A Night at the Acton Fall Fair (Ryan's Version).
Old friends, simple pleasures and seeing a community come together.
Cotton candy on the wind, the midway in your ears. The feeling of hay, underfoot, gleefully scuffing away whatever tread is left on your boots.
A sea of denim-on-denim (Canadian Tuxedos), cresting into a wave of deep browns and bright reds. Casual plaid.
The inevitable, midnight partnership of beer and comically oversized pretzels.
The Acton Fall Fair.
Where every year, the impossible presents itself.
How does one capture a moment in time in a place where time itself seems to stand still?
For a small town, particularly one on the rural edge of Toronto, traffic, if you could call it that, is relative.
The smallest of bottlenecks, coming from either Georgetown or Rockwood, that politely nudges you towards the fairgrounds.
On either side, the younger generations, filtering past, remain ever-oblivious.
It recalls a simpler time - when parking lot road rage was something only your parents experienced.
Though as the engine and blood both cool, they aren’t alone.
It is just after seven o’clock, on this Friday night. But here now, at the close of the third week of September, it is a reminder that expecting any sort of consistency out of Southern Ontario’s early autumn weather will, forever be, a fool’s errand.
So instead, at the crossroads of air conditioning and a lukewarm chill, you follow, as so many before have, the music.
And to denote them as members of the Canadian Soundtrack of Record, well, it seems almost too little praise. Founded in 1872, when the country and its dreams were still young, the Acton Citizen’s Band have bore witness to a history that is rich with runoff.
They were here when the tanneries arrived. When the resulting industry and the “Leathertown” moniker it inspired became known throughout the British Empire thrice over.
Here still, when they fell, the doors shuttered, when that sense of identity shifted.
When the commercial tagline, “The Drive to Acton”, once a punchline, was reclaimed as a point of local pride.
And here tonight, in perfect harmony, they’re the closest thing anyone born post-1970 has to seeing The Beatles in person.
It is a backing track that carries. From the beer tent, to the tractor pull, invoking both nostalgia and that small voice on one’s shoulder.
To stay present, in this particular moment, for however long it lasts.
Catching up, handshakes, high-fives and hugs.
The air, every square inch, thick with a sense of community that is familiar yet entirely unique. Both those that come home and those that stay close. There are old friends, with new partners who seem both impressed yet entirely overwhelmed: a crowd, that seems as if it stretches on for miles, yet every name is known.
Though come ten-thirty?
While it was valiant, that sweet aroma of cotton candy is no more. No, instead, it is the residue of whatever has stuck to one’s jeans - mainly, in this case, being spilled Molson and wafting smoke.
So as Sweet Caroline carries over the masses, with that immortal chorus break being answered in kind, it is when the stories begin to be shared - that tricky grey area, where you’re eager to give those you’ve known most of your life the benefit of the doubt. And yet, how much trust can one earnestly place in embellishment? Journalistic spidey-sense, you know.
Prize chickens used as mules for drug-running, fist fights, over misplaced love? A Scotswoman, masquerading as a false Russian bride? Absolute truth, in this instance, especially once you start into the midnight pretzels, well, it is a delicate commodity.
But there is something else too.
An honesty of sorts, a quiet kinship, a love that is strong but will always go unspoken. Plans, promises, made in-the-moment, that knowingly won’t be kept, forgotten, come the morning. But you’ll carry on. Another holiday season will arrive before, soon enough, it is summer once more.
And as summer ends, the leaves will fall, won’t they? As they do. Yet you’ll be back at the fairgrounds.
Where no matter where you go, it always feels like home.