Qualla: Cloverdale Rodeo and Country Fair

Cloverdale Rodeo and Country Fair: Introduction

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

On the Thursday before the fair opens, downtown Cloverdale fills with beds. Real ones, on casters, shoved down the street at a dead run by costumed teams while the Chamber of Commerce keeps time — a race held every spring since 1977, and one that went briefly, absurdly virtual in 2020 and 2021. It is an odd overture to a rodeo. It is also a fair summary of the place: a country fair first held in 1888 that has never outgrown its own sense of humour, bolted to a bucking arena that has spent much of the past two decades at the centre of an argument about livestock, tradition, and what a paying crowd should be asked to watch.

Cloverdale Rodeo and Country Fair: Before There Were Fairgrounds

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The first Surrey fair went up in September 1888, in and around the Municipal Hall — tables of preserves, pens of stock, the ordinary annual bookkeeping of a farming district taking its own measure. For half a century that was the shape of it. In 1938 the fair moved to the Cloverd...

Cloverdale Rodeo and Country Fair: Eight Seconds, Added in 1945

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The rodeo is the younger half by nearly six decades. It was first held in 1945 and caught on at once — popular enough that by 1947 the Lower Fraser Valley Agricultural Association had taken it over outright. The Fraser Valley Exhibition Society assumed control of the fair in 1962...

Cloverdale Rodeo and Country Fair: The Calf, and What Followed

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In May 2007 a calf died during a roping event. The following day, activists from the Vancouver group Liberation BC walked into the ring in protest — part of a pattern that had already seen demonstrators unfurl banners inside the grounds and handcuff themselves to the gates of the...

Cloverdale Rodeo and Country Fair: Preserves, 4-H, and the Midway

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Take the arena away and a complete fair is still standing. Cooking, baking and canning competitions fill the halls. So do arts and crafts displays, horticulture tables and livestock exhibits — the categories have barely changed since the Municipal Hall days, because the point of ...

Cloverdale Rodeo and Country Fair: Empty Springs, Then a Record

Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 GMT

COVID-19 closed the fairgrounds in 2020 and kept them closed through 2022 — three lost springs, matching the longest gap either world war had managed. The fair returned in 2023. It came back with appetite. The 2025 edition ran May 16 to 19, adding the South Gate Action Zone, a R...