Exhibits were still rolling into the Georgian Bay Steam Show grounds on the first day of the annual Steam Show and Family Farm Demonstration Festival: antique and classic cars, model engines, displays of old-time crafts in addition to Cockshutt tractors and farming equipment, arriving from as far away as the U.S.
Cockshutt is this year’s featured tractor - an icon of Canadian-made ingenuity that for decades had a plant in Brantford. After a hostile takeover in 1962, Cockshutt was no longer manufactured in Canada, but continued to be produced by the Oliver and Minneapolis-Moline tractor companies, until the name was retired in the mid-1970s.
Row after row of tractors – not just Cockshutt, but every make and model, including Rumely Oil Pull, Minneapolis Moline, and John Deere – fill a good portion of the Steam Show Grounds.
There are working models of engines, tents filled with displays, a vendors’ marketplace, horse-drawn wagon rides, tractor pulls, live entertainment, and demonstrations of everything from antique threshing equipment to the Georgian Bay Steam, Auto, Gas & Antiques Association’s own portable sawmill in action.
But the Queens of the Show, that give the festival its name and its character, are the massive steam engines manufactured by Waterloo, Geo. White & Co., and Sawyer Massey that dominate the landscape.
The 54th Annual Georgian Bay Steam Show continues all weekend at the show grounds, 4635 Victoria St. W. in Cookstown.
Gates open at 7:30 a.m. daily, and every day starts with a pancake breakfast served up by the members from 8 to 10 a.m. Features include tractor pulls, Garden Tractor Games, a Steam Whistle Symphony at noon, and a daily parade of vehicles and machinery.
And at 6 p.m. on Sunday, the OTTPA-sanctioned Modified Truck and Tractor Pull will fill the air with the sound of mighty engines at the Georgian Bay Steam Show’s pulling track.
A full schedule of events can be found online at steamshow.ca.
Admission is $12 on Saturday and Sunday, $8 on Monday. Accompanied children under 12 are free. No bicycles or dogs are allowed on the show grounds.
