Fall fair begins

Trudy Reid doesn’t want people to lose their connection to local farms.

An educator with the Dairy Farmers of Ontario, Reid wanted to make sure people knew where their milk came from. She and that question to participants at She and her mechanical, fiberglass cow, Maple, demonstrated this at the 98th annual Hymers Fair on Sunday.

Using a mechanical cow instead of a real one helped to make the demonstration safer for children, she said. Maple has moved around quite a bit from Kenora to Murillo and most of the northwest. From the Hymers Fair, Maple will move to Timmins, Ont. for the fair there, Reid said.

"It’s agricultural awareness," Reid said. "People don’t have the connection to the farm anymore. Maple is a way to be reconnected and I can talk to them about it if they want to learn more. There’s a lot of people who don’t realize where their food comes from anymore and they think that milk comes from the grocery store they don’t understand that it comes from an animal."

Traditionally, the way to milk a cow was to pull down and massage with the fingers by putting pressure from one finger to the next. Having done this maneuver for so many years, Reid said she doesn’t even notice anymore when she does it – it just comes naturally.
Raised on a dairy farm herself, Reid said the dairy industry rivaled popular markets such as the automotive industry but few people realize it.

"It is one of the biggest industries left in Ontario," she said. "Agriculture is the second largest industry in Ontario. There is so much tied back to food and people don’t realize that. You could be a mechanic but you could be a mechanic tied to the farm. We need tractor mechanics, people to weld things, so there is different ways to be connected."

Sandra Mazur, president of the Hymers Agricultural Society, said this year’s fair had some frost in the early morning but was glad that the weather was warming up for the afternoon. While the fair it may be a fair trek to the fair, Mazur said there are shuttle buses available for residents in located at County Fair Plaza, Thunder Bay Community Auditorium and Intercity Shopping Centre.

With the annual fall fair two years away from its 100th anniversary, Mazur said the fair would continue to be a family event and not change from its country theme.

"We’re a grassroots fair," Mazur said. "This fair is all about agriculture and it’s that aspect that people come out to see. We don’t have a beer gardens and we don’t have midway. People keep coming back because of the fact that there is good music, friends and the cultural shows."

Some of the new attractions included a pool filled with a $1,000 in coins scheduled for Monday. Mazur said children have 30 seconds to get as many coins as they can before the time runs out.

The fair concludes Monday at 5 p.m. Tickets are $5 for adults, $3 for seniors and children 12 and under, and children six and under are free.