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Home My WebLink AboutThe Citizen, 2018-09-06, Page 1CitizenTh e $1.25 GST included Serving the communities of Blyth and Brussels and northern Huron County Thursday, September 6, 2018 Volume 34 No. 35 ARTS - Pg. 18 Culture Days set for return to Huron County FESTIVAL - Pg. 19 ‘Songs’ provides unique theatre-going experience WIZARDRY - Pg. 9 Tickets sell out for Saturday at Festival of Wizardry Publications Mail Agreement No. 40050141 Return Undeliverable Items to North Huron Publishing Company Inc., P.O. Box 152, BRUSSELS, ON N0G 1H0 INSIDE THIS WEEK: R2R conference returns with expanded program Thresher Reunion returns to Blyth this weekend Two years after the first Rural talks to Rural (R2R) conference, the organization is planning its next installment of the event, which will focus on rural resiliency. Run by Blyth Arts and Culture Initiative 14/19 Inc., the conference, which will be held Oct. 17- 19, will feature what 14/19 Project Director Peter Smith calls overlooked opportunities. “We need to be aware of the assets in our communities,” he said. “Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes all we can see are the problems because we’re so comfortable with the assets.” He added that part of building rural resiliency is not being blind to those assets and protecting them. Smith said that two of the exciting aspects of the conference will run throughout the entirety of the event, including archiving the seminars and discussion in multiple formats and what he called a Research Tree, made possible by Market Street Strategies, a marketing company created by Allan Thompson, an accomplished journalist and journalism professor. The Research Tree, Smith said, will see participants provided with leaflet die-cuts to write the research needs and ideas to populate a tree. At the end of the event, the “tree’ will be compiled and forwarded to universities with rural-focused programs to help direct rural study. WEDNESDAY Starting on Wednesday, Oct. 17, the opening ceremonies, the conference will begin with a plenary seminar called “Wake Up!” by Hans van der Loo, a member of the Advisory Board at the Institute for Integrated Economic Research in Europe. The seminar is a question- and-answer event focusing on sustainability and resilience. After a brief break, a second event will run from 10:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. called “Making a Rural Culture Hub”. The seminar is to be run by Ben Fink of the Rural Culture Hub in Whitesburg, Kentucky. The hub is based on the idea that every community has opportunities or assets on which it can capitalize, Smith said. Wednesday’s lunch is provided by Syrian women recently arrived in Canada. Alongside the traditional Syrian meal, the women will share their experiences coming to Canada. Wednesday afternoon will be the first concurrent sessions, offering an opportunity for conference-goers to attend a session on community wellbeing supported by Seaforth’s Gateway Centre of Excellence in Rural Health or a seminar called “Products of the System” focusing on different voices in rural decision making. The Products of the System session focuses on the voices that are left out of rural life or decision making processes, like women, the LGBTQ+ community, people of colour and Indigenous people. After a brief break, another plenary session called the Rural Radio Forum will be held from 4- 5:30 p.m., moderated by retired The Citizen Publisher Keith Roulston and a panel of local and international rural experts. The seminar will mirror the Rural Radio Forum, a radio program that reached Canadian farmers decades ago via CBC Radio. Hosted at a kitchen table, the program would feature rural experts and grassroots participants discussing rural issues. Listeners would then write their responses and send them to CBC where they were collated to be discussed later. Smith said Roulston regularly references the idea as a heyday of national rural participation, which is one of the event’s core principles. The R2R Rural Radio Forum discussion will take place around a kitchen table at Memorial Hall, Smith said, and will be broadcast to five other kitchen tables from Newfoundland to British Columbia. After the Rural Radio Forum, photographer Terry Manzo will host the Huron Sundowner, during which she will unveil photos associated with those not earning a living wage. The show is part of the United Way This weekend, for the 57th time, the Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association will be hosting its annual reunion in Blyth. Reunion-goers will be back just in time to take part in the annual Plough Day tradition, which this year will be held at the farm of Gerald Kerr, just east of Blyth on County Road 25. That night, Doug McNaughton will also host his annual fiddle workshop at 7:30 p.m. in the Blyth and District Community Centre auditorium. This will be his 30th annual workshop. As the sun goes down on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, the Courtney family will be hosting its famous corn roast on the grounds. On Friday, Sept. 7, the grounds open at 8 a.m. with displays, indoor vendors, arena, outside vendors, student activities, working displays and the Lifestyles Tent at 9 a.m. At 10 a.m. the fun tractor pull and horse demonstrations begin, followed by the threshing demons- tration at 11 a.m. and 1:15 p.m. The Blyth United Church will serve lunch on both Friday and Saturday from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Also beginning at 11 a.m. will be Country Ways on the reunion’s main stage. The potato-picking demonstration will begin at noon, while the opening ceremonies will commence at 12:30 p.m. At 3 p.m. there will be the daily 50/50 draw, followed by the parade at 4 p.m. The Bluewater Shrine Club’s annual fish fry and Blyth Lions Park also begins at 4 p.m. The Blyth United Church will serve dinner in the auditorium of the community centre from 4-6 p.m., while the Twilight Serenaders will perform beginning at 6 p.m. in the Lifestyles Tent. The new attraction, the Stoneboat Pullers will be at the tractor pull run beginning at 7 p.m. and the Country Versatiles will be on the community centre stage that night at 8 p.m. The Fire Department of North Huron will host its annual breakfast at the Blyth Fire Hall beginning at 7:30 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday. The threshing demonstration will move to 10:30 a.m. on Saturday morning and registration for the fiddle competition will open in Shed 3 at 11 a.m. Also at 11 a.m. will be the potato- picking demonstration, followed by Pierce’s Country Music on the main stage at noon, which is when the Blyth Lions Club’s beer tent opens. It will remain open until midnight. The annual fiddle competition begins in Shed 3 at 12:30 p.m., followed by a performance by the Teeswater Pipe Band, the tractor pull (followed by the garden tractor pull), the children’s garden and lawn tractor rodeo and the children’s pedal tractor pull starting at 1 p.m. There will be another threshing demonstration at 1:15 p.m., followed by special events such as bag-tying and belt-setting at 1:30 p.m. The Teeswater Pipe Band will perform again at 3 p.m., followed by School is back in session which means it’s time again for the Elementary School Fair in Belgrave, bringing together students from Maitland River Elementary and Sacred Heart Schools. The fair is set for Wednesday, Sept. 12 at the Belgrave Community Centre and surrounding parks. It begins at 11:15 a.m. sharp with the parade, followed by the opening ceremonies that follow the parade. After the opening ceremonies, bicycles in the parade will be judged and then all exhibits will be open in the community centre. The fair has been part of the fabric of Huron County for nearly 100 years, beginning in 1920 with students from nine schools from across Morris and East Wawanosh Townships. The fair would eventually swell to include students from 21 different schools. The fair has persisted through a number of changes, however, like in 1967 when many one-room schoolhouses were closed and local village schools were opened or in 2012 when some of those schools were closed, but a volunteer group took over the fair and ensured it would continue. For more information, find the Elementary School Fair on Facebook. School Fair set for Sept. 12 A little help? The Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association will host its 57th annual reunion this weekend and, as is tradition, members were at the Blyth campground on Labour Day getting things whipped into shape in preparation. People were running tractors, forklifts and plenty of other machinery to get the grounds ready for the big event. Here, a group is busy fine-tuning the sawmill, one of the reunion’s most enduring attractions, addressing the issue from both the top and bottom sides. (Shawn Loughlin photo)Continued on page 10 Continued on page 8