The beer tent is for the adults wanting to catch up with friends made a lifetime ago, but it’s the Midway at the Vankleek Hill Agricultural Fair which is the most important gathering event of the summer season on any local teenagers social calendar. Every year the VKH Fair brings new relationships together, and breaks them apart soon after the Carnies have packed up and left four days later.

The VKH Fair always occurs on the second weekend of August, which means the school-aged young adults and younger kids haven’t seen most of their school buddies in six weeks, so there’s always something for the older kids to catch up on… someone’s mustache has gotten thicker, someone’s hair went from light to dark, someone is dating someone else, someone else shaved their head into a mohawk, someone else got a face tattoo, another person lost a limb in a body-modification incident, and other little thing and big things that happened since school ended.

It’s kind of the same thing for the younger kids, like, for my 11-year old son, it’s a time for finding friends to act as ‘ride buddies’, and comparing how many times they’ve gone on a ride, or how many packages of cotton candy they’ve stuffed in their mouth at a time, what colour their tongues are from all the red / blue / green Slushies and, of course, how much time their parents allowed them on Roblox and / or Fortnite for the past six weeks… the truly important stuff.

I don’t remember going to the Fair that often as a kid. I’ve never been a ride-lover, mostly because heights freak me out. I think I can remember getting into the bumper-cars a few times. I definitely remember sneaking into the Fair a couple of years… a friend of mine lived right next to the Fairgrounds, so we could either climb the fence, or there was a space where we could squeeze through. I also definitely remember never having any money for the Midway Games, which was cool because those Games are fixed to be harder than a Arcade Crane Game with a loose claw.

I do know the first time I took photos of the VKH Fair was waaaaaaay back in 1995-1996, for a College Project. The next time was in 2009, but that was just a night shot from a field away [link to that photo here]. I didn’t really start wondering around the VKH Fair, taking photos of everything, until 2011… that’s kind of when I was gifted my first digital camera. So that makes sense.

…anyway, enough about love lost and love gained, these are some photos of the 181st VKH Fair’s Midway, including a couple of my own kids, just click on the first photo to get the carousel started… comments are always welcome. Thanks for being here.