmth of a big live animal.”the man handling the animal said, “You’ve got your hand on where Ronald Macdonald’s hamburgers come from.”
“The most important thing for fair boards now is to encourage young people to take part,”villemaire said.
“For a family, it’s cheap entertainment for a weekend, Villemaire said. But for the Eastern Townships, it’s a tradition that binds us as a community, and as an industry, boosts our economy and keeps food on our tables.