Just off the 7 · 25 min north of Maberly on the Elphin road
McDonalds Corners
A volunteer-run Ag Hall up the Elphin road, with a Sunday market all summer and a fair in its 172nd year.
Why stop
The Agricultural Society hall is the whole reason to make this drive, and the Society has been at it a long time: the 2026 fair is its 172nd.
Through the summer the hall runs a Sunday market, 10 to 2, from the Victoria Day weekend to the first Sunday in October, with a light breakfast on from 10 and lunch from noon. The fair is on Saturday September 26 this year, 9 till 4, eight dollars in and twelve and under free.
The hall doesn’t close when the market does. There’s bingo every Thursday, doors at half five, darts on Friday nights through the winter, and a market of one kind or another most months: pies and pastries in September, a harvest market in October, a Christmas market at the end of November. The year finishes with a New Year’s Eve dance.
It’s a real detour rather than a wobble off the highway: twenty-five minutes and twenty-two kilometres north of Maberly on the Maberly-Elphin and McDonalds Corners roads, through the kind of Lanark Highlands country that makes the drive its own reason. Come for the fair or a Sunday market and it earns the trip.
Hall events are listed as the Society confirms them.
Weekly bingo at the Ag Hall, doors at half five and the first ball at seven, with snacks and drinks for sale. No bingo on Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve.
Pierrette Matthews, a member of the MERA Art Circle, meets visitors at the opening of her show of mixed-media collages, which stays up in Dean Hall through November.
Tulua, a young band from the southeast of Ireland, play traditional Irish music with strong instrumentals and songs drawn from local sessions. Thirty-five dollars, fifteen for those thirty and under.
Local artisans fill the schoolhouse for MERA's yearly Christmas fair, running since 2005, with a light lunch from the MERA café, a bake sale and a draw. It's the hall's biggest fundraiser of the year.
Three members of Les Boréades de Montréal play Renaissance and Baroque music on recorder, traverso flute and viola da gamba, with a set of traditional Irish and Acadian tunes. Thirty-five dollars, fifteen for those thirty and under.
The Open Road Band see the year out at the Ag Hall, with a licensed bar and a late hot and cold buffet. Thirty dollars a person, nineteen and over, tickets online or at the hall on a bingo or darts night.
The Agricultural Society's hall, and the reason the village has a calendar at all — the Sunday market all summer, the fair in September, bingo on Thursdays, darts on Fridays through the winter, and the markets and dinners in between. Volunteer-run. 613-278-2362.
194 Camerons Road, Maberly, ON · Checked Sep 2026 · Society submission by email, address and event list from a board member