The Rural Voice, 1999-08, Page 24Help!
The biggest danger to the future of our rural
fairs is a lack of volunteers to keep them running
By Keith Roulston
They survived world wars and
changes in agricultural
practices and government cuts
to grants, but if Ontario's rural fairs
are going to survive for another
generation their biggest challenge
may be getting younger volunteers
involved.
"My wife looked at the picture of
the board in our fair book and she
told me 'Do you realize that if
everybody over 60 quit you'd have
three people left?" said Ron McKay,
president of the Huron Central
Agricultural Society which operates
the Clinton Spring Fair.
Whether they operate a big fair or
a small one, whether they're
optimistic about the future or not, all
spokespeople for fairs we talked to
expressed concern about the
20 THE RURAL VOICE
difficulty of getting new people,
particularly younger people, involved
in running their fairs.
Jim Floyd, president of the
Seaforth Agricultural Society which
operates the Seaforth Fall Fair,
worries that younger people just
don't understand the importance of
community involvement.
To get and keep people involved,
you have to make it fun to be part of
the organization, says Ralph
Coneybeare, president of the
Listowel Agricultural Society.
Listowel (now part of the
municipality of North Perth) has
always been a close knit community
and that helps his organization. When
the Society acquired a building to be
moved and renovated for washrooms
for the fair, a few phone calls
recruited 25 men who gave two days
to dismantling, moving and
reassembling the building.
Brian Ireland, a director with the
Teeswater Agricultural Society
knows the problem of volunteer
recruitment. Currently there is neither
a president or vice-president with the
Society, and yet it carries on. It's not
only a problem getting new people
involved but of listening to them, he
feels. "Too often when a new person
comes up with an idea older people
say 'We tried that and it didn't
work'." Ireland feels if new people
have an idea they should be allowed
to try it. "Quite often that thing you
think won't work, does."
Finding those new ideas is the key
to keeping fairs lively and supported
by the community, says Coneybeare.
People see something that's worked
somewhere else and think it could be
adapted to the local fair.
In an increasingly sophisticated
society where people can get the best
entertainment on television or travel
to cities to see international
entertainers, it's increasingly hard to
impress local audiences yet few fairs
complain about attendance.
"There's no way a small fair can
afford entertainment that will draw a
crowd," says Ireland. "I remember
when we brought in chuck wagon