Start with the weekend in front of you. Perth hosts the Perth Garlic Festival at the fairgrounds on Saturday the 8th and Sunday the 9th — the 27th annual, back after a year off, with around sixty vendors, garlic-inspired everything, live music and a beer tent. If that’s not your Saturday, the same day gives you an afternoon open mic and dance at the Arden Legion, 1 to 5, bring an instrument or just your dancing shoes; and at 7:30 that evening, Studio Theatre Perth puts on That Lil Ole Band, a ZZ Top tribute, which is a genuinely funny thing to find in a small-town community theatre and we mean that as praise. Meanwhile Smiths Falls Pride runs five days through Sunday the 9th under the banner Small Town Glow, Big Pride.
But the date to circle is Saturday August 15, which is the fullest single day the corridor has all summer. At the Peterborough end, the Peterborough Folk Festival — Canada’s longest-running free-admission folk festival — opens its free outdoor weekend at Nicholls Oval Park, multiple stages and an artisan village, Saturday and Sunday, no ticket required. At the Ottawa end, Carleton Place lines the Mississippi River walkway at Sinclair Square with Riverfront Artscape, forty-plus artists, live painting and demos, 10 to 5, rain or shine. In between: Parham Fair runs its 135th on the 14th and 15th, fifteen minutes south of Sharbot Lake, with a horse draw, a cattle show and a demolition derby. Demo Day at O’Hara Mill outside Madoc goes 11 to 2. Harlowe Hall, up the road from Northbrook, holds its third-Saturday fiddle afternoon 1 to 5 — five dollars at the door, two if you bring an instrument. Then the Northbrook Lions serve a ribfest dinner 4 to 8, half a rack with corn, potato and coleslaw, twenty-five dollars a plate. And Smiths Falls spends the day on The Big Thrift downtown. You cannot do all of that. Pick a lane.
Two other things that week, if the 15th is spoken for. On Thursday the 13th, Art on 62 in Madoc hosts a free evening with Ingrid Whitaker, 6:30 to 8 — the same gallery behind Madoc’s ArtFest. Friday the 14th at 7, the Heritage House Museum runs a ticketed ghost walk through downtown Smiths Falls. And Sunday the 16th, the Civitan Club’s Neil Graham Memorial Car Show opens at 9am on County Road 43 outside Perth, with a BBQ and a 50/50 draw alongside the cars.
Now the part nobody likes: the weekly stuff is running out. Peterborough Musicfest plays its last Saturday at Del Crary on the 15th and its last Wednesday on the 19th. Smiths Falls’ Movies Under the Stars has one more, Thursday the 20th. After that you’ve got about a week each of Marmora’s Music in the Park (Tuesdays, through the 25th), Perth’s Tunes on the Tay (Wednesdays, through the 26th), Harmony in Havelock (Thursdays, through the 27th) and Carleton Place’s Pipes Are Calling (Fridays, through the 28th). Go while they’re free and outdoors. The markets carry on past all of it — Perth, Carleton Place and Sharbot Lake on Saturday mornings, Havelock on Friday afternoons, well into the fall.
Looking ahead, Saturday August 22 is the next stacked one and it’s a good one: Carleton Place Porchfest turns front lawns into stages 1 to 4, Perth’s Ontario Moonshine Festival runs 10am to 10pm at Top Shelf Distillers, there’s a classic car show at Cordova Mines north of Havelock, and O’Hara Mill throws open its Evening at O’Hara, 4 to 10. Before then, the Tweed Summer Youth Theatre campers take the Marble Arts Centre stage in Actinolite with High School Musical Jr. on the 20th and 21st. One last thing: we’ve published The Chip Truck Census — every chip truck we can actually confirm between Ottawa and Peterborough, seven of them so far, in the order you meet them. The rankings come after the drive. Tips welcome. See you on the road.