Canada’s 150th birthday celebrations will take on a rural flavour from the past in North Oyster.
On Canada Day (July 1), the North Oyster and Area Historical Society rolls out the past at the North Oyster Community Centre.
North Oyster is one of a group of rural communities between Nanaimo and Ladysmith that include Cedar, Yellow Point and Cassidy that date back to Canada’s confederation. North Oyster history is the event’s main theme, so the event is an opportunity to hear how rural communities developed over the past 150 years.
Events get underway at 11 a.m. when Nanaimo Airport’s big barbecue starts serving up hamburgers and hot dogs.
Farming and a rural lifestyle remains a big part of the community’s personality, so there will be lots of historic items, many supplied by local families, on display including North Oyster Volunteer Fire Department’s 1937 fire truck, memorabilia from Cedar Community Hall and Cedar Women’s Institute, plus tractors and farm equipment dating back to the 19th century and the original Cassidy family farm.
Cassidy is named after the family that first farmed that area. Nanaimo Airport is located on about 211 hectares of land originally purchased from Thomas Cassidy in 1942.
“We’ve got spinning wheels and weavers going back close to 100 years,” said Irene Hawthornthwaite, NOAHS vice-president.
Carding, spinning, weaving, knitting, quilting and candle-making are some of the pioneer crafts visitors can view and try their hands at to get a sense of what life was like in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
“We’ve got butter churns … the little hand butter churns,” Hawthornthwaite said. “I want the kids to make butter.”
Yellow Point Drama Group members will be on site in period costume and there will be live musical entertainment.
The event is a showcase of how inter-dependent this group of communities were, and continue to be, as the region was settled and developed, primarily due to the initiatives of families who settled those communities over the decades.
North Oyster’s first two-room school was established in 1891.
Today’s North Oyster Elementary School, a French immersion school, is situated on a portion, of a 65ha parcel of land originally purchased by Parker Williams, which Williams donated to build North Oyster’s first schools.
The North Oyster Community Centre was moved to its current location at 13647 Cedar Rd., Ladysmith, and renovated by local volunteers from the second North Oyster School originally built in 1913 for $14,000. The lot the community centre is on was donated by Williams’s grandson, Bert Gisborne.
Parking will be tight, but a park-and-ride service courtesy of Nanaimo Airporter will be available at from a parking lot at the intersection of Cedar and Code roads and 49th Parallel Grocery is sponsoring a lemonade stand for the day’s festivities, which run until 4 p.m.
For more information, visit https://northoysterhistoricalsociety.com.