The Citizen - Sept. 13, 2024

2 • Fundraiser 8 • Sports 15 • Fall Fair 23 • Theatre

The

THIS WEEK

Citizen

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Friday, September 13, 2024

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Volume 40 No. 37

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Another reunion in the books

By Scott Stephenson The Citizen

On display The 63rd annual reunion of the Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association, held in Blyth over the weekend, was another success, despite a soggy and cold start on Friday, above, and Saturday. Sunday, however, was sunny and bright, bringing hundreds of people to the

Blyth Campground for the storied event. In addition to staples like the fiddle and step dancing competitions and the threshing demonstrations, tractor pulls and The Lucky Charms concert also brought in the masses in what was another great year for the association. (Shawn Loughlin photo)

Year-end tournament set for Mitchell

By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen All the games have been played and the runs have been tallied and the Belmore Stingers are the regular season champions of the Huron County Fastball League with a record of 19-1 and 38 points. Just one loss - on Aug. 1 by a score of 87 to the Milverton Millwrights on the road - stood between the Stingers and the elusive perfect season.

The Wingham Hitmen ended the season in second place with 28 points and a record of 14-6, followed by the third-place Sebringville Sting with a record of 13-7 and 26 points.

Though they have identical 11-9 records with 22 points each, the Brussels Tigers will place fourth, followed by the Monkton Muskrats in fifth and the Goderich Grizzlies in sixth. The tie was broken by way of calculating the runs for each team when playing the teams with

which they’re tied. With 16, the Tigers placed first within this threeteam cluster, followed by the Muskrats with 14 and the Grizzlies with nine.

The Mitchell Mets finished the season in seventh place with a record of 9-10-1 and 19 points, followed by the eighth-place Elmira U20 Expos with a record of 8-10-2 and 18 points and the ninth-place Brussels Bangers and 10th-place Milverton Millwrights, both of which had identical 8-12 records with 16 points each. The Brussels Bangers won the head-to-head series, which moved them into ninth place.

The Walton Brewers finished in 11th place with 13 points and a record of 6-13-1, followed by the Fullarton A’s in 12th place with a record of 6-14 and 12 points and the last-place Wroxeter Rippers with a record of 4-16 and eight points.

The last game of the regular season was played on Monday night in Brussels; a 5-0 win for the

Monkton Muskrats over the Brussels Bangers.

One day earlier was a tough one for the Sebringville Sting. They were on the road for two games, in an effort to make up the balance of their regular season games before the deadline of Sept. 10, and lost both. First, the team fell to the Rippers in Wroxeter by a score of 13-11 and then to the Brewers in Walton by a score of 14-3, allowing a total of 27 runs over the course of the day.

On Sept. 6, the Sebringville Sting hosted the Goderich Grizzlies and won by a score of 4-3, while the Monkton Muskrats welcomed the Milverton Millwrights to town and won by a score of 6-4. The Brussels Bangers also played that night, losing to the Wingham Hitmen by a score of 7-0 in Brussels.

One day earlier, the Sebringville Sting beat the Monkton Muskrats in Monkton by a score of 7-5, while, that same night, the Milverton Millwrights hosted the Walton

Brewers and won by a score of 9-1 and the Fullarton A’s were in Wroxeter to play the Rippers and won by a score of 11-5.

On Wednesday, Sept. 4, the Brussels Tigers hosted the Mitchell Mets, but lost by a score of 10-6.

The Monkton Muskrats were in Linwood to play the Elmira U20 Expos that night as well, with the Muskrats winning by a score of 9-3.

The Walton Brewers hosted a game with the Goderich Grizzlies that night as well, though Goderich was officially the home team for the contest. Goderich would capitalize on its “home field” advantage and win by a score of 8-7.

On Sept. 3, just after the Labour Day weekend, the Brussels Bangers hosted the Sebringville Sting and lost by a score of 11-4. Also that night, the Elmira U20 Expos were forced to forfeit to the Hitmen in Wingham, resulting in a 2-0 victory for the Hitmen.

This weekend, at Mitchell’s Continued on page 8

It may have been a bit of a drizzly weekend in Blyth, but that didn’t stop the annual Threshers Reunion from going full-steam ahead! This past weekend marked 63 years since Blyth first hosted its annual celebration of the threshing arts, and it is always a weekend that imprints on the mind. Over the decades, this long-running community festival has created a self-sustained, immersive environment, complete with a working sawmill, a log cabin and numerous performance sheds that really give visitors a taste of what it was like to live the agricultural life in Huron County in days gone by.

It‘s not just an opportunity to see some of the finest machines that have ever been made, it’s a chance to learn a little more about the evolution of the machines that have made it possible to produce the food that feeds our people for so many years.

The original idea behind the Threshers Reunion was a simple one - to reunite a gang of men who used to travel from farm to farm, threshing the fields. That group included local men like Jack White, Alec Manning, Hugh Chisholm, and a few of the Hallahan brothers - Dennis, Willie, Joe, Dan, John, Simon, and Raymond. Now, 63 years later, members of the Hallahan clan are still playing their part to make the Reunion run smoothly - eagle-eyed visitors that attended the event this past weekend may have spotted Dan’s son Joe lending a hand wherever need be. Joe Hallahan got his start with the annual celebration when he was still a child and his father was still working hard with the other founders to build up the campground into the unique, sprawling event space it is today.

That first Reunion was a chance for the guys to get together and remember the days before modern technology had made the old ‘threshing gang’ into a thing of the past. Invitations were sent out to other local threshers, and machinists were also encouraged to bring their steam engines and threshing machines to the reunion to show off. There were five steam engines at that first event, and the numbers have grown steadily since then. This year’s featured Continued on page 3

PAGE 2. THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024.

Wingham’s Burke surpasses goal, sets new one

By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen

Next stop: $2,000!

Meghan Burke began her humble fundraiser with a goal of $1,000 - one hand-packed $2.25 bag of candy at a time. Last week, she exceeded that goal by over $300 and has since set a new goal of $2,000, which she hopes to hit before the end of the golf season at the Wingham Golf and Curling Club. (Shawn Loughlin photo)

On Wednesday, Sept. 4, Meghan Burke marched right into the Wingham Golf and Curling Club with an envelope. (The Citizen was lucky enough to be there.) In that envelope was enough money to topple her fundraising goal for the club of $1,000, bringing the amount raised to $1,312 and encouraging her to set a new course and raise more money.

The 22-year-old, who is a mainstay at the club, enjoying the food and drinks and time with her friends and family there, had an idea to raise some money for the club earlier this summer. Taking a task she had done for one of the club’s camps some time ago, she would create little bags of candy and sell them for a few dollars each.

She began by buying candy with her own money and bagging it up herself. It went up for sale at the club itself and then at Ship2Shore Holidays in Wingham, where her mother Kendra Quinlan works, and the sales started rolling in. And so did the donations. Once people caught wind of what Burke was doing, they would donate money to the cause or to buy some more candy to keep the fundraiser alive and well.

Thanks to some early support, candy started moving and the money was coming in. The enthusiasm from the community was great and Burke was really happy with how well the fundraiser was being received by residents.

Now that her work has raised in excess of $1,300, Burke has decided to raise the goal to $2,000 and keep selling candy until the end

of the golf season. Then, she said, she’ll see where she ends up and how much money has been raised.

Burke is a busy, popular member of the community, who holds down part-time jobs at Castings and Cornerstone Pizza, while also helping with the snack program at Maitland River Elementary School.

She is also a member of the Almost Famous Players, joining in 2020.

As for where the money will go, Burke isn’t quite sure yet. She wants it to benefit the club she so loves, but she doesn’t know exactly how. Danielle Sutton, one of the club’s operation managers, said she is just thrilled that Burke has taken the initiative to raise money for the club and is happy that something new will come to it as a result.

Burke hopes to do something for the youth with the money, but she won’t exactly figure that out until the final dollar has been counted.

For now, the fundraiser continues and candy can be found and purchased at the Wingham Golf and Curling Club or Ship2Shore. As for next season, Burke said she may take on the fundraiser again, but hasn’t yet made a final decision.

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THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024. PAGE 3.

Despite rain, cold, reunion delights audiences the enthusiasm of the crowd.

Providing good food has become as important a part of the reunion as it was for the threshing gangs back in the day. This year’s daily bean pot was a huge success, as always, as was Saturday night’s free steampowered corn roast. Both the bean pot and the corn roast are great reminders of the old way of feeding the community - local corn and beans, prepared simply and in great abundance.

The Blyth United Church also took over the top floor of the arena all weekend, and cooked up a storm that showed off the best of the country supper - turkey on Friday, roast beef on Saturday,

and a soup and sandwich Sunday lunch for after the church service, which was led this year by Keith Roulston, who contributed some well-received words to the weekend about the miracle that is agriculture.

There is a wild alchemy that exists within the Thresher Reunion - it merges a nostalgia for the new technologies of the past with a desire to pass on the power of community-oriented rural spirit to the next generation. It reminds us all that, even though modern technology means we don't need to know our neighbours, it makes for a healthier, happier agricultural community when we do.

Reunited The Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association held its annual reunion over the weekend to much acclaim. Above, Huron-Bruce MPP and Minister of Rural Affairs Lisa Thompson caught a ride with a gorgeous steam engine, while, right, Joe Gahan and The Lucky Charms played their now-staple Saturday night concert in Shed 3 due to the rain, though the enthusiasm of no one whatsoever was dampened. (Scott Stephenson photos) Continued from page 1 engine, an 18-horsepower John Goodison, did not disappoint. This particular engine, owned by one Geoff Scholes of Sarnia, is still a real beauty, even at 115 years old.

Scholes’ machine may not be as big a behemoth as the statuesque Sawyer Massey that MPP Lisa Thompson was spotted atop on Friday, but it’s still a marvel of the modern technology that once was.

The hand-painted logo near the back of the engine that reads “The John Goodison Thresher Co. Limited Sarnia,” is a nice little reminder that Southern Ontario was once a world-class hub of innovation for farm equipment.

The antique steam engines aren’t just beautiful museum pieces - they actually still run, which is both a testament to the construction of these machines and the skills of the machinists who tend to them. The ultimate proof of each machine’s functionality comes each day at 4 p.m., when all the engines proceed about the grounds in a grand parade. This year’s promenade marked the end of an era, as it was the last one to be called by former association president Jim Sloan.

He’s attended almost every reunion weekend since the very beginning, and has announced the parade for over a decade.

The annual Threshers Reunion in Blyth has been evolving for so long now that it has its own storied history.

Bea Houston, the association’s first woman president, was also the first woman to lead a steam show in Ontario. As part of her plan to make the reunion more appealing to women, she expanded the show to include homecrafts in the arena. The annual craft show has since grown over the years, and now attracts talented artisans from all over Ontario. This year’s craft show packed an impressive amount of artisans onto the arena floor.

Upcycled garden art, stunning quilts, knitwear, one-of-a-kind Halloween decorations, tole painting, toy tractors and, of course,

Threshers Reunion souvenirs.

Houston also introduced the idea of adding a youth education component into the mix. She developed the Friday of the reunion into a field trip day, which has now brought thousands of children into contact with their agricultural past.

This year, the students created some truly inspired scarecrows, and thoroughly enjoyed observing how wheat and chaff were once separated during the threshing demonstration.

There were no formal plans to have a musical component at the first-ever Thresher Reunion, but every threshing gang tended to have a few musicians in the mix - a little music was a welcome way to unwind after a hard day out in the field. So it wasn’t much of a surprise when a few attendees that first year broke out their fiddles and started raising revelry. One of the threshers was also a step dancer who showed the others some choice moves. Today, music is almost as big a part of the weekend as the threshing and the antique engines.

Entertainment Co-ordinator Gladys Van Egmond has ensured that the

spirit of that first event is alive and well by putting on the annual fiddle and step dance competition, which was well-attended again this year by talented musicians and dancers from far and wide. The rainy weather also didn’t dissuade musicians of all stripes from coming out to the numerous jam sessions that go down all weekend long at various spots around the grounds. It was a veritable who’s who of local musicians with a proclivity for old time music.

One of the most recent additions to the reunion has been the Saturday night concert with The Lucky Charms. They may play a slightly more modern type of music than reunion favourites The Twilight Serenaders or The Country Versatiles, but their Beatles-heavy setlist could still be considered the music of a bygone era. After all, the year of the first Threshers Reunion was also the year that the Beatles were first recorded playing together in Germany! This year’s rain meant that the show had to be moved from the outdoor Harvest Stage to the safety of Shed 3, but it in no way dampened

The fruits and effects He produces (J.C. Ryle, “The Holy Spirit”) "When He comes, He will convict the world about sin, righteousness, and judgment." (John 16:8) Where the Holy Spirit is, there will always be deep conviction of sin--and true repentance for it. It is His special office to convince of sin.

He shows the exceeding holiness of God. He teaches the exceeding corruption and infirmity of our nature.

He strips us of our blind self-righteousness.

THE BELGRAVE COMMUNITY CENTRE BOARD Invites you to their ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 24, 2024 At the Belgrave Community Centre 7 p.m.

At the meeting, members will have the opportunity to: • find out about BCCB’s operations and finances • ask questions about the operations and finances of BCCB • speak about any items on the agenda • vote on any resolutions proposed • accept the minutes of the last annual general meeting • accept the annual financial statements Also the Presentation of the Jim McGee Community Volunteer Award will take place at the Annual General Meeting.

Please contact Jonathan VanCamp - President 519-357-8259

He opens our eyes to our awful guilt, folly and danger.

He fills the heart with sorrow, contrition, and abhorrence for sin--as the abominable thing which God hates.

He who knows nothing of all this, and saunters carelessly through life, thoughtless about sin, and indifferent and unconcerned about his soul, is a dead man before God! He has not the Holy Spirit.

The presence of the Holy Spirit in a man's heart can only be known by the fruits and effects He produces. Mysterious and invisible to mortal eye as His operations are, they always lead to certain visible and tangible results.

Just as you know there is life in a tree by its sap, buds, leaves and fruits--just so you may know the Spirit to be in a man's heart by the influence He exercises over his thoughts, affections, opinions, habits, and life. I lay this down broadly and unhesitatingly. I see it clearly marked out in our Lord Jesus Christ's words, "Every tree is known by his own fruit." (Luke 6:44) A Grace Gem Submitted by: Immanuel United Reformed Church Listowel, ON 519-291-3887

PAGE 4. THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024.

Editorials & Opinions

Founding Publisher: Keith Roulston Publisher & President: Deb Sholdice Editor: Shawn Loughlin • Reporter: Scott Stephenson Advertising Sales: Brenda Nyveld

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A new, hazy mess Last week, the U.S. Justice Department unsealed indictments alleging that an unnamed company, whose description closely matches a company run by two Canadian far-right social media influencers - Tenet Media is operated by Lauren Chen and her husband Liam Donovan spouted a steady stream of pro- Donald Trump content that the indictment says was part of a Russian-funded propaganda campaign.

With the advent of the internet and social media, it has become impossible to know who is behind the posts, articles, videos, memes and blogs that we are consuming. At least in the days of print and broadcast media, the advertisers and sponsors were in plain view.

Everyone who receives public money is required to post a logo from the level of government providing the funds. While it is ostensibly to promote the good works of our hard-earned tax dollars, it does also provide some transparency. Fortunately, in Canada, whether you are a publisher or a non-profit theatre or a charitable organization, receiving a grant comes without interference on content, other than reporting that verifies that you did what you said you were going to do with it.

With the public’s growing distaste for advertising, a lack of transparency has been allowed to grow and is accepted as the new normal. We all hear about “influencers” getting rich from their social media, but does anyone stop to think about who is funding them? – DS

On shaky ground Well... this just got very exciting. That will be the sentiment of some regarding the news that the federal NDP has pulled out of the Supplyand-Confidence Agreement with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party that allowed the two parties to operate as a de facto majority government, delivering on promises from both parties, as long as the NDP’s demands were met - a condition of the agreement. Others will say that it has destabilized the Canadian political landscape, which is completely at odds with why it was created in the first place.

Those who hate Trudeau will be pleased, despite surely disliking NDP leader Jagmeet Singh just as much as they do Trudeau, seeing this as some of the final rats to leave a sinking ship. Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre sees this as his best chance at an early election.

What it actually will be remains to be seen. There is clearly no love lost between Singh and Poilievre so, when push comes to shove, it’s hard to envision Singh doing something that will benefit Poilievre, and yet, Trudeau’s party hasn’t delivered what the NDP wants either.

Many editorialists and columnists have opined as to what this new development will mean for the next election, whenever it may be, but one thing is for sure. The ground of the Canadian political landscape is not nearly as solid as it once was. An unpredictable future lies ahead and, for some, that’s a scary sentiment, while others will welcome any change and a future that does not include Justin Trudeau.

The coming months promise to be interesting and different and they may, in fact, yield the change for which so many have been pining. And yet, will those so eager for change be so blinded by their hatred that they’ll accept an alternative in place of a viable alternative? – SL

More in common Ontarians know how to throw a festival and the range of events across the province proves it. Whether you’re soaking in the farming heritage of Huron County or rubbing elbows with A-listers in the heart of Toronto, there’s no need to choose between rural charm and urban glitz.

Take the Huron Pioneer Threshers and Hobby Association’s annual reunion in Blyth, for example. This event is a living museum of sorts, showcasing advancements in agriculture that have powered not only Huron County’s history, but also industries far beyond the farm. The steam engines roar to life as antique tractors parade by, offering a glimpse into how the backbone of modern farming was built.

Demonstrations of threshing, blacksmithing and cider pressing fill the air with the scents and sounds of a bygone era, while tractor pulls and fiddle competitions give a taste of the area’s local flavour. Meanwhile, down in Toronto, the city is buzzing with the glamour of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Celebrities flock to the “Big Smoke” for film premieres, parties and some good old-fashioned hobnobbing.

The beauty of Ontario is that you don’t have to pick one over the other. TIFF’s high-energy atmosphere and the rural charm of the Thresher Reunion may seem worlds apart, but they both share a common goal: to celebrate culture, history and progress. Whether you’re watching steam engines chugging through Blyth or catching the latest cinematic masterpiece in Toronto, these festivals highlight the diverse experiences that make Ontario so unique. Both of these festivals offer space to learn, explore and celebrate - whether it’s the technical marvels of farming or the artistic achievements of cinema. This diversity is one of the province’s strengths. Ontario doesn’t force you to pick a side; there’s room for everyone to enjoy the best of both worlds. – SBS

Looking Back Through the Years September 17, 1969 Last Friday afternoon, a grass fire broke out in a field owned by Richard Snell, roughly half a mile south of Blyth.

The blaze inflicted significant damage on nearby properties and is believed to have caused a traffic accident on the adjacent highway.

The fire spread beyond its confines into a field behind the home of Mr. and Mrs. Frank Elliott, prompting Joe and Ted Hunking, who were baling straw there, to make a swift exit.

The flames also damaged a fence on the Elliott property and burned a hedge of cedar trees surrounding the house.

The Horse Show in the Blyth arena last Saturday night turned out to be a promising start for the 1969 edition of the Blyth Fall Fair.

While attendance dipped slightly compared to the previous year, the arena remained reasonably packed with enthusiastic horse enthusiasts.

Bill Dale from Hullett Township served as the judge for the heavy horse classes, and Bill Tapsall from St. Thomas was responsible for judging the light horses.

A family gathering took place on Sunday at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Clare Niergarth in Wingham, where Mr. and Mrs. Albert Walsh marked their 57th wedding anniversary with the entire family in attendance.

Those who attended included Mr. and Mrs. Norman Pepper from Hensall, Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Walsh from Sarnia, Mr. and Mrs. Ben Walsh, Mr. and Mrs. Jim Walsh and Mr. Lloyd Walsh, all from Blyth.

September 14, 1977 On Monday night, George Cousins of Brussels was appointed as the new member of the village

council, filling the vacancy created

by Frank Stretton’s resignation.

Gordon Stephenson, who had served with the Brussels volunteer fire brigade for 34 years, was honoured at an Ontario Fire Marshal’s convention.

Three youths from Brussels were charged with mischief and theft under $200 following an incident that occurred early last Thursday morning.

According to the Wingham OPP, a soft drink machine owned by Erie and Huron Beverages of Stratford was damaged, and money was stolen from the machine’s coin box at around 5:30 a.m. on Sept. 8.

Additionally, the coin box of a pay telephone was opened, and coins were taken in the same incident.

September 13, 1989 On September 5, the Brussels village council decided that, effective immediately, no building permits would be issued without prior approval from the Public Utilities Commission (P.U.C.).

The decision followed a meeting where Gerry Wheeler from the P.U.C. explained the issues arising from the council issuing permits without consulting the commissioners. Wheeler noted that once a building permit is approved, it appears as though the P.U.C. is obligated to provide service, which can lead to complications.

A man from Morris Township sustained serious injuries following a dirt bike accident at his home on Saturday afternoon.

Brian Oldridge, of Blyth, was jumping hills on his 1982 Honda motorbike when he lost control on the muddy surface and was thrown from the bike.

According to the Wingham OPP, Oldridge was travelling at a speed

of 60 kilometres per hour when the accident occurred.

Oldridge was transported by ambulance to Wingham and District Hospital and was subsequently transferred to St. Joseph’s Hospital in London. The hospital did not disclose details about his injuries.

The OPP reported that there was no damage to the motorcycle.

Members of Brussels and Ethel United Churches welcomed a new minister during a service on Sunday evening.

Reverend Cam McMillan, who previously served at Harriston United Church, had begun his duties at both Brussels and Ethel churches.

With 25 years of experience in ministry, this marked the seventh rural ministry Rev. McMillan had undertaken. “I have always enjoyed rural ministry, even though I was raised in the city of Winnipeg. My first church was in rural Saskatchewan,” Rev. McMillan shared. “My wife, Barb, is originally from Toronto, but she also appreciates rural areas. It has always been our preference,” he said.

September 16, 2004 The Londesborough Angels’ ball tournament proved to be a resounding success, raising a total of $1,161 for new playground equipment at the ball park.

Cheers erupted at the Brussels Legion on Saturday night as Candice McLellan was announced as the winner of the Brussels Ambassador pageant.

Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association President Paul Josling reported that approximately 1,105 campers were registered at the Blyth campgrounds for the Thresher Reunion weekend.

THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024. PAGE 5.

Other Views

Our beloved rural future is at stake

W

ell, the Blyth Festival has finished its 50th anniversary season, the streets of Blyth are not crowded with hundreds of people trying to find a place to park and the merchants are missing the extra customers coming in.

As someone who was there in the beginning, it’s hard to imagine what the Festival has become all these years later after a young James Roy and Anne Chislett came to town in the summer of 1975, dreaming of starting a summer theatre. It was a time so different than today. Eight years after Canada had celebrated its centennial, Canadians first felt subservient to Britain, and then to the United States, but soon became more confident about their own country.

Before then, theatre in Canada had mostly been about British or American stories, as at the Stratford Shakespearian Festival or the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Suddenly, Canadian theatres like Tarragon in Toronto became popular. There was a real breakthrough when Paul Thompson brought a bunch of young actors to a farm near Clinton and talked to farm neighbours and collectively created The Farm Show, which became a hit when it went back to Toronto in the fall of 1972.

I was in the audience for The Farm Show in a barn near Clinton on a Sunday afternoon when the company performed, for a mostly local audience, the stories they had worked up after researching the show. Also there, unknown to me, was a young York University student from Clinton: James Roy. Having discovered the Memorial Hall theatre after Jill and I bought The Blyth Standard in 1971, I began working on Thompson with the idea of making Blyth a summer base for his Theatre Passe Muraille, but Memorial Hall

Keith Roulston

From the cluttered desk required a new roof and, while the huge project dragged on and on, Thompson decided instead to go to the Petrolia Opera House, which also wanted a summer theatre.

But after graduating, James Roy worked at Passe Muraille in the fall and winter of 1974/1975 and told Thompson about wanting to start a new summer theatre. Thompson knew that the new roof design had finally been completed and suggested Roy contact me. He did in March of 1975 and, young and ambitious as he was, decided he’d start a summer theatre that year. He chose to create a play collectively from a Huron County writer Harry J. Boyle.

Mostly in Clover was a smash hit. Roy decided from that moment that the Blyth Festival would be dedicated to plays of local interest and, over the next 50 seasons, that’s what it has done, with more than 100 premiere performances.

The Citizen’s special issue celebrating those 50 seasons was a tremendous effort by the newspaper’s staff, the kind of thing that only the local, community-owned newspaper could pull off. Small though the paper’s staff is, it’s still the largest in Huron County. Shawn Loughlin and Scott Stephenson managed to track down all eight previous Artistic Directors and learn from them their stories and their most memorable plays.

Also in that issue were clippings from the old Blyth Standard about the beginning of the

Festival. Though I was intimately involved and wrote many of those stories, I can’t take credit for their still being available. I was so busy concentrating on the next paper that I didn’t take the time to preserve the paper we had just published. It was A. Y. McLean, to whom we sold The Standard after I became infatuated with theatre, who dug out copies of each paper and maintained Blyth’s history, as well as that of the Festival.

Though I knew how important local newspapers were in recording local history, it became most evident to me recently at meetings of community members planning a history of Blyth’s last 50 years, as teams over and over mentioned reading old files of The Standard and The Citizen to get details.

The Citizen is still serving the community today, much better than other community newspapers in Huron County. Finding tickets for all the newspapers - weeklies and dailies that wanted to send reviewers to the Festival used to be a challenge. There are few reviewers these days. In fact, it’s hard to see how Artistic Director Gil Garratt manages to attract sold-out audiences when there is so little media coverage.

One wonders if the next 50 years will be as successful as the last. Will young theatregoers replace the older patrons as they age? So many of the summer theatres that were born after Blyth’s success, like the theatres in Meaford and Kincardine, have also died.

So many businesses in Blyth have been attracted because of the success of the Festival, where once people shopped in Blyth weekly for necessities.

The future of our communities, and its theatres, is at stake. People of all ages must be engaged or there may be no 100th anniversary for the Blyth Festival.

A very special history lesson from ‘The Chaff’

O

, Captain! My Captain! It is with a heavy head and heart that The Chaff must announce that the most hallowed of ’eens will not be taking place this year.

That’s right, the band Ween has canceled its upcoming tour, which was intended to celebrate the 30 year anniversary of their 1994 album, Chocolate and Cheese.

So now, it is time for us to turn our collective eyeballs towards the very near future, which contains the second most hallowed of ’eens: Halloween. The official holiday of Spirit Halloween fast approaches, which means that all those ’round the town are really ripping into the tender flesh of their favourite pumpkins in order to create the madcap candle vessel that is the modern day Jack-o’-lantern.

It’s rather obvious where the ”Jack“ and the ”lantern” are coming from, but did any of you Chaff Riffraff know that the “o” betwixt those two is actually an old time obscurity - an abbreviated form of “of”? Because back in the day, nobody had a bunch of loose, wrinkly folds of spare time to waste on superfluous letters, especially during the all-important pumpkin harvest season. Even when those superfluous letters don’t result in additional syllables. It was the best o’ times, it was the worst o’ times.

Now, dear Chaff readers, you may still be reeling from that Ween tour bombshell, but, for any of you Chaff stars out there who weren’t spiritually blown to Weenereens, here are a few more phrases, terms, words and linguistic foofaraw times of antiquity that tend to tickle the staff here at The Chaff, just in time for the multi-month ramp up to All Hallow’s Eve. Who knows, they might just get you through the night.

Why walk when one can “obambulate”?

After all, a little “obambulation” a day keeps the doctor away!

Scott Stephenson The Chaff Everybody loves a good, old-fashioned obstruction of justice, but an “obduction” of justice will do just as well in a pinch.

Ever wonder what they call those giant ships that only transport citrus fruit across the ocean? They’re “orangers!” As in, “When’s that bloody oranger going to show up with my damn clementine?!”

Do you want to predict something that might happen in the future, perhaps even a prophecy?

Then that’s “oss”, boss!

Too busy scarfing down oysters by the Chaff-ful to predict the future? Then that makes you an ostreophagist, old chum!

Right around the turn of the 19th century, a troubling increase in the number of lads in the world led to the advent of an excess lad disposal system known as university. Once they were all shuttled off to “receive an education” and the streets were safe to walk again, the jokiest lads of all the ladd referred to their dorm doors as “oaks”, because they were typically made of oak - pretty cool, right?

Here’s one you can set your haircut to.

“They say that oafishness is next to oakishness.” While less popular than “cleanliness is next to godliness”, this phrase still serves to teach us an equally important lesson: in the days before XBox, Twitter and XBox Live, we mostly just talked about trees.

Now, we’re all loving that hot new Billie Eilish song that extols the virtue of enjoying a midday meal, but that doesn’t mean you

should be adding an “oak apple” into your lunch sack just yet. Don’t let the name lead you down the oh-so-well-trodden lane of linguistic malapropism - oak apples may sound like a most magical fruit, but, in reality, they’re actually just apple-shaped tumours that grow on oak trees that have been intensely irritated by fungi, insects, or bacteria. Yuck!

Now, we’re all loving that hot new Billie Eilish song that extols the virtue of enjoying a midday meal, but don’t try adding an “oak leather” into your lunch sack just yet. Don’t let the name lead you down the oh-so-welltrodden lane of linguistic malapropism - oak leather may sound like a most magical suit, but it’s actually just a leather-looking fungus that grows in the crevices of old oak trees. Yuck!

Now, we’re all loving that hot new Billie Eilish song that extols the virtue of enjoying a midday meal, but don’t try adding an oak spangle into your sack lunch just yet. Don’t let the name lead you down the oh-so-welltrodden lane of linguistic malapropism - oak spangles may sound like a most magical fruit, but they are actually just spangle-shape tumours that grow on oak leaves. Yuck!

So there you have it, Chaff Folk, Okey Dokes and Bicycle Spokes - just a little hiss of Jack-o’-lantern-centric history that the whole family will be able to use as carver’s inspiration this upcoming Halloween!

O Tempora! O Mores!

The Citizen welcomes letters to the editor.

Letters must be signed and should include a daytime telephone number for verification only.

Unsigned letters will not be printed.

Submissions may be edited for length, clarity and content, using fair comment as our guideline.

Shawn Loughlin Shawn’s Sense

The Replacements

F

ull-scale election fever is running amok these days and everyone either has it or is avoiding it like the plague, which it kind of is.

We have the U.S. election this fall, which will mark Donald Trump’s official return to politics and hold the potential to bring the country its first-ever female president and a woman of colour at that. Here in Canada, there have been some absolutely major developments in the federal realm, with Jagmeet Singh and the NDP pulling support for the Supply and Confidence Agreement with Justin Trudeau’s Liberal Party in what can certainly be regarded as an early Christmas present for Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre. The potential for an early election just increased dramatically, which is music to the ears of some and slightly-more-than-mildly tedious to the nervous systems of others.

So many of our current political situations of late are not driven by things like excitement, the dawn of a new day or the promise of a bright future for residents both young and old.

No - instead, they are driven by the utterly unexciting fact that, well, at least Candidate A isn’t Prime Minister X or that the only way to stop former President B is a vote for Candidate Y. The best thing many of the candidates of today have going for them is that they’re not the other candidate. And that, my friends, is a sad state of affairs. Imagine being excited about eating at a restaurant and its most intriguing feature is the fact that it isn’t that roach-ridden other place on the edge of town.

Or a young pair of parents exchanging high fives because their kid didn’t get the teacher with a less-than-thrilling reputation for Junior Kindergarten and yet, what do we really know about this other teacher anyway?

The movie Nashville, directed by Robert Altman and released in 1975, tells the story of a country music-loving city by way of several of its, seemingly-unconnected characters over the span of a few days. One of the threads running through everyone’s lives is the presidential campaign of Hal Philip Walker of the Replacement Party. Billed as a “walker, talker and sleeper”, Walker offers the voting public an alternative to major party politics.

He’ll replace - hence the name of the party whoever was in power and take things in a new, allegedly exciting direction.

Though we never do actually see Walker in the film, he is always around and we hear his voice frequently (or at least we’re to assume).

This was nearly 50 years ago and it seems that the politics of replacement were alive and well even back then, when a candidate could sell himself by, well, not selling himself.

Really, he was selling all the things that he is not.

In the U.S., for a time, Joe Biden was selling himself as the person who wasn’t Donald Trump. Some might even say that’s how he won the 2020 election and that’s all that it took. Again, for a time, he thought he could do it again, but time caught up with him and he stepped aside to let someone else take a shot at defeating Trump. Kamala Harris is making some good points and exciting a younger base of voters, but, every once in a while, even in her own signage, she drops a reminder that she is, in fact, not Donald Trump.

In Canada, it’s more straightforward. Justin Trudeau has become someone who incites some very strong feelings from a lot of people.

He’s even inspired a profane flag and, more and more, it’s becoming clear that people want rid of him. But, who is left? The other guys.

They’re not him and sometimes that’s enough.

PAGE 6. THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024.

School, Fall Fairs ring in the fall for Graber Watson A NOTE FROM BETTY

By Betty Graber Watson Call 887-9231

Initiated It was initiation day at the Brussels Legion on Sunday, that saw new members mingle with long-time members and members of the executive, all in the name of creating familiarity and a sense of welcoming. (Submitted photo)

At the Branch

Initiation held at the Branch

By Jo-Ann McDonald The start of school means the start of the Brussels Army Cadet Corp 2967 at the Brussels Legion.

The Corp has Cadets from the age of 12 to 18 involved. It is a completely free youth group to join.

They meet on Tuesday evenings from 6:30-9 p.m. They learn leadership, drills, camping, friendship, sports, marksmanship, challenges and they can attend paid summer camps and more. Drop into the Legion on Tuesday evenings and speak with the Commanding Officer who will be glad to talk to you and give your child a chance to meet other Cadets.

The Branch was the venue for the lunch following the funeral of the late Bea Seili. Our condolences to the Seili family. Comrades helping at the luncheon included Jo-Ann McDonald, Judy Lee, Sandra Brown, Linda Bird and Perry and Julie Pearce.

The Catch the Ace draw on Friday evening had Deb Seili the weekly winner of $216. Her choice of envelope was number 45 and the four of clubs was revealed. The estimated jackpot for the Sept. 13 draw could be $6,900.

The pub grub this Friday night is fish burgers and fries.

The fish fry crew was working in cooler conditions in Blyth at the

Lions Park, serving 230 folks on Friday evening. Prep work was done by Jo-Ann and Judy and working at the fish fry dinner were Kathy Burkholder, Ken Pennington, Deb Seili, Rick Demaray, Derek Douglas, Karen Cowan and Jim Brown. Good job by all.

The Branch has only two events remaining before putting away the fryers. It is never too early to call the Branch for dates for next year, as we do book up early. When the Branch does a fry, our job is to cook the fish and fries. The group that books us is responsible for providing runners to take food in, the rest of the meal and the serving and or packaging of the meal. If your group is interested in finding a date, call the Branch.

On Sunday, the Branch welcomed many of our new members for initiation, a tour of the Branch and a social afternoon. A group of 14 that was initiated included Deb and Joe Seili, Christine Quehe, Derek Douglas, Wanda Hladysh, Tim Nyholt, Richard Demaray, Jeanette Mayer, Benjamin Lootsma, Bonnie Gropp, Mark Gropp, Jodi Houston, Marguerite Thomas and Matthew Thomas.

There were many members and guests attending.

Comrade President Jamie Mitchell welcomed everyone to the Branch after being

marched on by Sargeant at Arms Lisa Glanville and proceeded to conduct the initiation. The program was turned over to Membership Chair Sandra Brown, who read the names of those initiated and presented them with a Legion pin and badge. Zone Commander Jon Corbett explained about the objects that make up the Legion crest.

Comrade Sandra then introduced the members of the current executive and asked them to stand and describe their duties. We hope the new members got an idea on the programs and their interests. The Branch has four new members who have transferred from the Howick Branch, which has closed. Comrade Brown presented them with a Brussels Legion Branch pin. They included Comrade Gerry Brewer, Jeffrey Hawkins, Mac Inglis and Floyd Allen. The group broke into two groups and everyone was given a tour of the Branch and then enjoyed a social time. It was a great afternoon.

The Branch was the venue for the funeral luncheon for the late Edna Pletch on Monday.

Our condolences to the family. Helping at the Branch were Perry and Julie Pearce, Linda Bird, Tanya Martin, Jo-Ann McDonald, Judy Lee, Rhonda Fischer and Deb Seili.

Thanks for the great help.

The Elementary School Fair was looking like good weather could be a possibility, this being written on Tuesday. The Belgrave Elementary School Fair and the area music festival held yearly in Belgrave made me think and smile this morning.

My school was #10 Ramsey School in Morris Township a few years ago. Fall fair memories include practising marching outside our school. Oh my, then we had the big day marching with all our eight grades through uptown Belgrave, along with the other area schools.

Everything else is blurry, except for a bottle of grape pop, the treat of the day, a rare occasion for farm families. I hope good memories are still being made.

Autumn seems to have a calming effect. Plans are made with less pressure, details fall into place and life continues. In spite of growth slowing elsewhere, my rooftop pumpkin plant has added five new leaves and is heading west from its southern way last week. As you can tell, it doesn’t take much to amuse me.

The Olympics and Paralympics are now complete for this round.

We’ve learned some new names to watch in the future, new records have been made and new countries have been noted for attendance.

When you think of the history of the Olympics, ancient Greece at that first competition, the foresight and the vision of a community of

athletes encouraging each to become better - there is some good history there.

The idea that is for the betterment of all remains in tune with today.

The nearest we get to Paris is television viewing to see the hard work and adverse conditions that are faced and the very act of being there is wonderful.

The 161st Brussels Fall Fair books are still available. You have time to check for details of the articles you wish to enter. Each item on display is so good to see. It shows talent, pride in your work and community spirit, all ready to share with our fair, plus a positive vote on the fair and its many volunteers. Good work folks.

For next Wednesday, be sure to check out the revised parade route.

Road construction on Sports Drive removed a section of the usual parade route, so be sure to get your chair on the right street or you’ll miss it.

Take care, remember the past but celebrate the future.

Bye now. Betty GW

NEWS FROM BRUSSELS

Brussels Legion 218 Catch the Ace Weekly Winner Winning Ticket: Deb Seili, $216.

Envelope #45 found the 4 of Clubs.

Next estimated jackpot is $6,900.

Belgrave Community Centre Board presents a

New fire dept. structure approved

By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen Huron East Council has approved a new structure for its fire departments aimed at standardizing the hierarchy of the departments across the board.

The main changes to the structure will be the eventual elimination of the deputy district chief positions and the standardization of three chiefs per department.

“The current structure is not standard through the entire fire service. The Brussels and Grey stations are generally similar, however, the Seaforth station only has two captains, whereas the other two stations have four,” said Chief Administrative Officer Brad McRoberts in his report to council, presented at its Aug. 13 meeting.

“The primary change to the organizational structure is the

eventual elimination of the deputy district chief position through attrition (i.e. retirement or resignation) and the creation of a new lieutenant position to be implemented once other positions and roles are filled and stabilized.

“The various roles will be outlined within specific job descriptions that will be reviewed on an annual basis as part of the regular annual performance management review process, undertaken by the fire chief, deputy fire chief and district chief, where appropriate.”

McRoberts said the new structure will go a long way towards stability and long-term viability with a succession plan.

“The new structure will establish an excellent mechanism to develop and groom firefighters for more senior roles and to establish a robust succession plan within the

fire service,” McRoberts said in his report.

He noted that the current firefighter complement is 68 when at full staff, but the revised structure would grow that to 75 with crews of four or five at each station.

Under McRoberts as the municipality’s top employee will be the fire chief and the part-time deputy fire chief under him or her.

Each of the three stations Brussels, Grey and Seaforth - will then have a district chief, a training officer captain, three captains, two lieutenants and 18 firefighters, again, based on a full staffing complement.

McRoberts noted that the newlycreated lieutenant positions would be the last ones to be filled once everyone else is in place.

Council approved the recommended changes.

1/2 BBQ Chicken Dinner Sit Down or Take Out

Prepared by Pineridge Barbecue Company

Sunday, September 29, 2024 Belgrave Community Centre ~ 5-7 pm Meal prepared by the Community Centre Board Members and Volunteers Baked potato, coleslaw, roll, vegetable and dessert

$

25

Tickets are available at Stainton’s Home Hardware, Wingham and the Belgrave Co-op and from Belgrave Community Board Members: Jonathon Van Camp 519-357-8259, Justin Howatt 519-531-1121, Nicole Casemore 519-357-7238, Peg Procter 519-357-0332, Neil Vincent 519-357-2336, Bruce Higgins 519-357-5109, Kendra Robinson 519-357-4040, Ron Taylor 519-357-2158 TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE UNTIL SEPTEMBER 16, 2024

Proceeds to the Belgrave Community Centre

THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024. PAGE 7.

Craig keeps streak alive by attending Thresher Reunion

Tunnel vision Politicians, dignitaries, trail users and others were in Blyth on Friday for the official ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new tunnel along the Goderich-to-Guelph Rail Trail.

(Scott Stephenson photo)

By Deb Hakkers The Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association’s annual steam show was wetter and colder than usual, but it was still a great show.

The pancake breakfasts and the meals were well attended with several of them selling out.

Mom continues with rehab in Huronlea, she managed to stand several times last week. This is a big step towards her goal of walking. She can continue to say she has attended every show that the Threshers have hosted. She came on the van with Huronlea Home for the Aged and although they were never off the van, she saw parts of the show that she had never seen before.

Helen Lapp and Helena De Graaf are still touring Holland. They are catching up with relatives and Helen is showing her granddaughter all that Holland has to offer. By the pictures coming back, they are having a great time. We wish them a great holiday and a smoother return trip.

Gary Hakkers is recovering well after his hip replacement. He is no longer using the walker and has moved on to a cane.

This week, we wish a happy birthday to Edgar Daer on Sept. 15, Tricia Daer on Sept. 17, and Gary

Gateway’s Devereaux speaks to NH

By Scott Stephenson The Citizen

The Gateway Centre of Excellence in Rural Health (CERH) has been working to improve the quality of the rural communities of Grey, Bruce, Huron and Perth Counties for 16 years through research and education. At last week’s North Huron Council meeting, CERH president Gwen Devereaux and research assistant Amy Sturgeon offered a presentation on the progress the not-for-profit has made in its ongoing mission to improve rural lives, and the projects they are working on right now.

Devereaux began the presentation by explaining a bit about why she feels it was essential to form CERH in the first place. “This organization was really formed because I’m an RN, but I’ve worked for years in physician recruitment. It was born of me being an aging baby boomer needing a nurse by my side, and trying to find physicians to go into rural [health care], which is not an easy feat,” she explained.

From that humble beginning, CERH has grown to include 17 physicians and PhDs who volunteer as research chairs, and many community partners, such as the University of Waterloo School of Pharmacy, Bruce Power, The Southwestern Ontario Isotope Coalition, Huron Health System, the Winchester District Memorial Hospital, and the University of Guelph’s Agricultural College.

“The goal is to create a centre at each of our small, rural hospitals that do not have a research centre.

When it comes to recruitment, we can have our physicians, nurses and lab techs, etc., not only teaching

here, but doing research.”

Sturgeon began the next portion of the presentation by introducing one of her current projects ‘Legion Learning,’ which was officially launched in April. “This is a partnership with Branch 109, located in Goderich... essentially, it’s connecting seniors with technology, and trying to bridge that gap of digital literacy. It’s senior-led, senior-based, one-onone workshops and group workshops,” she explained.

They’ve also had guest speakers, like members of the OPP, come in to discuss how to spot and avoid online and landline scams and fraud. The program offers in-person assistance twice a week, and has guest speakers twice a month.

Laptops and iPads are brought in to help with hands-on skill development.

Another part of the project is ‘Legion Lounge,’ which emphasizes socialization, mental stimulation and physical activity.

“Coming out of the pandemic, we know social isolation amongst our seniors was very hard, especially within rural [communities],” Sturgeon pointed out. So far, they’ve brought in a driving simulator, skeeball, pinball machines, pool tables, dart boards, and a Nintendo Switch, all to provide a little bit of fun for seniors.

An ongoing series of events spearheaded by Devereaux aimed at improving mental health are the SHED Talks, which brings local farmers together at locations like Brussels’ Four Winds Barn to discuss issues that matter to them.

The goal is to create meaningful connections among farmers and reduce social isolation. “I’m married to a farmer, and a man, and

I know it can be very difficult for them to admit when they need help,” Devereaux observed. ”This is an extremely important project.”

SHED Talks serve the dual purpose of creating a networking opportunity for farmers while simultaneously educating them on safety risks surrounding things like chemicals, road safety and farmrelated diseases.

Another project in the works is Mental Health First Aid Training, which is designed to help rural

citizens recognize the signs of declining mental well-being, learn how to assist during a mental health or substance use crisis, and how to maintain one's own mental wellness. CERH also plans to continue its good work by promoting the health of our volunteer firefighters by providing them with free medical screenings.

Of course, Gateway’s original plan to attract and retain skilled healthcare workers is still going strong as well, Devereaux said.

Hakkers is 65 on Sept. 18. We hope everyone enjoys their special day!

This week we also wish a happy anniversary to Blair and Shannon Bieman on Sept. 16. We hope everyone enjoys their special day!

If there is anything special you would like to see mentioned in this column, please e-mail me at mcraig1@tcc.on.ca or call me at 519-525-8640.

Until next week, take care of yourselves and each other and enjoy summer while it is here because it’s short, and fall will be here very soon!

NEWS FROM BLYTH

Leadership in energy and environmental design

Devon Henry 84772 McDonald Line • Box 616 • Brussels

devonjhenry@hotmail.com 519-505-2473

MAITLAND VALLEY CAMERA CLUB

Photography by Gayle Jaycock

PAGE 8. THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024.

Sports Stingers, Hitmen, Sebringville earn first-round byes night game between the Mitchell Mets and Milverton Millwrights and the third-seeded Sebringville Sting will play the winner of the Friday night game between the Goderich Grizzlies and Walton Brewers. The top-seeded Belmore Stingers will also play their first game of the tournament that morning, taking on the winner of the Friday night game between the Elmira U20 Expos and the Brussels Bangers. All three games for the top three teams will be played at 10 a.m. on Saturday morning, followed by the rest of the bracket, including the one-loss bracket, the winner of

which will return in the championship game, set to be played on Sunday at 3 p.m.

Despite placing fourth in the regular season standings, the Brussels Tigers will be on the hunt for their seventh straight Huron County Fastball League title and their eighth in the last nine years.

Meanwhile, the only team not named the Brussels Tigers that has won a title in the last nine years, the Wingham Hitmen in 2016, is well positioned to make a run, finishing the season in second place and earning a first-round bye in this weekend’s tournament.

Squared up The Brussels Bangers hosted the final game of this year’s Huron County Fastball League regular season on Monday night, above, welcoming the Monkton Muskrats west to the village. Unfortunately for the home team, it wasn’t cause for celebration, as it was the visiting Muskrats that shutout the home team by a score of 5-0. One night earlier, the Walton Brewers hosted the Sebringville Sting in what would be both teams’ final game of the regular season, with the Brewers winning convincingly by a score of 14-3. (John Stephenson photos)

Continued from page 1 Keterson Park, the league will settle all of this season’s unfinished business with its championship tournament. The teams are seeded in accordance with how they finished in the regular season

standings and action begins on Friday night at 7 p.m. when the Mitchell Mets play the Milverton Millwrights, the Goderich Grizzlies play the Walton Brewers and the Elmira U20 Expos play the Brussels Bangers. Later that night

at 9 p.m., the Brussels Tigers will play the Wroxeter Rippers and the Monkton Muskrats will play the Fullarton A’s.

On Saturday morning, the second-seeded Wingham Hitmen will play the winner of the Friday

Fox Run set for Wingham

By Scott Stephenson The Citizen One of the primary tenets of journalism dictates that the journalist should remain at arm’s length from their subject, as to preserve objectivity. So, as a prominent member of the news media, there’s just one time a year that journalist Scott Miller allows himself to break that rule and become the subject of a local story that is just too near and dear to his heart to keep at arm’s length: the Terry Fox Run. And Miller is certainly not alone in his passion for this annual charity run - the Terry Fox Run has grown from a grassroots movement to a national event that raises a tremendous amount of money each year to help fund cancer research.

While he’s been participating in the run for over a decade, this will be the third year that Miller, a survivor of testicular cancer, has been helping to organize the Wingham branch of the Terry Fox Run, which got its start 36 years ago. In the time since its inaugural run, the little community of Wingham has raised a grand total of $637,000 in support of cancer research.

That means that Wingham, per capita, is in the top

20 of all the Terry Fox fundraisers in the entire country. Last year, Miller and fellow testicular cancer survivor Steve Jackson put on a run that raised $30,079, which is only the second time in Wingham’s history that they’ve raised over $30,000. Miller is hoping to make this year the third time the event surpasses $30,000. “I won’t bore you with a ton of information or tell you that there’s anything dramatically different happening for this year’s run than last year’s, but I think it’s a great event that raises a lot of money for cancer research,” he explained.

This year, the Wingham Terry Fox Run is happening on Sunday, September 15. There’s no need to register in advance - just head on out to the picnic shelter at the Wingham Lions Park at 11 a.m.

Those looking to register or donate

Celebrating A Special Occasion?

Advertise it in

The Citizen 519-523-4792 info@northhuron.on.ca

can find the necessary link on terryfox.org.

Thank You On behalf of the Blyth Firefighters Association we would like to extend a thank you to everyone who attended and made our Threshers breakfast a big success.

Special thanks to all of our sponsors for their generous contributions.

Aisle 5 Bellera Livestock Inc. Blyth Printing Inc. Burnbrae Farms Jeff & Laurie Bylsma Hanna’s Maple Syrup

Marvin Freiburger & Sons Inc. Orr Insurance Parrish & Heimbecker Blyth Creek Maple Farm Shopbike Coffee Roasters Storey Maple Syrup

Blyth Firefighters Association

THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024. PAGE 9.

Fallen red-tailed hawk rescue attempted in Walton PEOPLE AROUND WALTON

By Jo-Ann McDonald Call 887-6570

It has been a great week (at least for the parents) with the kids returning to school. Little ones just starting were shy and unsure about getting on the bus. Many had older siblings, but a few did not. I would welcome them with my extra-happy voice and had chosen a little older student to sit with them. Come Monday, they will be on the bus everyday and, before long, they will be sure and confident little students! It doesn’t take long. All parents should stress to their children to follow the bus rules.

Listen to the driver, remain seated, no eating on the bus and no profanity. New this year is that children wanting to listen to music must have earbuds to wear. The music is for them, not the entire bus. Let’s all have a good year!

The summer sports are winding up and the winter sports are just beginning. The men’s and ladies slo-pitch will finish Sept. 14, as will the Huron County Fastball League with tournaments in Brussels and fastball in Mitchell. Hockey practice at other arenas in the area have started and, before long, broomball and curling (November) will begin. Watch for the sign-up dates.

Brad and Christine Knight have returned from a vacation to the east coast. They drove via Ontario and Quebec and, after reaching Sherbrooke, Quebec, they crossed over into Maine. They headed to Quispamsis, New Brunswick where sister Joanne (Knight) and husband Weldon Black reside. They spent a day or so visiting and then headed for Halifax, Nova Scotia. They went to the Halifax Harbour, where the Dec. 6, 1917 explosion of the French Cargo Ship, SS Mont Blanc, devastated the harbour and city of Halifax. The ship was laden with explosives and collided with a Norwegian vessel, the SS IMO, in the harbour. The ship caught fire and exploded, devastating the Richmond District of Halifax. Over 1,782 people died. The blast, debris and fires collapsed buildings for miles. Sites to see include the Memorial Bell Tower, Maritime Museum and the Halifax Explosion Memorial Sculpture.

They spent four days there and they were totally impressed by the displays and recommend anyone travelling east to go see the area of Halifax. They toured back through New Brunswick to Perth-Andover to visit with daughter Janine and partner Allison and their daughter Noa. After a great visit, they headed home to Brussels. Welcome back!

Congratulations to Cody Terpstra and Jess Kipfer, who were married a couple of weeks ago. They were married in the St. Columban Church and a lovely reception was held on the farm of parents Pete and Suzanne Terpstra for nearly 200 guests. The couple live on Blyth Road. Congratulations !

We had a very unusual event happen out front of our home. A young red-tailed hawk appeared at the end of the lane. We thought it was strange for it to stay in the ditch, until looking at it closer to see it was injured. It must have been

hit by a vehicle. After a few days and not knowing what to do, we called the Wingham Vet Clinic, which gave us the phone number

for Procyon Wild Life.

It was just after that call that a couple of vehicles stopped at the end of the lane, so I went out to investigate. It was Janice Machan, along with son Wade and Sierra (who she had called). Janice had noticed the bird hopping in the ditch and stopped to investigate and then called Wade. He has a passion for wild animals and to be able to help them. Wade threw a blanket over the young bird and gathered it up and held it. Another call was made and they were given the number for the Salthaven Wildlife Rehabilitation and Education Centre. The trio made the drive to Strathroy to the centre with Wade holding the precious cargo all the way. There, the owner confirmed the hawk had broken the end section of its right wing. He would do x-rays to confirm and was going to let the trio know the results.

This was truly a selfless act of caring by the Machan family to try and save “Red”. Some interesting facts about red-tailed hawks, and many birds, is that the “wing bones” are hollow for easier flying.

It is also the most common hawk in our area. It can have a wingspan of between a metre and a metre and a

half and they mate for life. They eat rodents, bunnies, squirrels and reptiles, as well as other small birds and fish. They can fly at speeds of between 20 and 40 kilometres per hour and their diving speed can reach 100 kilometres per hour. They have very sharp eyesight and can see eight times better than humans.

They can weigh up to three pounds and can live for as long as 20 years.

This hawk, I called “Red”, was a beautiful rich brown colour with a pale underside with red spots and white rings around the eyes.

Unfortunately, our story has a sad ending; the yearling hawk did not survive, as the injuries were more extensive than first thought. Our kudos go to the Machan family for going above and beyond to try and save the hawk.

Congratulations to Sherry Thompson on her marriage to Martin DeVries last weekend.

Sherry has been missing from Foodland for almost a year due to a devasting fall that had her femur badly broken. She was a beautiful bride and we wish her happiness in her future as she and her new husband move to Owen Sound.

Sherry was an employee of Foodland for almost 17 years and

has been missed. Congratulations!

Celebrating birthdays this past week include Steve Bowers, David Grobbink, Andrew Kruse, Michael Paterson, Jack Grobbink, Cindy Kerr, Justin Shortreed, Tim Fritz, Katrina Godkin, Brenda Linton, Jaden Shortreed, Lisa Stevenson, Brian Alcock and Anne Ryan.

Happy birthday to all.

NEWS FROM WALTON

PAGE 10. THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024.

Roulston delivers memorable sermon at reunion 4, Kinloss and my uncle’s farm on Concession 6. I grew up on a farm where we threshed (we said thrashed). We worked with the next-door neighbour. My father and uncle helped them, then they threshed us, both on our farm and at my uncle’s place on the next concession. Our neighbour powered his threshing machine with a Case.

Our next-door neighbour on the other side and his brother used an Allis-Chalmers tractor-pulled combine. When we went to my uncle’s place, I remember his nextdoor neighbour powered the threshing machine on his farm with a steam engine.

I remember hearing about the beginning of the Thresher Reunion.

I wasn’t interested in those days. I was excited about aircraft and wanted to join the air force. I pestered my parents to take me to the air show at the Centralia Air Force Base, which was on the same weekend as the Thresher Reunion perhaps the very first one, I’m not sure. I remember watching out the car window for activity as we drove through Blyth.

I lost interest in the air force when I realized I had taken the wrong subjects to get the university course I needed to get aviation training. My mother convinced me to go to journalism school. I graduated and got a job at the Clinton News-Record in 1970 and my wife Jill and I bought the Blyth

A time for reflection Founder of The Citizen and The Rural Voice and co-founder of the Blyth Festival Keith Roulston reflected on the miracles of agriculture in his community for his special sermon at the Thresher Reunion’s annual Sunday church service - a staple of the weekend. Read his words, in their entirety, below. (John Stephenson photo)

By Keith Roulston “We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land, but it is fed and watered

by God’s almighty hand; He sends the snow in winter, the warmth to swell the grain, the breezes and the sunshine and soft refreshing rain.

All good gifts around us are sent from heaven above, then thank the Lord, O thank the Lord for all his love.”

That was one of my favourite hymns from my youth. I didn’t sing it for you. I thought I’d save you the pain of my singing voice today.

I think on the farm, when I was growing up, we were particularly conscious of God. Probably farm

people still are. I know that most of my neighbours in the country north of town here go to church. It’s why there are still so many churches in our small towns. When you depend on growing a crop for a living, planting the crop in spring, watching it sprout and grow, praying for rain as it gets taller, praying it doesn’t rain too much to prevent it from being safely harvested, being thankful if and when the harvest is completed, it’s all so natural, but when you farm, you can never take it for granted. If you have a job in the city and go to work and just expect that every week, or every two weeks, you will be given a pay-cheque, you can take it for granted, but not with farming.

I remember my favourite church service when I was young, back in

the old Anglican church in Lucknow, was the “Harvest Home” service. We had a family that ran an orchard and they brought enough apples to line the wainscotting around the church with an apple every foot or so. There were fancy sheaves of barley or oats and tall stalks of corn and a special loaf of home-baked bread on the altar. And we sang hymns like the one I quoted at the beginning.

When I go out on the grounds of the Thresher Reunion, I can remember what it was like as a kid on our farm north of Lucknow. I see Case and Allis-Chalmers and Massey-Harris tractors like the ones my neighbours had and even Minneapolis-Moline R tractors like the one my father and uncle had to farm our home farm on Concession

Standard in late 1971. So, from 1972 on, I have covered the Thresher Reunion.

Back then, things were much different at the Thresher Reunion.

There used to be a shed near the entrance where the threshermen’s dinners were held. The old Blyth arena was still on the site. In 1976, came big changes. The provincial government, after a lengthy investigation of the 1959 Listowel arena collapse, decided that every arena must be inspected by an engineer for safety. Most arenas, including the one here, failed the test. The Blyth arena was closed and the community sprang into action. Volunteers demolished the old arena almost immediately.

The Thresher Reunion was one of the big users of the Blyth arena.

Blyth was also approaching its Centennial in 1977 and wanted the arena back in use. The decision was to use the old artificial ice plant and ice surface and build a new arena on top of the old one, complete with modern dressing rooms and a new upstairs hall to hold larger dances and dinners than Memorial Hall, downtown, could hold. The new building was completed in months and was ready by the 1977 Centennial and that year’s Thresher Reunion.

Later, craft shows became a big part of rural Ontario events with the one at the Colborne Township hall Continued on page 23

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SUDOKU Fun By The Numbers Like puzzles?

Then you’ll love sudoku. This mindbending puzzle will have you hooked from the moment you square off, so sharpen your pencil and put your sudoku savvy to the test!

Here’s How It Works: Sudoku puzzles are formatted as a 9x9 grid, broken down into nine 3x3 boxes. To solve a sudoku, the numbers 1 through 9 must fill each row, column and box. Each number can appear only once in each row, column and box. You can figure out the order in which the numbers will appear by using the numeric clues already provided in the boxes. The more numbers you name, the easier it gets to solve the puzzle!

THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024. PAGE 11.

BLYTH Y 519-523-4244

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www.ruralvoice e.ca

Fall fairs give farmers a chance to connect

By Sara Wood, Vice President, Ontario Federation of Agriculture Early September often feels as much like a new beginning as early January does. It’s when most summer activities end, and kids go back to school. For the farming community, it means harvest time kicks into high gear - but it also unofficially marks the beginning of our sector’s annual meeting and event season.

This week, for example, will see one of the biggest agricultural events of the year: Canada’s Outdoor Farm Show in Woodstock.

I farm with my family near Mitchell and I’m also a vice-president with the Ontario Federation of Agriculture (OFA), so I’ll be working at the show this week at what we call Federation House - the OFA building on the show grounds.

For me as a farmer, the show lets me see the latest agricultural innovations, tools, equipment and technology, and chat with a wide range of people. Life can be isolating on the farm sometimes, so it’s a great opportunity to get out, visit with neighbours and farming friends and reconnect with others in the agricultural community.

From an OFA perspective, the show lets us have informal, one-onone conversations with members who come and see us so we can learn more about the challenges and successes they are having, and what they’re looking forward to in the coming year.

We’re an advocacy organization for Ontario farmers and rural

communities, after all, so these types of opportunities are invaluable to make sure we can represent the needs and interests of our members to the best of our abilities.

We’re encouraging our members, for example, to have conversations with their local municipal representatives about responsible land-use planning. But we’re also putting a particular focus on harvest readiness. This means highlighting farm and road safety, but also mental health and wellness and how self-care is as importance as looking after your crops, livestock and equipment.

We also have a focus on young farmers this year and, in partnership with the Junior Farmers’ Association of Ontario, the presidents of our two organizations are hosting an informal networking event on the first night of the show.

The goal is to bring young farmers together, encourage them to engage with our organizations and give us input on how we can best encourage their involvement in the future of Ontario agriculture.

We’re sharing our space in Federation House with other organizations and businesses as well, including many of our OFA Benefit Program partners, such as Farm Life, Scotiabank, Cooperators, Better Farming, Peavey Mart and Hearing Life. These are businesses that offer succession planning, financial, insurance, media, retail and health care services to our members at discounted rates - and the show offers the opportunity to learn more

about what is available to OFA members.

It’s a year of big anniversaries for a couple of our partners. The Advanced Agricultural Leadership Program is marking its 40th anniversary and, as a founding member of the program, we’re proud to be the premier sponsor of its celebration at the farm show this year.

We see the results of this program’s impact reflected throughout the agriculture and food sector. I’m a graduate, as are other

OFA board members and staff, and many alumni are making significant contributions across our membership, and throughout the entire value chain.

Better Farming is celebrating its 25th anniversary at this show, as well as 25 years as an OFA member benefit program partner.

Autumn also means it’s fall fair time across Ontario and many of our farmer members and our county and regional federations will be participating in fairs in their communities. They’re a great

opportunity for Ontarians to come and experience a glimpse of farming and rural life.

When I was growing up, I used to show cattle at fall fairs, and it was always great to see kids who had never seen a calf or a cow before coming up and asking if they could pet the animals. It only takes a little bit of time to have that conversation with them, but the impression that it leaves will last a lifetime.

We look forward to seeing you at a show, a fair or other event this fall!

Neither rain nor...

Despite a rainy and cold first day of the annual reunion of the Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association last Friday, members were still out in full forces (and warm jackets) to enjoy the event to which they look so forward. (Shawn Loughlin photo)

BRUSSELS LIVESTOCK REPORT For the week ending September 6, 2024 Total Receipts: 1285 cattle; 845 lambs, sheep, and goats Tuesday – Fed cattle sold strong on an active trade. Cows sold steady.

Thursday – Veal sold on a steady market with good buyer demand. Lambs, sheep and goats sold steady Friday – Calves and yearlings sold on an easier market.

Fed Cattle: There were 100 fed cattle on offer: Choice Fed Cattle: $240 – $268 Second Cut Fed Cattle: $230 – $239 Aged and Medium Fed Cattle: $210 – $230 Holstein Fed Cattle: $195 – $227.50 Allen Kistner of Monkton, consigned two black steer fats that averaged 1,478 lbs. and sold for an average price of $267.

George Roney of Hensall, consigned 10 heifer fats that averaged 1,345 lbs. and sold for an average price of $243.

Cows: There were 125 cows on offer: Beef Cows: $160 – $225.50 Good Holstein Cows: $153 – $167 Medium Holstein Cows: $139 – $155 Bulls: $215 – $234

Mark Pfeffer of Clifford, consigned three head. One charolais cow weighed 1,400 lbs. and sold for a price of $219.

B and J Lichtensteiger Farms Ltd. of Monkton, consigned two head. One holstein cow weighed 1,180 lbs. and sold for a price of $167.

Andy McCullough of Paisley, consigned one red bull that weighed 2,075 lbs. and sold for a price of $234.

Veal: There were 130 veal and 30 bob calves on offer: Beef Veal: $250 – $280 Good Holsteins: $250 – $283 SL Heavy Holsteins: $245 – $265 Heavy Holsteins: $240 – $267 Medium Holsteins: $245 – $265 Plain Holsteins: $200 – $225 Holstein Drop Calves: $350 – $1125 / HEAD Jim Maw of Forest, consigned 12 head.

Five cross bred veal averaged 1,034 lbs. and sold for an average price of $263.50.

Levi Miller of Auburn, consigned 10 head.

One holstein veal that weighed 730 lbs. and sold for a price of $283.

Lambs: Under 50 lbs.: $245 – $345 50-64 lbs.: $315 – $370 65-79 lbs.: $340 – $370 80-94 lbs.: $280 – $308 up to $365 95-109 lbs.: $275 – $310 110 lbs. and over: $250 – $275 up to $290 Sheep: $160 – $237.50 Mac McKillop of Wallacetown, consigned 17 head. Eleven lambs averaged 83 lbs. and sold for an average price of $333.

Todd Sheep Company of Lucknow, consigned 22 head. Two lambs averaged 104 lbs. and sold for an average price of $309.

Goats: Meat Kids: $400 – $525 Dairy Kids: $340 – $400 Mature Bucks: $300 – $400 Mature Does: $200 – $260 Dave Lawson of Clinton, consigned seven head. Five kid goats averaged 53 lbs. and sold for an average price of $522.

Darrin Durand of Hensall, consigned seven head. Six kid goats averaged 61 lbs. and sold for an average price of $495.

Stockers: There were 900 stockers on offer:

Top Quality Steers: Under 400 lbs.: $450 – $502.50 400 – 499 lbs.: $455 – $490 500 – 599 lbs.: $380 – $455 600 – 699 lbs.: $356 – $435 700 – 799 lbs.: $342 – $383 800 – 899 lbs.: $330 – $356 900 – 999 lbs.: $318 – $327 1,000 lbs. and over: $289 – $321 Top Quality Heifers: Under 400 lbs.: $450 – $450 400 – 499 lbs.: $310 – $440 500 – 599 lbs.: $280 – $400 600 – 699 lbs.: $320 – $368 700 – 799 lbs.: $270 – $328 800 – 899 lbs.: $286 – $319 900 lbs. and over: $261 – $298.50 Doug McComb of Chatsworth, consigned 131 head. Sixteen black steers averaged 1,000 lbs. and sold for an average price of $321. Eight black steers averaged 743 lbs. and sold for an average price of $383.

Nine simmental heifers averaged 817 lbs. and sold for an average price of $319.

Bamberg Sawmill Inc. of Wellesley, consigned 17 head. Five limo cross steers averaged 635 lbs. and sold for an average price of $435. Three simmental heifers averaged 538 lbs. and sold for an average price of $400.

Ervin H. Martin of Holyrood, consigned nine head. Two red steers averaged 983 lbs. and sold for an average price of $327.

Jim Stewart of Kenilworth, consigned 16 head. Thirteen charolais cross heifers averaged 939 lbs. and sold for an average price of $298.50.

Emerson M. Martin of Proton Station, consigned 31 head. Ten simmental heifers averaged 626 lbs. and sold for an average price of $368.

BRUSSELS LIVESTOCK Division of Gamble & Rogers Ltd.

UPCOMING SALES TUESDAYS 10:00 a.m.

Fed Cattle, Bulls & Cows

THURSDAYS

9:00 a.m. Drop Calves 10:00 a.m.Veal 11:30 a.m. Lambs, Goats & Sheep

FRIDAYS

10:00 a.m. Stockers Visit our webpage at: www.brusselslivestock.ca email us at: info@brusselslivestock.ca

Call us 519-887-6461

PAGE 12. THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024.

From the Minister’s Study

Dow explores the concept of being lost and found

By Ernest Dow (retired), Huron Chapel Evangelical Missionary Church It’s a frightening experience to be lost in the woods! You start out on a peaceful path, ambling amongst the pines and poplars, when suddenly you realize you’ve lost your bearings and haven’t a clue which direction you need to go in order to get back. Panic sets in.

In some ways, that’s the situation of modern culture: we’re lost and don’t know where to turn.

Back in the mid-1970s, one summer as a teenaged counsellor at a Christian boys’ camp in Quebec, I led an introduction to “Orienteering”. The goal in orienteering is to be able to find your way around with just a map and a compass. (This was long before the days of smartphones with built-in GPS!) The basic idea was to get to a place where you could identify two landmarks in the distance, use the compass to determine where the sight-lines intersect on the map, then you knew your location.

For centuries, western civilization had Judeo-Christian teaching as one of its key “landmarks”. Modernity turned away from that in favour of science and materialistically-based education. Postmodernism has ignored it in favour of subjectivism and doing “what feels good”.

Consequently, people lack a sense of meaning and direction. We have lost our way. Beyond perhaps the next weekend, we’re not sure what we’re living for.

Recently I was asked by someone from a Buddhist background what my favourite Bible passage would be. After a moment, I suggested Luke 15. There, Jesus tells the stories of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son(s). And, in a way, here we find the message of the Bible in a nutshell.

The first two stories share a similar pattern. First, a sheep wanders away from the flock. The shepherd searches for it, and when he finds and retrieves it, calls his neighbours together to rejoice with him, having found his lost sheep.

Second, a woman loses a silver coin (possibly a tenth of her precious “dowry” or insurance in case her husband dies). She searches the house painstakingly for it; when she finds it, she calls her neighbours together to share her joy.

Just so, Jesus concludes, there is joy in heaven when a sinner repents. Clearly, the implication is

Evangelical Missionary Church

Sunday, September 15, 10:30 a.m.

Missions Sunday Guest Speakers Stan & Sally Bragg

that it matters to God whether we are in a right relationship with Him. We are not alone in a meaningless universe. God is there, He is not silent and He rejoices when we find our way back to Him. The third story in the same chapter, traditionally known as “The Prodigal Son”, actually features two sons who are in various states of “lostness”. The younger son, with audacious nerve, demands his share of the estate, even though dear ol’ Dad has not died and is still very much alive. He then squanders this considerable sum in a distant country on constant partying and loose living. Finding himself destitute, reduced to feeding slop to hogs (detestable, unclean animals to Jews), he sobers up and decides to return home, admit his stupidity, and appeal to his father to accept him as just a lowly servant, seeing that he has disgraced the family name and forfeited any right to be called “son”.

In a surprising twist, the father is not scornful and retaliatory, but sees the son coming a long way off, runs to meet him (very undignified for an older man in that culture), embraces and kisses him, and insists on dressing him with finery, bedecking him with a ring, and throwing a lavish party to celebrate the prodigal’s homecoming. Sheer grace.

Clearly Jesus’ implication is that God resembles a loving divine Father who is waiting for us to repent and return to Him, forgiving our trespasses and wilful sins, revelling in the mere fact that a

much-loved child has returned to be part of the family. “He was lost and is found.”

But that’s not the end of the story.

The older brother blows his stack at this turn of events and refuses to take part in the festivities. When the father pleads with him, he retorts that he’s slaved away hard all these years, yet never received even a young goat to have a party with his buddies. Yet the father has thrown a major celebration to welcome back the same son who succeeded in slicing in half the family fortune and squandering the proceeds with prostitutes. Is not the father’s grace, in effect, celebrating and condoning the sin of the younger brother?

The older son certainly has a point. He has been the mainstay of the family farm’s operations. He’s been the reliable one, the responsible one, not running off to party and forsaking his duties like the younger scallywag. But we’re not told whether the father’s appeals ever succeed in persuading him to join the party. His selfrighteousness is isolating him from relationship with the father and his brother. He has checked off all the boxes, done his duty and kept the rules. But he somehow winds up missing out on the main event, being left out in the cold.

In the context of Luke 15, Jesus was telling these stories by way of challenge to the most “religious” folk of His day: Pharisees and scribes who were offended by the fact He welcomed sinners and shared table-fellowship with them, seemingly accepting those whom others looked down upon.

To talk to Pastor Mike please email pastormike@huronchapel.com

119 John’s Ave., Auburn 519-526-1131

The Anglican Churches of Blyth, Seaforth and Wingham Welcome You to Sunday Service!

Trinity: 9:00 a.m. Parish of the Holy Spirit: 9:30 a.m. St. Paul’s-Trinity: 11:00 a.m.

66 Dinsley St. W, Blyth

21 Jarvis St. Seaforth 519-527-1522

revjoann@hurontel.on.ca

holyspirit@tcc.on.ca

stpauls@hurontel.on.ca

www.holyspiritseaforth.ca

www.regionalministryof hope.com

The Regional Ministry of Hope

23 John St E Wingham 519-357-4883

Service Livestreamed Sundays at 11 a.m. on our facebook page

The Regional Ministry of

Worrship with us at Brruss M Brussels Mennonite Fellowship p Service at 10:00 a.m.

Worship W Co ee Time at 11:00 a.m. ool for all ages at 11:15 a.m. ay Scho S Sunda All A Are Welcome Interim Pastor s Elwin Elwiin Garland 250 Princess St., Brussels • 519 887 6388

Pr Praise God for th the harvest!

U United Chu ur urch

Sundayy,, September 15 Sunday, att 11:00 a.m. a Worrship Service Sacram ment of Baptism

All are welcome, com me be part of our Faith Comm munity Contact Alex at ministter.brusselsandblythuc@gmail.co y @g om Website: brusselsandblythuc.ca brusselsandblythuc b ca P.O. Box 359, Brussels ~ 519-887-6259 P.

MEL LV VILLE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH BRUSSELS

Sunday, September 15, 2024 9:30 a.m. (Please note time change) We extend a loving welcome to all to join us as Mary Jane Bissset leads us in worship, prayer and praise to God. Following the service, there will be refreshments and a chance to visit.

Soup & More 2 Join us every Friday from 11:30 a.m. - 1 p.m. for lunch. This free meal is made possible by the Brussels churches and many volunteers working together to serve our community. c All are welcome!

For pastoral care concerns please call 519-524-7512 2

Sunday, September 15

On-site and online - live.huronchapel.com

depravity and sinfulness, our failure to be able to keep the law perfectly.

In the New Testament, the central point is Jesus’ death on the cross in our stead as a perfect substitute to pay the penalty for our sins - our wandering (like the sheep) and squandering (like the younger son).

There is a Heavenly Father seeking us in our lostness, longing for His children to return, ready to celebrate when the lost is found!

BRUSSELS S

Blyth United Church

Nursery & Sunday School during worship

Much religion on earth is like the mindset of the older brother: do, do, do - keep the rules, check off the boxes, earn your eternal reward.

Christianity is different. For Jesusfollowers, it’s about what Jesus has done, not what we do.

The two sons in some ways represent two testaments in the Bible: the older son, the Jewish law; the younger son, New Testament grace. The history of the Jews pointed out human lamentable

Sunday, September 15 at 10 a.m.

BMG Community Centre (upstairs room) 800 Sports Drive, Brussels Childcare and Sunday School provided for children 0 to 8 during the sermon

Worship and Prayer Time Loving Fellowship Expository Preaching

brusselscommunitybiblechapel.ca

Join us Sun nday y,, September 15 5

at 9:30 a.m.

Mr. Steve Vogel will be leading us in the e 10:00 am service.

There will be no evening service.

“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” John 10:11

Services S ervices a are re llive-streamed ive-streamed a and nd c can an be be ffo found ound b by ys searching earching ““Blyth “B Blly yth C Christian hristian R Reformed effo orrm med C Church” hurrc ch”

Outreach project for North Huron Food Share. (Especially lunch box items).

BLYT TH CHRISTIAN REFORMED CHURCH

Join us Wednesday mornings for conversation in the garden starting at 10 am Contact Alex at: minister.brusselsandblythuc@gmail.com Facebook: Blyth and Brussels United Churches blythunited@tcc.on.ca ~ 519-523-4224

Hwy. 4, Blyth 519-523-4743 www.blythcrc.ca

THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024. PAGE 13.

After 63 years, the Thresher Reunion remains strong

Another great weekend Clockwise from above: Komoka’s Isaac McIntosh competes in the step dancing competition, the sawmill delights onlookers, the indoor market attracts buyers, students learn a bit about square dancing and dignitaries speak at the opening ceremonies, such as, below, Huron Pioneer Thresher and Hobby Association President Cole McDonald

and, from left, Huron-Bruce MP Ben Lobb, North Huron Reeve Paul Heffer, Huron County Warden Glen McNeil, Central Huron Mayor Jim Ginn and Dawson Hallahan, a representative for Huron-Bruce MPP Lisa Thompson who is also part of the family that helped to found the reunion, which has been part of his life since he was just a child. (John Stephenson, Shawn Loughlin photos)

PAGE 14. THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024.

Classified Advertising

Articles for sale Coming events GERBERS FIREWOOD SER RV VING you for over 15 years. Y Yo our number one source of quality slabwood and bodywood. Delivery available. No Sunday calls. 519-274-1236, 519441-2085.

------------------------------------------Shade trees, Spruce, White Pine, Cedars, windbreaks and privacy hedges, Shrubs, Apples, Pears, Peaches, Plums, Sweet & sour Cherry Trees at (Emanuel E.M. Martin) Martin's Nursery 42661 Orangehill Rd, W Wrroxeter ON N0G 2X0 ------------------------------------------REPRINTS OF PHOTOS taken by Citizen photographers are available to purchase. All are in colour. 4x6 $5.00, 5x7 - $6.00, 8x10 - $10.00.

Phone to order 519-523-4792 or email info@northhuron.on.ca ------------------------------------------THE CITIZEN IS AV VA AILABLE TO purchase at these locations - Auburn Esso, Belgrave Variety Va y,, Blyth Food Market, Blyth V Vaariety, Blyth Ultramar, Brussels Foodland, Brussels Vaariety, V Clinton Convenience, Clinton Foodland, Fogal's YIG (Wingham), Seaforth Foodland, Fincher's (Goderich), Goderich V Viictoria St Shell, Goderich Petro-Canada Gas Bar, and The Citizen offffice in Blyth.

-------------------------------------------

FOR SALE - 1969 Mustang GT convertible, red, 2nd owner, 351W W,, auto, all original, numbers matching. $45,000 Call 519-357-0053.

------------------------------------------POLY LY Y OUTDOOR FURNITURE up to $100 offff retail price. Further quantity discounts available. Located 2 blocks north of Whitechurch at 382 Whitechurch St.

Coming events PIES PIES PIES! The Brussels Agricultural Society would appreciate a donated pie for our Fall Fair food booth. Pies may be dropped offff at BMG Community Centre no later than 4:30 pm on September 17th. This year you are invited to bring your ingredients to the Grays of Brussels (52 Thomas St.) and use their kitchen to prepare your pie. Contact T Teerri at 519-4981852 to arrange a time. W Wee thank you in advance for your generosity and look forward to seeing you at the 161st Fair!

------------------------------------------Londesboro & District Lions Club Saturday, Sept. 21, 4:30 to 7 pm 15th Annual Fish Fryy,, $25.00 per person Drive Through Take-out, Advance tickets only.

Londesborough Community Hall. For tickets call 519-523-4378.

------------------------------------------TAKE-OUT TA HOMECOOKED MEAL!!! Turkey and stuffffing, mashed potatoes, peas and carrots, roll $19.50. Fri, Oct. 4, 11 to 1 pm and 4:30 to 7 pm. Pie, T Taarts, Ice cream 11 am to 7 pm RSVP 226971-2395. Maitside Orchards, 23 Orchard Lane, Brussels.

EVER RY YONE WELCOME!!

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Nonkes lauds cricket day in Wingham as a success

Red Plaid Productions Presents Canada's Celtic Rock W Waarriors Mudmen in Concert, Memorial Hall, Blyth, Ontario. Friday y,, November 1, 2024. Tix $35.00 All Ages. www.blythmemorialcommunityhall. com 519-523-9300, Doors 7 pm, Show 8pm. Ex-NHL great Glenn Healy says you won't to miss this show.www.mudmen.ca ------------------------------------------SEPTEMBER TA T AKE-OUT LUNCH, Tuesday, September 17, 11:45 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Trinity Anglican Church, Blyth.

Meat loaf lunch with dessert, $12 per person.

Ordering deadline: Mondayy,, September 16. T To o order call 519-523-9396 or email: mcgregor@ezlink.ca

In memoriam In loving memory of a dear wife, mother and grandmother

Crystal Ta ayylor who passed away September 18, 2023 Not Nothing N No can prreepare us for losing siingg a loved lo l one and there’’ss no ge getting ettting used to this feeling.

While W hhile le you y may not be here p ph phy physically y,, you’ll always bbee in our heartss.

Wee m W miss you!

Ji and Jim an Familyy

Swap shop Citizen-To-Cit o tizen “SW WAP SHO OP” ad Call 519-523-47 792 or email: info@northhu uron.on.ca

• Free ad up to 25 wordss, person to person only (no businesses), items valued at $1,000 or less. Price must be included in your ad.Y Yo ou ur ad will run three times unless it sells faster!

• The Citizen reserves the right to limit the number of items or o ads per person.

FOR SALE - Q Queen size bed, b complete, $60 or best offffer; harvest table and six chairs, $60; vintage slippeer chair, $30; buffffet and hutch, $50. 519-4482-7262.

37-3 ---------------------------------------------FOR SALE - Ski-dooo TNT 440 Snowmobile, needs some ccare, $600 or best offffer. Brussels 519-887--6488. 37-3 ---------------------------------------------FOR SALE - W Woooden spoool high chair, $25; digital backup camerra - wireless, never used, $20. 519-523-96671.

37-3 ---------------------------------------------FOR SALE - China cabinet, $20; cradle, $30; round oak table, $300; two-drawer chest, $10. Blyth 519-525-93377.

37-3 ---------------------------------------------FOR SALE - John Deeree JS 48 selfpropelled push mower, $2200. 519-3576338.

37-3 ---------------------------------------------FOR SALE - Beaver vintagee 8” table saw.

Model 2200 made in Guelphh, ON, Mobile base, fence, mitre gauge annd 18 ft. cord.

Great conditon $325. T Teext 519-887-9577.

37-3 ---------------------------------------------FOR SALE - Craftsmaan 20” selfpropelled lawn mower. Staarts easy and works good. $60. Brussels 519-887-8141.

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High-paced action Late last month, Wingham played host to a special cricket day, which is the latest in a series of such days celebrating the internationally-renowned sport. Huron Immigration Partnershp Manager Mark Nonkes said the day was a success for Wingham, as well as for all of Huron County (John Stephenson photo)

By Scott Stephenson The Citizen In recent years, an influx of new residents to Huron County has brought about some exciting new events and recreational activities to the township. Wingham now celebrates Vaisakhi in the spring, Diwali in the fall, and cricket matches during the summer.

Last week, Local Immigration Partnership Manager Mark Nonkes gave a presentation to North Huron Council that offered an update on both the challenges faced by immigrants coming to Huron County as well as the successes that some of those newcomers have found here.

Nonkes began by expressing his appreciation of the government of North Huron for always being receptive to ideas for initiatives aimed at improving the lives of new

residents.

“I really have commendation for both your staff and the Council itself tonight. We’ll be talking about immigration, and how to make sure that immigrants feel like they’re part of the community, and that they belong here,” he stated. “We have this goal to create a welcoming community where newcomers feel supported, at home, and integrated into all spheres of life.”

Nonkes also made sure to underscore the value of bringing more immigrants to Canada in general, and Huron County, specifically. “People who are in the prime of their working career are leaving this area, and they’re not coming back until they’re thinking about retirement...

COVID accelerated retirements, so we have more people retiring than people entering the work force.” He presented a graph that detailed

some of the jobs that are most frequently advertised for in the area - nurses and home support workers are the most in demand. “We know from trends across Canada that immigrants frequently work in the health care sector,” he pointed out.

Nonkes also lamented the increase in anti-immigration rhetoric that he has observed in recent government policies.

In a municipality-by-municipality breakdown of changes to Huron County’s immigrant population from 2016 to 2021, Goderich, Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh, Bluewater, Morris Turnberry and Howick have all seen slight increases in their immigrant population, while South Huron, Huron East, Central Huron and North Huron have all seen their immigrant population decrease during that time. Overall, 6.84 per Continued on page 24

160th coming for Knox United PEOPLE AROUND BELGRAVE

By Linda Campbell Call 357-2188

Congratulations to Kendall Jardin and Kailey Wheeler on their first wedding anniversary on Sept.

9 and to Blair and Shannon Bieman who will celebrate their wedding anniversary on Sept. 6. Belated birthday greetings are extended to Katie Cottrill who celebrated on Aug. 31. Hope you enjoyed your day.

Renee and Rick Lanthier of Rochester, New York enjoyed a five-day visit at their aunt Arlyn Montgomery’s home.

Sympathy is extended to Henry Devlin in the loss of his wife Sharon and to Crystal and Jason in the loss of their mother. The family lived in Belgrave before moving just outside of Brussels and Wingham.

Knox United Church in Belgrave will be celebrating its 160th anniversary on Sept. 15 at 11 am.

We look forward to welcoming everyone for our worship service, special music and a celebration of baptisms. A social time with coffee and refreshments will be held at 10:30 am prior to their service.

Please join us on this special occasion.

The can/bottle drive was a big success with seven truckloads being delivered to the Beer Store with proceeds going towards the new playground. Thanks to all those who contributed.

There are still tickets available if you wish to go to the half chicken dinner from 5-7 pm at the Belgrave Community Centre on Sept. 29.

The coffee break was held at the Community Centre on Tuesday, Sept. 10. Everyone enjoys getting together to catch up on the news while enjoying coffee and snacks.

The next coffee break is on Tuesday, Sept. 24.

On Friday and Saturday, the weather wasn’t so great for the Annual Thresher Reunion in Blyth, but on Sunday it turned out to be a nice day. As usual, it brought a lot

of people to Blyth to enjoy the events. It is a good time to visit with people that attend and you don’t see often.

Our weather this week looks to be sunny and warm. It’s a good time to do things outside before the weather changes. Get out and enjoy it.

NEWS FROM BELGRAVE

THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024. PAGE 15.

Come join us at the

161st

Brussels Fall Fair September 17 & 18

“Pork & Beans”

PAGE 16. THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024.

Bieman to lead society as 2024 Ambassador

Leading the way Last month, the Brussels Agricultural Society introduced its 2024 slate of Ambassadors, front row, from left: Junior Ambassador Bridget McCallum, Ambassador Emily Bieman and Little Ambassador Sophia Blake. Back row, from left: Committee member Nicole Lowe, 2023 Junior Ambassador Paislee Ribey, 2023 Ambassador Loretta Higgins, 2023 Little Ambassador Isla Fischer and Committee member Maggie Speer. (File photo)

By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen This year’s Brussels Fall Fair Ambassador, Emily Bieman, is no stranger to the Brussels Agricultural Society or to holding an ambassador title within the organization for that matter.

In 2017, Bieman was the Junior Ambassador of the Brussels Fall Fair in a year that was special for a number of reasons. Not only was it Canada’s sesquicentennial celebration, but it was also the 100th International Plowing Match (IPM) in Walton. That year, the Brussels Fall Fair, which would

have conflicted with the juggernaut of an event, was held at the IPM, within the tented city in Walton - a first for the storied provincial event.

Bieman says the novelty of that special arrangement that year was amazing and it was great to spend that much time at the IPM, meeting people and seeing all that there was to see, but she is also looking forward to a return to a form of normalcy this year with the Brussels Fall Fair coming back home.

This year, the fair will be held in the recently renovated and expanded Brussels, Morris and Grey Community Centre, which has

been home to the fair for a number of years. It will be the first year in many that the fair will be held at the centre. It was there last year, but the centre was still under construction, so the society could not use all of the building for the fair. Before that, the fair was held at the Brussels Four Winds Barn.

The fair will now be held at the centre and this will be an important year for the society, says President Reg Vinnicombe, in which members will find out how the Brussels Fall Fair works with the new and improved space and the new possibilities and opportunities that may present themselves as a result of the renovation and expansion of the centre.

Back to Bieman - she thoroughly enjoyed her time as the Junior Ambassador in 2017 and was sad when she had to give her crown to another in 2018. Then, the society planted the seed with Bieman about potentially returning to be the Brussels Fall Fair Ambassador one year in the future.

However, the COVID-19 pandemic soon struck and Bieman carried through with her plans to head to post-secondary school at the University of Guelph. So, after a number of years to get things in order and focus on her education, she felt the time was right to step up and consider filling the position.

She wanted to make sure that she could commit the appropriate

amount of time to the ambassador position and now she thinks she can do that.

She was crowned at a special event last month along with the new Junior and Little Ambassadors at the Brussels Legion and has already been busy within the position. But, of course, she’s most looking forward to the Brussels Fall Fair and the opportunity to represent the Brussels Agricultural Society and her community throughout Huron County.

On a personal level, Bieman is in her third year at the University of Guelph studying animal biology in an effort to become a large-animal veterinarian - both a position and a university she has had in her plans for years. She said she knew she wanted to become a large-animal veterinarian since she was in Grade 4 and had pegged the University of Guelph as where she wanted to go since Grade 8.

She has also been extensively involved in her community from a very young age. In addition to being only the second-ever Junior Ambassador for the Brussels Fall Fair, she was also one of the first Elementary School Fair Ambassadors and has spent many, many hours within the Huron 4-H program. A member since she was just nine years old, Bieman has completed over 60 clubs in Huron 4-H in that time and continues to be involved at the local level.

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Wednesday, September 18th

Inflatables 4-9 pm Exhibits Open 5 pm Pie Table Raffle Table Train Display Escape Room 4-9 pm BBQ Dinner 5-6:30 pm Food Booth 6-8 pm Opening Ceremonies 7 pm Dog Show 7:15 pm Ambassador Cake Decorating & Auction 7:30 pm

Children’s Program 9:30-11:30 am Exhibits Open 10 am Parade 11:30 am Pie Table Raffle Table Train Display Inflatables 12 noon - 3 pm Food Booth 12 noon - 3 pm Raffle Basket Draw 3 pm LIVE VESTOCK SHED AT AT BMG: Sheep Show 12 noon 4-H Beef Show 1 pm Little Folks Ag Show 1 pm

Contact Glenda Morrison for Pork Chop BBQ tickets at (519) 887-8642 or text call her cell at (519) 503-4092

161st Parade Info On Wednesday, September 18th at 11:30 am The route is changed due to construction on Sport Dr. Parade starts at the pool on Sports Drive, goes to Flora, up Ainley, left of King, through downtown and ends at the Community Centre.

For more info: John Lowe 519-887-9799

Passing the torch Bridget McCallum, left, is the new Brussels Fall Fair Junior Ambassador, with the torch being passed from the capable hands of Paislee Ribey, right, who relished filling the position in 2023. (File photo)

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THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024. PAGE 17.

Lowe’s Fall Fair involvement dates back decades for just about as long as she’s been alive, so, when the time came, Lowe said she felt that putting her name forward in hopes of being the Brussels Fall Fair Ambassador was pretty much expected of her. And, in 2002, she won the local competition and would go on to do something that no Brussels Fall Fair Ambassador before her had ever done: she placed in the fabled top seven at the Canadian National Exhibition (CNE) Ambassador of the Fairs competition for the province. Only one other Brussels Fall Fair Ambassador, Sean Mitchell, just a few years ago, has reached those heights again.

Lowe said that she helped “put Brussels on the map” as far as the ambassador program was concerned and, for that, she’ll always be proud.

After her reign, she then got involved with the planning side of the competition and ran it largely solo for about 10 years, when she began bringing some more people in. That group is now the fearsome foursome of Lowe, Maggie Speer, Hannah Hodgins and Morgan Zoccolante, all former ambassadors themselves, and it’s clear that the program is in good hands, despite the widespread problem of finding enough participants. However, this year, the fair has three excellent representatives who will take centre stage later this month.

When Lowe was chosen to represent her community, she said it made her so proud, because the community of Brussels is near and dear to her heart. She has been in the village her whole life, has been involved in a number of volunteer endeavours and always been one of

The Citizen

Fall Fair family, which she says that, once you’re a member, you’re always a member. That staying power and sense of community within a community means the world to Lowe and many, many others who have been involved over the years.

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By Shawn Loughlin When she was a kid, Nicole Lowe had to abide by one rule when it came to the Brussels Fall Fair: if she wanted the day off of school to attend the fair, she had to earn it by being part of the annual event in some way.

She grew up knowing that she was expected to enter some of her arts and crafts or decorate her bicycle and be part of the parade. In some way, she had to be part of the community of the Brussels Fall Fair and she has since brought that mandate to her family, insisting that her three children get involved and show off what they can do every September in Brussels.

Now, her children will often submit their arts and crafts, just as their mother had, but, with a lavish home garden, they will also enter some flowers into the competition from time to time as well.

The fair has been a part of her life

its biggest champions. So, to be able to do that as the Brussels Fall Fair Ambassador was an important stage of her life.

And while she enjoys working with the young ambassadors year after year, what means the most to her is remaining part of the Brussels

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Let’s get creative A relatively new event, the ambassador cakedecorating competition, seen above last year, has been a hit for Tuesday night at the Brussels Fall Fair. In fact, Ambassador Emily Bieman is especially looking forward to it, as it didn’t exist when she was the Junior Ambassador back in 2017. (File photo)

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Brussels Fair Parade New route due to construction The Parade form-up at 11am and parade leaves the ball diamond/pool area at 11:30 a.m.

Theme: Pork and Beans Prizes awarded for: Best Theme by Business/Group/Association Best Youth Theme Best Horses Best Youth Decorated Bicycles Parade travels along Flora Street to Ainley St, then it will turn right on Ainley and travel to King St where it will turn left on King and follow it to Turnberry. At Turnberry the parade will turn left and head South down Turnberry St to Ellen St where it will turn left and head over to Ainley where it will turn right and proceed down Ainley to the BMG Community Centre where it will end.

PAGE 18. THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024.

Vinnicombe sees opportunity in centre renovations

By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen

Seeing an opportunity Brussels Agricultural Society President Reg Vinnicombe, above, sees this year’s Brussels Fall Fair as a real chance to see what the new and improved centre can offer the fair after last year’s fair, below, was held at the centre, but with areas off limits due to the ongoing construction. (File photos)

the oy Enj air!

F

For Walton’s Reg Vinnicombe, this year’s Brussels Fall Fair is one of opportunity and a glimpse into the future and the endless possibilities offered up by a newly renovated and expanded Brussels, Morris and Grey Community Centre.

Vinnicombe led the society last year when the fair was held at the centre, but it was still very much under construction at the time. So, the Brussels Agricultural Society didn’t have access to all areas of the centre and things had to be augmented a bit. This year, the centre is ready, new and improved and Vinnicombe says it will be fun for volunteers to see what they can do with the space and how they can use it all to their advantage.

Vinnicombe is a relatively new member of the society, joining during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021. After retiring from Johnston and Johnston in Guelph, the Walton-area man found he had more time on his hands and decided to give back through the society. He spoke with friend Monique Baan, who has been an active member of the group for years, and was convinced to give it a try.

It wasn’t long until there was a vacancy at the top and the society came calling, asking Vinnicombe if he wanted to be the president.

Zoellyn Onn had stayed on for a third year to see the society through the pandemic, safely hosting parades in 2020 and 2021 and then a pared-down fair in 2022, held at the Four Winds Barn and other locations throughout the village, and it was now time for someone new to take the reins.

Vinnicombe says it has been great working with a group of dedicated and passionate volunteers that care so much about their fall fair. He is now in his

second year at the helm of the storied organization, he said, but the help he has and the people he can lean on for knowledge have made the transition a smooth one.

Last year’s fair, he said, went quite well as far as he was concerned. But he expects that this year will be much better with all of the community centre building available to the fair.

He’s also encouraged by the three ambassadors who put their names forward to represent the Brussels Agricultural Society last month.

While, in a perfect world, he would love to have a competition with many contestants, landing in a

place with three eager, enthusiastic and engaging ambassadors - Sophia Blake as the Little Ambassador, Bridget McCallum as the Junior Ambassador and Emily Bieman at the Brussels Fall Fair Ambassador is a good place to be, he said.

As for this year’s fair, he admits to not looking forward to one particular aspect of it more than another, but simply relishing the opportunity to show off the community, provide a forum for its residents to present their talents and skills to their neighbours and to be part of the continuum of ruralthemed events that are so important to communities like Huron County.

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Speer ‘honoured’ to be ‘Fair Mom’ to ambassadors wonders for young people, if they’d only give it a chance.

Unfortunately, contrary to what she said about the 1990s, many young people aren’t making the ambassador program part of their lives and Speer thinks they’re missing a chance to do something great as a result.

Speer presented the example of Emily Bieman - this year’s Brussels Fall Fair Ambassador - who was, back in 2017, the Junior Ambassador in a year that the fair

was held at the International Plowing Match (IPM) in Walton.

Back then, Speer said, Bieman was shy and still finding her way in the world, but now she’s returned to take on the Fall Fair Ambassador role. Another is Paislee Ribey, who fully grew into the role of Junior Ambassador, going from a shy young lady to an outgoing young woman in just one year.

It’s those changes and the ability to help young people grow in the Continued on page 21

See you at the Brussels Fair Brussels Lions Club

Staying involved After being crowned the Brussels Fall Fair Queen in 1992, Maggie Speer has remained involved with the now-ambassador program because of how firmly she believes in its ability to help young people develop and improve in a number of ways. Speer is seen above in 1992 with her grandparents Jean and Grand Williams and then below at this year’s special ambassador night at the Brussels Legion. (Submitted, file photos)

By Shawn Loughlin The Citizen

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While the Brussels Fall Fair Ambassador Committee consists of four past winners - Maggie Speer, Nicole Lowe, Hannah Hodgins and Morgan Zoccolante - it’s only Speer who is often referred to as the “Fair Mom” by the ambassadors of today.

Speer was crowned the Brussels Fall Fair Queen in 1992, besting 11 other young women. In those days, it wasn’t uncommon to have a dozen people from the community wanting to be the next queen.

Speer is also the final Brussels Fall Fair Queen, as it was soon changed to the title of ambassador.

Speer likes to joke that her reign is still ongoing because she was never succeeded by the next queen.

Growing up, Speer always attended the fair. As a member of the Brussels Legion Pipe Band, she was often in the parade as a musician. However, when she was crowned Brussels Fall Fair Queen, she had to take a small step away from the band, as she had other duties to attend to as the queen.

As an elementary school student, Speer was a natural public speaker and has won a number of competitions in her time. That was why she had no problem putting her name forward in hopes of winning the crown. However, she says, back then, it’s just what young women from the village did. When they were old enough to vie for the crown, they would.

Speer first threw her hat into the ring in 1990, but was unsuccessful.

Then, if she remembers correctly, there was no competition in 1991 before she returned the following year and won.

One of the most passionate advocates for the ambassador program, Speer said that the confidence and public speaking prowess she developed in part through being the queen all those years ago now pay her bills as a wedding officiant and marketing manager. She has seen those skills take hold in other young people too over the years and thinks the program has the ability to do

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PAGE 20. THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024.

Brussels Fall Fair’s history is rich indeed Hardware, behind the present Optimists’ club house, for $575.

In 1875, the new Agricultural Hall, costing $600, was ready for use.

In 1883, there were also Morris and Grey Township Agricultural Societies that worked with East Huron Agricultural Society (Brussels).

In 1891, 10 more acres were purchased from John Leckie. Horse

racing was introduced for the first time. The new competition in 1892 was to determine the “Best Lady Driver”.

In 1895, there was the first Field Crop Competition. The crops were to be turnips and mangels.

In 1900, the directors decided to hold a big concert on the Friday night following the fair in the Town Hall. Attendance at the 1900 Fall Continued on page 21

Welcome to the Brussels Fair!

Jacquie Gowing Accounting, Income Tax and Business Management Services Personal, Farm, Business & Corporate • Monthly Bookkeeping Services • Electronic Tax Filing The Brussels Post, 1961 After the cancellation of the Brussels Fall Fair in both 2020 and 2021, the Brussels Agricultural Society returned in 2022, though not at its traditional home of the Brussels, Morris and Grey Community Centre. The event marked an enthusiastic return to a traditional fair, held that year at the Four Winds Barn.

Last year, the fair was back at the Brussels, Morris and Grey Community Centre, but in a limited capacity, as its renovation and expansion was still very much underway at the time. This year will mark the full return to the venue the fair has made its home in recent years and translates to an exciting beginning of a future at the new and improved centre, with members of the Brussels Agricultural Society eager to see how the centre works for their event and how it can accommodate the fair for years to come.

A look back at the fair’s history shows that a venue change is not unheard of in the event’s history. Of course, there was 2017 when the fair moved its operations lock, stock and barrel south to Walton to be part of the International Plowing Match.

That was a landmark year for the fair and it made history as the first-ever full fall fair to be held in conjunction with an International Plowing Match.

Through the years, there have been significant changes to the fair, from the more recent additions like the fire safety courses hosted by Huron East Fire Department and the change from a traditional midway to inflatable attractions, to older changes like when the Queen of the Fair competition was first incorporated in 1980 and historical changes, like when the fair was originally held in Victoria Park, the site of the Brussels baseball diamond.

Then-Secretary of the Association Mary Douma, in 2012, provided a brief history of the society and the fair to The Citizen for the special Brussels Homecoming edition produced that year. That history is reprinted below:

By Mary Douma The first Brussels Fall Fairs were held in Victoria Park (where the main ball diamond is today), with the inside department housed in the hall at the Armstrong Hotel (later known as the American Hotel, just south of the Brussels Library on Turnberry Street).

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Fall Fair moved to Brussels arena in 1984 Continued from page 20 Fair was an estimated 5,000.

In 1901, ladies assisted in setting up and displaying exhibits. This became an annual custom and each year two or three women were appointed as assistants.

In 1903, the first contest for children was recorded, that being an apple-naming contest. The first competition in a “Fancy Drill” by school children was held in 1905.

There were to be at least 16 children in each drill. The prize went to Ethel

school with 25 children taking part.

In 1906, the “Crystal Palace” show hall was built for a cost of $3,263. 1928, the palace was wired for hydro.

In 1929, the Fair Board bought two lots facing Turnberry Street to increase its land base.

Until 1929 there was also a spring fair in April (mostly an exhibition of stallions and bulls) as well as a fall fair held in October.

In 1937, the fair was cancelled due to a polio epidemic.

In 1946, a membership to the East Huron Agricultural Society cost $1 and included two admission tickets.

Also in 1946, the field crop section expanded to include wheat, oats and barley. In 1947, the first school parade was held.

In 1949, the large opening in the second storey of the Crystal Palace was closed in and floored with hardwood, making it an ideal floor for dancing. In 1951 there was a variety concert in the arena starting at 8:30 p.m. followed by dancing at

the Crystal Palace Ballroom.

In 1952, the women’s division was taken over by the Brussels and Cranbrook Women’s Institutes. In 1954, a water system was installed in the Crystal Palace Ballroom. In 1959, washrooms were installed in the north-east corner of the palace.

In 1961, the fair and society’s 100th anniversary, a centennial stone gateway was erected at the Turnberry Street entrance. In 1966, the name of the Society was

changed to Brussels Agricultural Society.

The first Queen of the Fair Competition was held in 1980. In 1984, the fair moved to the Brussels, Morris and Grey Community Centre. In 1995, the Ambassador competition replaced the Queen of the Fair competition. In 2006, the youth activities for the two local schools, Grey Central and Brussels Public, were introduced on the Wednesday morning of the fair.

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Agricultural roots The Brussels Fall Fair has been the long-time home of 4-H achievement days for beef and sheep clubs, seen above at last year’s fair, which are circled on the calendars of many young people from the community. (File photo)

Speer sees value in program Continued from page 19 world that keeps Speer coming back.

After her year as the Brussels Fall Fair Queen, Speer stepped back and started a family, but, one day, when Nicole Lowe came calling, looking for help to administer the ambassador program, Speer answered the call.

In the time since, the two have reversed roles. When Speer decided to step up, she had small children and was very busy - now, it’s Lowe who has three small children and Speer has taken a more active role to allow Lowe to step back a bit.

And while Speer remains dedicated to helping with the program and loves helping the young people of today, she has no idea why she’s singled out as the “Fair Mom” by many of them. She thinks it’s just because she’s so often there with them, but they seem to genuinely appreciate the care and attention that Speer brings with her to Brussels Fall Fairrelated events.

She says it’s an honour and it reflects a level of trust that she’s established with not only the ambassadors, but with their parents as well.

To put a period on her story, Speer said that another thing about being the Brussels Fall Fair Queen that has stayed with her throughout her life has been what it means to others who can appreciate the community aspect

of being a fall fair ambassador.

When she was in her thirties, she was in a job interview and she said the first thing the interviewer wanted to ask her about was being the Brussels Fall Fair Queen. She spoke about it and, when the interview concluded, she asked why

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PAGE 22. THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024.

kinds of evergreens. There were trails around it and all sorts of forts and clubhouses were there and, in June, the wild strawberries were an added attraction.

The school was a kind of community centre and, in the winter, there were euchre parties held there.

Each December, the students performed in a Christmas concert.

The basement of the Anglican Church, just down the road from the school, was used for this purpose.

In my eight years there, there were five different teachers, all good people who encouraged us to do our best and thus prepared us for success in life.

SS#1 still stands, not as a school but as a lovely home.

Back to school... back in the day Glimpses of the Past with Karen Webster

F

or readers who attended a oneroom schoolhouse, perhaps their memories are similar to mine. I attended SS#1 school at Port Albert. It was so named because it was the first school in Ashfield Township. Apparently, a log building, erected near the lake, served as the first school and church.

SS#1 was built on what is now called London Road as a frame building in 1873 and had a cement veneer applied in 1910. This was the same school that my grandmother and father, as well as countless other relatives, attended.

The school building was entered from a door on the east side that led into a tiny room, which then gave way to a larger room. There was a wood lathe in this room on which a former teacher had instructed the older boys how to make baseball bats, but it was never used when I was there. On the right was the girls’ cloakroom and toilet and on the south side the same for the boys.

Each day, the custodian had to put a pail of water down each toilet and I think there was some kind of chemical was used as well.

My first memory is that of sitting in the first desk on the north side of the building. As we progressed through the grades, we moved further south each year until we reached the wall with all the windows. I was in front of the piano and on top was a globe that wobbled a bit when anyone walked around. I was afraid the whole world would come crashing down on me.

Word by word, we learned to read by copying them from the blackboard in our very best printing.

It was an exciting day when we learned a long word like “something”. The Dick and Jane books were our guides and later we progressed through a series of compilations until we reached the High Flight volume.

The classroom had one door in the centre of the back wall. To the right

of the door were a sink and a crockery water dispenser with a push button tap at the bottom. There was no running water, so a pail of fresh water from the well was brought in each day. On a shelf above the sink was a radio from which CBC school broadcasts were sometimes tuned to.

A small hotplate was located in this area and, in the cold winter months, either soup or hot chocolate was made by the senior students to supplement the peanut butter and jam or egg salad sandwiches that we brought in our little tin lunch boxes.

There was a work table along the back of the classroom on which the hectograph pad sat. This was a gelatin pad that was used to make copies of worksheets. A special purple pencil was used to make the master copy. The hectograph pad was dampened and the master sheet was rubbed firmly onto the pad, thus leaving the image in reverse on the pad. Several copies of this could be made by firmly rubbing paper onto the damp gelatin pad until the image became too faint to be seen. Then the process would start once more.

Another way that copies were made, especially of maps, was to hold the original image up to the south window with a plain piece of paper over it. It took dexterity and determination to trace a good copy.

To the left of the door was a painted cupboard that housed the library. Once a month, the Huron County Library truck came around and the senior students were allowed to choose books to be used until they were rotated a month later. One Friday afternoon a month, a Red Cross program was held with students reading prepared stories or poems and then a collection was taken up to be sent to a part of the world that needed our assistance.

Up at the front of the room was the teacher’s desk, bookshelves and a piano. Blackboards covered the west and north walls, above which were a

photo of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip, as well as cursive and printed alphabet cards.

In the centre of the classroom sat a large wood burning stove, with a metal shield around it. On very cold days, desks were edged closer to the heat. Our desks were mounted on two long boards in groups of two or three and moving these desks required some muscle. Somewhere along the line, a partial basement was dug and an oil furnace was installed.

Each afternoon, once school was let out, a couple of students, who were the custodians, sprinkled the floor with a red oily, sawdust-like compound and then they swept it.

The teacher was a busy person who wrote the work for the day for all the grades on the blackboards.

Students were expected to work independently and to quietly read if they finished their lessons early.

When students reached Grade 3, if they had completed their assignments, they were allowed to listen to the younger grades when they were reading and to correct some workbooks. The teacher used recess and noon time to prepare for the next subjects. The children were free to use the playground unsupervised, but with the teacher keeping an ear open.

Along with the perennial ballgames was another activity called “Ante-I-Over the Coal Shed”.

Sides were chosen and teams lined up on the north and south sides of the outbuilding. A ball was thrown over and a form of tag followed in an attempt to capture players from the opposing team. A similar game was “Kings and Crowns” that spanned the width of the playing field. But the best memory of all didn’t take place on the school ground, but instead in the fields that surrounded it.

In wintertime, these fields were covered with ice. Recess times were stitched to a longer noon hour and

many happy days were spent playing hockey and skating around.

Each spring, an Arbour day was held to plant trees, attend to a flowerbed and to whitewash the stones along the front of the building. Once the work was completed, the teacher took the students on a hike to a nearby bush as a reward for their efforts.

To the west of the school was a reforestation plot filled with all

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THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024. PAGE 23.

Entertainment & Leisure

John entertains with Festival reflections

By Scott Stephenson The Citizen If you go by what Google says, Blyth’s Phillips Studio at 209 Dinsley Street was a photography studio that is now permanently closed. But don't tell that to the crowd of interested listeners that came to the space last week to hear a little bit of humourous history about the Blyth Festival from the mouth and mind of noted writer Ted Johns, who originally hails from Seaforth.

Johns offered his orations as a trio of un-identical talks on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday under the billing of ”Jokes and Quotes for the Fiftieth.”

There were certainly plenty of jokes, a few quotes, and a whole lot of interesting history. Of course, anyone familiar with one of Johns’ plays knew not to expect a straightforward take on local lore. His work tends to treat reality with a hearty dose of hilarity before being presented to an audience, whether it be his 1977 hit He Won’t Come in From the Barn, which spun a yarn about a farmer who decides one day to just stay in, or 2004’s Cricket and Claudette, which considered Canadian theatre legend and the most-produced playwright in what life might be like working at the local garbage Blyth Festival history offered up three sessions at the Phillips dump.

Studio to look back, reflect and look forward on the occasion At the centre of this oneof the 50th anniversary of the Festival. (Scott Stephenson photo) man show is a charming man

‘Jokes and Quotes’

Give thanks at harvest time Continued from page 10 leading the way. A craft show here was set up in the arena. My mother displayed her homemade crafts and her paintings there a few times back in the early days.

Another big change at the show is the camping. In the early days, a few people who wanted to stay with their equipment, brought various sorts of accommodation to stay in overnight. Later came trailers and motor homes and a camping grounds was set up that now operates for casual campers all summer long.

I knew many of the people who were important in the beginning of the Thresher Reunion. Simon Hallahan, long the secretarytreasurer of the event, became a distant neighbour when Jill and I moved to our current home.

I remember Simon joking about the annual meetings of the Thresher Reunion being held in the Orange Lodge that used to be on Dinsley Street. Simon, and all the Hallahans who were so important in the early years of the Reunion, were good Roman Catholics so, meeting in the Orange Lodge, he chuckled, seemed ironic. It’s a sign of how things have changed over the years that there’s no Orange Lodge anymore. In fact, Simon’s church on Drummond Street is gone too.

The world on the farm around our severed property too has changed.

When we moved there in 1975, our neighbour across the road farmed his own farm, plus nearly 250 acres on our side of the road. He had modern equipment for the time, plowing the land and working it, combining the grain or corn. We have a huge hill to the east of us.

There used to be a line fence across it at one time, but it was removed when the farms were united. With plowing, there was a lot of erosion and we, at the bottom of the hill, inherited a lot of good topsoil.

As the years passed, the neighbour rented out his land to a huge farming operation. The equipment got bigger and bigger.

That 250 acres is generally planted in less than 24 hours and harvested, come fall, in another 24 hours.

There are probably one or two days when he sprays weeds or fertilizes but, other than that, we’re left alone. He uses improved breeds of seeds and fertilizer and grows yields of corn or soybeans his grandfather could only dream about.

Sometimes I look out my kitchen window and think back 175 years to when the first settlers came to Huron County.

In our neighbourhood north of town, known then as the MacGowan settlement, a whole group of brothers from the same family took up hundreds of acres of bush. Little by little they chopped down the trees, a few acres each year, and

planted crops. The “old” farming equipment that we celebrate out on the fairgrounds would have seemed fanciful to them. They cut grain with scythes and threshed with flails. They used oxen or horses to pull up the stumps once they had rotted.

It was such a struggle, but they prospered. They started with backbreaking work, then oxen and horses. Eventually, they had threshing machines powered by steam engines, then tractors and so on.

We prospered so much that we didn’t need as many people growing the crops as we did and the sons and daughters of the men and women who grew the crops moved to the towns and cities and they prospered - to the point that people shop in supermarkets so overflowing with food that they don’t realize that this is because there are people out on the farms feeding them.

The pioneers prospered by hard work. As the hymn I began my talk with said, “We plough the fields and scatter the good seed on the land, but it is fed and watered by God’s almighty hand.”

How blessed we are!

But the people who celebrate the successful harvest of the fruits of our land, as you do here today, as you will throughout the day, know how much we have to give thanks for.

with a lot to say about the evolution of the Blyth Festival. Johns is most certainly an authority on the history of rural theatre - not only was he part of the touring company for The Farm Show back in the 1970s, he also had a hand in the conception of the seminal show. That’s right, this Ted Johns and the Ted Johns that egged on a young, Russian-cinemaenraged Paul Thompson to write a play about tractors are one and the same! Johns’ first Blyth Festival play was 1978’s hyper topical The School Show, which saw expectant audiences lined up around the block outside Memorial Hall. Although he lives in Toronto now, Johns still keeps up with the goings-on in Blyth. So, suffice to say, he’s a man with more than a few fingers in the pie of local theatrical history.

The Citizen sent a scout to the Friday afternoon show, and observed that the audience, many of whom had a personal connection to the Festival’s history, was very receptive to Johns’ oral history. He welcomed onlooker participation, and engaged in several full-out conversations with the curious crowd. It was a great atmosphere that made for a funny, intimate afternoon affair that was enjoyed by all. The event also attracted Blyth Festival bigwigs Gil Garratt and Janet Amos, the latter of whom is, admittedly, married to Johns.

Johns spoke about how, these days, it would be impossible for a 22-year-old, fresh-out-of-school young person to be put in charge of an entire theatre festival, as Blyth did 50 years ago when it entrusted the programming at Memorial Hall to a young James Roy, who went on to set the mandate for local, new works about rural life that continues to this day.

He also talked about the various periods of growth that have made the Blyth Festival what it is today.

One of his favourite additions over the years is the Phillips Studio itself, where his show was taking place. It proved to be a very

interesting experience to hear the history of the very building within which one was currently sitting.

The Phillips Studio was originally known as The Garage, as that’s what it was when the Festival first took possession of it. Johns detailed the effort that was put in to turn the auto shop into a multi-use performance space that has gone on to host some of the Festival’s most experimental work.

At one point, a discussion broke out as to whether or not a particular member of the audience would have seen Johns in The Farm Show at such-and-such farm on such-andsuch date led to a bit of timelineoriented confusion, which eventually sorted itself out when another member of the public pointed out that there was more than one run of The Farm Show.

During the debate, it seemed that audience member Landon Doak, who performed in this year’s The Farm Show: Then and Now, likely could have cleared things up post haste, as they just spent their summer up to their elbows in the storied history of The Farm Show.

Perhaps Doak would have chimed in to the conversation, had they not been the only person in attendance who arrived after the show had already begun.

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PAGE 24. THE CITIZEN, FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 13, 2024.

Retention is needed

Back at it Abbey Haak and Lucia Dale were all smiles aboard their school bus last Wednesday, as they returned to Londesborough’s Hullett Central Public School for another year of education and fun. Students have now been in class for over a week after a staggered start that saw some classes begin on Wednesday and Kindergarten students begin on Friday. (Scott Stephenson photo)

Open house coming

Licensed Lay Worship Leader Sue Barnett led the morning worship at Londesborough United Church on Sunday, Sept. 8. In her chosen scripture passage, Mark 7:24-37, the apostle told of several healing miracles Jesus performed.

Sue’s reflection reminded everyone that Jesus, who did His very best to improve the lives of the people who heard His ministry, wants us to be the most loving persons it is possible for us to be and to commit to doing our best at all times. Sue noted that doing one’s best is far more important than being the best. She noted that all Olympians, regardless of whether they won any medals, strove always to do their best.

Her wish is that others can say of all of us that we did and do all things to the best of our ability.

Next Sunday’s service will be held at the regular time of 10:30 a.m., but at the Ball’s Chapel.

Representative(s) from Community Paramedics will attend the Londesborough United Church Women meeting on Monday, Sept.

16.

By now, all pupils will be back in class for the 2024/2025 school year.

Kindergarten children came to school on a staggered basis during the first week of classes in order for everyone to feel comfortable in their new surroundings. It is a big step for the youngest children, and just as upsetting for the parents left at home for the first time.

Helping the Kindergarten children feel at home this year are Jill Bell and Crystal Moir. The other primary teachers, Grades 1-3, are Christa Haggitt, Melinda Ireland and Allison Plumsteel.

Junior teachers, Grades 4 - 6, are Brianna Schwantz, Justin Plant and Julie Gilroy. On the senior wing,

Sydney Elder and Claudia Wellwood will be working with the students in Grades 6 and 7 and Craig Caldwell will be preparing the Grade 8 students for their transition to high school.

Offering support to classroom teachers are Jill Ten Hag, Meagan Anderson, Tina Taylor, Donna Douglas, Freda Hill, Barb Bos and Tina Soundy. Julie Gilroy will be co-ordinating special education and resources on a part-time basis.

Kristin Workman is the French teacher.

Offering comfort to pupils and support to teachers and parents is secretary, Shelley Kirkconnell. Lori Stevens returns as principal for a third year at Hullett.

Keeping the building clean are Larry Dalton and September Koskela.

Welcome to all staff members to our community school! We trust you will enjoy your time at Hullett with our children.

Hullett Central will hold its annual open house on Thursday, Sept. 19. This is a chance for parents, especially those new to Hullett, to come into the building and have a “look-see” as the year gets started and meet the teachers of their children. Hot dogs will be served on the back tarmac from 5:30-6 p.m. and from 6-7 p.m., families are welcome in the classrooms.

Continued from page 14 cent of the population of Huron County is made up of immigrants.

The top challenges faced by newcomers to Huron and Perth Counties are currently the cost of living, finding a family doctor, locating affordable housing, transportation and finding work that matches their qualifications.

Nonkes’ presentation also drew attention to the issue of newcomer retention. In 2016, 240 new immigrants came to Huron County, but, five years later, half of those newcomers had left. “So, we can get people to move here, but we can’t always get them to stay,” he said. One of the biggest contributing factors that negatively affect immigrant retention is discrimination.

Sixty-nine per cent of immigrants and visible minorities in HuronPerth feel that they have been discriminated against in the past three years, Nonkes said. Other factors include a lack of immigrantfocused services, economic marginalization and social isolation.

In order to combat low newcomer

retention, the report suggested tackling barriers with issue-specific task groups, information-sharing meetings and prioritizing newcomer youths. To address discrimination, Immigration Partnership support workshops and training for municipal staff, community organizations and employers have been introduced.

The Immigration Partnership is also developing new resources and tools aimed at helping organizations effectively deliver services to newcomers, such as its new publication: Building Belonging, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Rural Communities.

A few recent local efforts to build a more welcoming community in Huron County include Cricket Day and Diwali in Wingham, the Multicultural Festival in Goderich, meet-your-neighbour nights at local libraries, curling lessons for immigrants and more. “Cricket Day in Wingham has been an absolute success. North Huron has done very well. If you went to the sports field last weekend, you would have seen over 100 people playing cricket.”

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