FallFest 2016…here’s what’s NEW

7 Sep

If you think that the Glengarry Pioneer Museum’s Harvest Fall Festival is the “same old, same old” think again. Festival committee chair, Lindsey Howes, and her hardworking team have added a number of new attractions for you to look forward to this year.

For starters, Jesse Brunet will be at the museum with an extensive collection of antique pistols and primed to answer any questions you might have (on the subject of antique handguns). Then there’s the folklorist duo of Carole Pagé and her husband, Eric Charbonneau. They will be stepping into the gaping hole left by the departure of Archie Martin. For years, Archie captivated countless Dunvegan festivalgoers with his intimate knowledge of Native Canadian heritage. Carole and Eric have both worked with Archie and will carry on his proud tradition of raconteur and historical interpreter.

Even the Festival’s agricultural display has a new addition this year: a recently restored Ferguson Threshing Mill. James Ferguson of St. Elmo built his first revolutionary thresher in 1874 to free farmers from the backbreaking task of using a hand flail to separate grain. In 1881, as demand for his invention increased, Ferguson moved to Maxville and set up shop on Marlborough Street. In time, Ferguson’s son, Donald (Dan), joined the business and the father and son team built a new factory in 1928 that focused exclusively on threshers. When his dad died in December of 1933, Dan continued to make enhancements to the original design. Ferguson Threshers were manufactured in Maxville right up until 1954, when the modern combine harvester arrived on the scene.

Last but not least, a new display of Ice Cutting tools and paraphernalia will underscore the importance of this wintertime “crop.” In the days before modern refrigeration techniques, blocks of ice were key when it came to food preservation during the hot summer months. Each winter, large blocks of ice would be cut by hand from frozen ponds and streams with long crosscut saws and hauled away for storage in ice houses with thick layers of insulating sawdust between the blocks. Ralph MacIntosh of St. Elmo used to work on the “ice fields” to earn a little extra money and wrote an account of his experiences in a short memoir. This cool exhibition will pay tribute to some of his memories.

These newcomers will be joined by a host of tried and true activities that have been delighting young and old alike for years. Pioneer demonstrations, artisans, a hands-on display of heritage breeds and the horse-powered parade (at 1 PM), day-long entertainment, mouth-watering Oktoberfest sausages, Beef-on-a-Bun sandwiches and home-made slabs of pie at the Old Cheese Factory and the Star Inn Bar serving Cassel Brewery beer and Ontario wine… who could ask for a better day?

And that’s not to mention all the games and activities at the Children’s Tent designed to keep your youngsters engaged and entertained, including: stilt races, sack races, crafts and a penny candy booth. And if that isn’t enough, race over to the ice cream booth and try some real hand-cranked ice cream.

Admission is only $10 for adults, $25 for families, with children under 12 getting in free. Cash only please. This year’s festival is co-sponsored by The Commonwell Mutual Insurance Group, Caisse Populaire de la Vallée, and many other local businesses. For those of you who have never been to Dunvegan (shame on you), the Glengarry Pioneer Museum is located at the intersection of County Roads 24 and 30. Plenty of free parking is available, including accessible slots for those with mobility challenges.

Welcome home, Isabel

I’m pleased to report that Dunvegan has one more member of the Zipper Club: Isabel Clark. The club’s name comes from the telltale zipper-like scar left after open-heart surgery. In a move that fractionally reversed the normal flow of Quebec patients to our local Ontario hospitals, Isabel’s surgery took place at the new “super” facility in Montreal. She was admitted on Sunday, August 7th, the day after the annual fundraiser at the MacCrimmon Hall and wasn’t released until Saturday, August 27th.

While her triple bypass went off without a hitch, complications with atrial fibrillation, also known as afib, resulted on a longer hospital stay than normal. Afib is an irregular and often very fast heart rate that may cause symptoms like heart palpitations, fatigue and shortness of breath. However, all is now OK and partner, Donaldson MacLeod, drove her back home a little over a week ago. Months ago, I asked Isabel why she chose Montreal over the Ottawa Heart Institute and she said she’d been told the wait times were much shorter. In the end though, she ended up twiddling her thumbs for about the same length of time as I did. Nevertheless, Isabel has no regrets. She tells me that the doctors and support staff were fabulous and that all the patient rooms were private, spacious and came with ensuite baths and comfortable in-room seating for visitors. Welcome home, Isabel.

The answer is blowing ‘cross the road (Part I)

Driving east along Dunvegan Road back in August, I encountered two parallel rubber tubes stretched tightly across the road. We’ve all seen them before countless times. They appear overnight on our county roads… and disappear just as quickly. However, on this occasion I said to myself, “The time has come to get to the bottom of these mysterious tubes.”

Tubes like these used to be a sure sign of a speed trap, at least back when I first started driving. Somewhere nearby, an officer of the law would be hidden, hunched over a bulky instrument that measured how fast approaching drivers were going. His lair (for back then an officer of the female persuasion was extremely rare) was usually far enough down the road that he could wave over offenders and issue tickets to his heart’s content. But that was then. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that today’s road bisecting tubes were not about catching speeders. So I fired off a quick e-mail to Benjamin de Haan in the hope of getting to the bottom of this tubular conundrum. Mr. de Haan is the County’s 
Director of Transportation and Planning Services.

As de Haan explained, the County uses the tube-based technology to conduct ‘traffic counts’… in other words, how many cars use a road on an ‘average day.’ The tubes themselves are made from soft hollow rubber. When a vehicle goes over them, the tires compress the tube and send a puff of air down it to a recording device anchored at the side of the road.

Why are there two tubes? Well, the County could get away with just one, if they only wanted to count the number of passing cars. However, “…with the two tubes, we can get all sorts of neat things,” explained de Haan, “including how many vehicles, the type of vehicle, how fast they are moving, the time of day that they passed, when the ‘peak’ traffic occurs and what the prevailing speed is at any given time.”

The puffs of air are converted into digital data and stored in a roadside black box. After surveying traffic for at least 24 hours, a County crew hooks up the box to a laptop and downloads the information. Once the data is safely transferred, the crew moves the tubes and the recording device to the next spot without having to bring everything back to the office.

I asked Mr. de Haan how the survey locations were selected… and why a thoroughfare like Dunvegan Road would have more than one survey spot along its length? He told me that the sites are not chosen randomly. “The County counts traffic at approximately 300 different locations throughout SDG,” he said. “We are very strategic in selecting the locations… because we need to understand how much traffic is on each section of road we are responsible for.”

Why does the County need this data… and what sort of information are they able to obtain from the surveys? Tune in next week for the conclusion of this in-depth report.

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