A Fair Request - Episode 64

The Canadian National Exhibition has a long history in the city of Toronto and Susanne is flattered when she receives an  invitation to  demonstrate her barn quilt painting skills.

Find out what happens when she mulls over the request and finds a connection that she had been researching for a couple of years. 

If you would like to receive my weekly Saturday morning email that contains my original stories, Canadian book recommendation, new barn quilt design and a recipe or cycling route (depending on the season), sign up here. 

Follow me on Facebook and Instagram

My website to join in our barn quilt painting experiences is www.crazy8barn.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Happy to Be Canadian Podcast. I'm Suzanne Spence Wilkins, a writer who lives in rural southwestern Ontario, Canada. Each week I share an original, very short story that will have you laughing and reflecting on the simple moments of our lives. Now, on to today's episode. Happy to be Canadian, episode 64, a fair request. Early last week I was asked to do some barn quilt painting at the CNE in Toronto later this summer. The request came from a phone call with one of those displayed numbers that you wonder whether you should answer or not. But it was a real person and a real inquiry. As head of the agricultural division that this year was featuring barn quilts as part of their popular fabric clothing display, the caller was trying to replace a featured exhibitor that had to cancel because of medical issues. I'm now in that camp where people doing the same craft as me are medically fragile. Even though the offer was last minute, I was honored to receive it. The caller explained that there were 18 days to the exhibition, and that started to make things real. As I listened, I knew I couldn't or wouldn't commit to almost three weeks in the city. The thought of that was a little soul-destroying. We continued to talk about what might be possible. She explained that she was receiving assistance from Denise Cornell of Wardsville, who is the founder of BarnquiltTrails.ca movement that registers the community art trails on their website. From that site, the X is creating a barn quilt trail of large photographs of barn quilts from each of the 30 Ontario trails, and it will lead into the exhibition building. The exhibition organizers wanted some hands-on activities or demonstrations or other participatory ideas for the barn quilt part of their exhibit. As we talked about it, we whittled down the options. Individuals painting their own barn quilt would be challenging with the time restraints and limited access to lots and lots of hairdryers. They wanted a 20-minute activity because their fair growers often have impatient companions, or they themselves have so much they want to see that spending two hours at the barn quilt exhibit is not desirable. They also have to carry whatever they create around the exhibition grounds. We were talking about watercolor postcards or colouring papers or a communal barn quilt painting experience or a demonstration. At the end of the conversation, my mind was whirling with the possibilities. I only had one question that was throbbing in the back of my mind. Who would pay for all of this? I was worried it might be me. The caller said we could discuss reimbursement. A few days later I received an email that they could cover the cost of lodging at the Weston. I said I would think about it. At first I was flattered to be asked by the CNE. I had no idea how many artists had been approached before me, but they were inviting me now. I have only attended the CNE once, and that was as part of an exhibition in the late 1980s. The Canadian Harvard Aircraft Association from Tilsonburg, where I was a member, was launching awareness and fundraising efforts. Someone had installed a Harvard aircraft inside a display center. In volunteer shifts, we took Polaroid shots of faregoers who donned a leather flying cap and slung a parachute over their shoulder as they stood in front of the yellow training aircraft from the Second World War. We had fun, but I don't know that it changed the trajectory of our flying association. As anyone who has done it knows, exhibiting at a fair or festival is always a crapshoot. I can't imagine how many tens of thousands of exhibitors have taken a risk on the fair over the past 168 years. The X began in 1858 as the Provincial Agricultural Fair of Canada West. It moved each year to the big provincial cities, showcasing horses, cows, and other farm animals and accessories to the newly settled. After the third time the fair was hosted in the city, Toronto's leaders requested that the festival be permanently home there. Turning down the offer, the organizing agricultural society kept moving the renamed Dominion Exhibition throughout the country with the help from the federal government until 1913. In 1879, the first Toronto Industrial Exhibition attracted 100,000 visitors, which was considered quite a success as the city proper only had a population of 80,000 people. At the time, Toronto was already an established hub for train travel. Visitors could arrive at Union Station and steam-powered or horse-drawn streetcars would take them the final four kilometers to the exhibition grounds. By 1890, the promotional posters labeled it the people's greatest holiday. The big fair, which changed its name to the Canadian Exhibition in 1912, has only ceased operations three times. In World War I and II, the grounds were used for troop training and deployment as well as the end of hostilities discharge. The COVID-19 pandemic restrictions closed the exhibition for two years. To this day, the event has remained strong in spite of other challenges caused by the Spanish flu pandemic, the Great Depression, polio epidemics, SARS, the electrical blackout of the eastern seaboard, and swine flu. That is because people always want to congregate to see the newest and the best. While innovations aren't often launched at exhibitions any longer, the X had many firsts for showing its attendees the phonograph in 1888, the radio in 1922, the television in 1939, and even virtual reality in 1992. It's a tradition that anyone would be proud to be part of. I thought about all of this as I mulled over the prospect of demonstrating my Barnquill painting skills at the CNE. I considered intertwining my presentations with a road trip that I had in the back of my mind. I even wondered how fabulous or fatal it would be to attend all 18 days of the X. After waiting for a few days, I turned down the offer. It was hard, but the commitment just didn't fit into my plans for late summer. Even though I turned down the plea for assistance, in my refusal email, I asked the ex's representative for a favor. I wondered if she could suggest where I might research the showing of the Highgate Mastodon bones that were displayed at the C and E in either 1890 or 91. Does the CNE have archives? She responded that she had forwarded my request and the archivist got really excited. Hopefully she can find something for you, she said. I've been following up on that tidbit of information about the Mastodon bones for a couple of years, and now the answer may have landed in my lap. All because I turned down a request for help, but wasn't afraid to ask for some assistance instead. Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Happy to Be Canadian. If you would like to receive an email each Saturday morning that features new short stories and more, you can sign up on my website, www.crazy8barn.com. If you would like to meet me in person and discover another way that we tell our rural stories, please join me at a barn quilt painting workshop at our beautiful eight-sided barn in Palmyra, Ontario, along the north shore of Lake Erie. You can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Crazy8 Barn. If you are an Apple podcast listener and enjoyed this podcast, I would appreciate it if you could leave me a favorable review. And that lets Apple know that Happy to Be Canadian is a valuable podcast and it shares it with other potential listeners. I'm Suzanne Spence Wilkins, and I'm Happy to Be Canadian.