INNISFAIL – It was a celebration of history, music, dance, fashion and food during a chautauqua at the Innisfail and District Historical Village.
The event gave local citizens a chance to experience a chautauqua on Sept. 15.
“Chautauquas were tented events that made their way across the Prairies, north of the border and south of the border,” said Anna Lenters, board president. “Chautauqua derived from Chautauqua, New York. That was its point of origin around 1880.”
They were first begun by a religious group, noted Lenters, adding chautauquas expanded over the years and began to include dance, fashion, music, medicine and new inventions.
“This was a way of bringing information to people,” she said, adding it was prior to the telephone and television. “(The people of New York) would come through small communities and set up their tents. It was an important social event.
“Sometimes they would stay for several days,” she added.
Lenters said Innisfail also once held chautauquas near the turn of the century. The idea to hold one on Sept. 15 came when they found three different items from a chautauqua held many years ago.
Those items included clothing patterns that a women purchased at a chautauqua in Innisfail in 1907, an original temperance card and literature from a chautauqua.
“Over the winter last year when we were cleaning we came across the temperance cards and we came across literature relative to a chautauqua,” said Lenters. “We said let’s do something different other than just a fall fair. Let's call it a chautauqua and let's attempt to do it the way it would have been done.
“That’s what inspired us to do it,” she added. “We wanted to introduce people to it so it’s educational and entertaining.”
Innisfail’s remake of a chautauqua on Sept. 15 included market vendors, music, dance, food, a fortune teller, a men’s saloon and actors dressed in period costumes.
The event garnered plenty of interest, she noted.
“Even with this bad weather, there’s been a bit of a party atmosphere,” said Lenters. “People are glad to get out of their house, enjoy the music and the food and be out with their friends.”
