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For 140 years, people have gathered at Prairieland Park in Saskatoon for the city’s annual exhibition and other big events.
The milestone is being marked on Friday with a special celebration to reflect on the impact the event space has had on Saskatoon’s history.
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The first edition of the Saskatoon Exhibition was held in October of 1886 near the riverbank, where Nutana Collegiate now sits. The one-day event was mainly an agriculture showcase, where farmers came to display livestock and see farming equipment.
City archivist Jeff O’Brien told the CKOM Morning Show that the early days of the exhibition were very different from the midways and musical performances that people are now accustomed to seeing.
In its early days, the Saskatoon Ex was primarily an agricultural event, but it slowly transformed over the years. (Nick Biblow/Tourism Saskatoon)
“One of the problems of having the Ex in the early days is there was no easy way to get across the river,” O’Brien explained. “The way you got across is you took the ferry. One year the ferry cable broke two days before the exhibition.”
The ferry, which was often unreliable, was no longer a headache for fairgoers after the Traffic Bridge opened in 1907. It was also the same year electricity came to Saskatoon.
“Suddenly the show was a nighttime show. The show could go into the night. They had side shows. They had food,” said O’Brien.
“The other big thing is they moved the exhibition to the summer to attract more people and have better weather.”
According to O’Brien, the fair moved several times during the early years until it found its permanent home at the site now known as Prairieland Park back in 1909.
“When they said ‘We want to have a big-city show,’ part of that was changing the focus from strictly agriculture to an agriculture-and-industrial show,” the archivist explained.
“One that showcases local industry, commerce, science, arts and more entertainment. Saskatoon isn’t just this rural area where we farm.”
Many additions and changes have been made to Prairieland Park over the past 140 years.
The racetrack at Marquis Downs is set to be replaced by a parking lot. Horse racing at the track ended in 2021. (Brent Bosker/650 CKOM)
The grandstand was built in 1928, and the Marquis Downs horse racing track opened in 1969.
The first exhibition in Saskatoon was supposed to happen a year earlier, in 1885, but it was scrapped because of the North-West Rebellion. The event was also cancelled in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
