By Sault Tourism
Fall Rendezvous Festival, at the Ermatinger Clergue National Historic Site, is a 4-day event, hosted each September by the Friends of Ermatinger Clergue National Historic Site. The festival, this year occurring September 25th – 28th, is a chance to immerse yourself in the history of the war of 1812 and the daily life of the early 1800’s, through a number of live reenactments including; canon and musket fire, Indigenous storytellers, workshops and more!
Keep reading to learn more about the Fall Rendezvous Festival.
The Fall Rendezvous Festival starts on Wednesday, September 25th and will run for four days until Saturday, September 28th, 2024. The event is open to the public, as well as for groups including School Groups, from 10am to 4pm for each day.
Admission is by donation (pay what you can) and includes entrance to the Ermatinger Clergue National Historic Site heritage buildings and grounds, as well as interaction and knowledge sharing with 36 heritage performers including Francophone and Indigenous storytellers. See the Red Coats and the flash in the pan, smell the gunpowder as the muskets and cannons ignite, hear the drumming and our storytellers, taste Algoma Country’s culinary samplings. Immerse yourself!
A fun part of the Fall Rendezvous Festival is the historical reenactments from the period surrounding the war of 1812. Restored canons and muskets from the era are fired at regular intervals throughout the festival, with groups of onlookers and spectators kept at a safe range. 🙂
Expect the canon to fire every hour or more frequently when groups are on tours!
There are 36 heritage performers and exhibits present at the Festival. These include Coureur du Bois, Voyageurs, Métis, quill work, drumming & Indigenous song, sacred plants and teachings – all in live performance! Thinking Rock Community Arts will be on site on Friday.
Saturday will also see the addition of tasty local samplings from Hogan’s Homestead, Beaver Tails food trailer and Chef Zach Keeshig (ticketed event, details about tickets coming soon).
The site is accessible with parking, boardwalks, washrooms and audio tours.
A new addition to this year’s event is Chef Zach Keeshig. Chef Zach will be doing demonstration and talk about indigenous culinary canapés, utilizing foraged foods and sacred plants. This is a ticketed event and more details will be released soon. Information about Chef Zach is below:
Zach Keeshig was born in Wiarton, Ontario but raised in Owen Sound, he attended culinary school locally at Georgian college under Anthony Bevan. After culinary school Zach apprenticed locally under Chef Tim Johnston (Cobble beach), Later working at regarded restaurants such as Langdon Hall (Cambridge), Micheal Stadtlander’s Eigensinn farm (Singhampton), Restaurant Pearl Morissette (Jordan, Ontario), Canoe (Toronto) & most recently at 1 Michelin star Enigma (Yorkville, Ontario).
Zach now runs a small upscale reservation only 17 seat dining room he calls “Naagan” (Ojibwa for Dish) at the Owen Sound Farmers Market. Zach calls his cuisine progressive aboriginal using things from the land fusing his Ojibwa background with French techniques. Naagan serves a 9 course tasting menu paired with wild drinks using things they’ve either foraged/sourced locally/ grown.
Check out the festival schedule below!
Wednesday & Thursday
9am-4pm
Friday & Saturday
10am-4pm
Fall Rendezvous Festival takes place on the grounds of the Ermatinger Clergue National Historic Site; where two of the oldest stone buildings in Ontario are Sault Ste. Marie’s only remains of the fur trade era, and home to the earliest European settlers.
Learn about the war of 1812 through interactive displays, enjoy an audio tour to help guide you through the site. There is also a gift shop filled with local artisan products and memorabilia from Sault Ste. Marie. Read more about visiting Ermatinger Clergue National Historic Site here.
The Fall Rendezvous Festival is hosted by the Friends of Ermatinger National Historic Site and funded by the Government of Canada, the Government of Ontario and the City of Sault Ste. Marie.
By Sault Tourism
The Art Gallery of Algoma is a public gallery dedicated to cultivating and advancing the awareness of visual arts in Sault Ste. Marie and Algoma. Approximately 24 exhibitions are mounted each year featuring local, national and international artists. The art gallery also boasts an ever-growing permanent collection of 5,000 works of art and an arts-related resource centre.
In the summer and fall of 2024, the Art Gallery of Algoma hosts a special exhibit by Group of Seven painter Franklin Carmichael, a gallery on the Canadian Wilderness, also featuring works from Group of Seven artists, a beautiful photography display, and pieces of renowned Indigenous art. Keep reading to learn more, or click on this link to go to the Art Gallery website.
The town of Cobalt, Ontario—some 500 kilometres north of Toronto—was established in 1904 following the discovery of rich silver, cobalt, ore, and nickel deposits. At peak production in 1911, Cobalt provided approximately one eighth of the world’s silver. In its heyday, the story of Cobalt was known around the world, and the town attracted miners, scientists, scholars, and of course, artists.
This exhibition, which run to October 12, showcases the work of the artists who visited and documented Cobalt and its silver mines between the First and Second World Wars, after much of the natural resource deposits were depleted. Among them was a rising generation of Canadian modern painters which included Yvonne McKague Housser, Bess Larkin Housser Harris, Isabel McLaughlin, Frederick Banting, A.Y. Jackson, and Franklin Carmichael. These artists created works that depicted Canada as a new, modern industrial nation in step with the future — a contrast to the better-known works from this period that picture Canada as untouched wilderness. While some artists conjured Cobalt as a heroic bastion of industry and enterprise, others focused on the town’s grit and dishevelment. This exhibition and its accompanying publication will explore both sides of this dynamic relationship and shine new light on the settler relationship with the natural landscape.
Organized and circulated by McMichael Canadian Art Collection.
Curated by Dr. Catharine Mastin Ph.D.
Love of Canadian Wilderness features artwork by the Group of Seven from the Art Gallery of Algoma’s permanent collection.
The Group of Seven in Canadian art history remains the most recognizable art group for over a century. One of their favourite places to paint and visit was Algoma and the shores of Lake Superior. This rugged landscape, mostly wild and untouched, remains to this day an inspiration to many contemporary artists.
The way in which the Group of Seven artists depicted the Canadian landscape is still the image instilled in people’s minds when they think about Canada. It is a perception of stunning natural beauty, adventure in the wilderness, solitude, and admiration of nature. Algoma is a huge part of it.
Fifteen Minutes of Fame? presents photographs from the Art Gallery of Algoma’s permanent collection. While technology can facilitate Internet stardom today, these glossy black-and-white photographs by acclaimed American photographers Edward Steichen (1879-1973) and Larry Fink (1941-2023) present fame through the glamorous world of actors, writers, and visual artists from the 1920s to the early 2000s, as well as gritty scenes of boxing matches in the 1990s.
Gallery 3 presents a rotating selection of paintings from the permanent collection and on the lobby of the Art Gallery is where you’ll find work from Norval Morrisseau
Norval Morrisseau (1931-2007) is the most known and recognized Indigenous artist in Canada. He is considered the founder of the Woodland School of art, which is the art style based on the traditional Indigenous legends. It is unmistakably recognizable through the use of bright colours, bold lines, heavy black outlines of forms and X-ray views of people, animals and spirits. He was the first to break traditional rules by depicting spiritual knowledge in his paintings. Morrisseau’s images carry powerful messages, they are full of symbolism and spirituality translating oral into visual stories. This exhibition features a selection of his works from the Art Gallery of Algoma’s permanent collection.
The Art Gallery of Algoma offers a number of tours that are designed to engage out of town visitors and local community members alike. Please contact us about any of the tours listed below. Custom tours are available upon request with 48 hours prior notice. Occasionally, group tours can be booked outside of regular hours of operation dependent on staff availability.
Tours include a Group of Seven Painting Tours, Art & Architecture Tour, Tour and Lunch, Guided Tour and Art Activity or a Wine and Cheese Reception. Get all the details by clicking here.
