Community, competition, and joy: Preparing for the Chilliwack Fair

We are baking the perfect apple pie. 

At least, that’s what the New Cookbook calls it. And it likely has claim to. After all, it is the pie recipe that has won Debora Soutar five medals over the years. 

“Even though I don’t consider myself the best pie maker, I do have medals,” Soutar says, taking them off a hook in the spare bedroom of her Chilliwack home. She brings them to the kitchen for me to see, five beribboned awards with the words “Apple Pie Contest” emblazoned on the front.

“They’re all from the Chilliwack Fair, over time,” she adds. “And then after a while it’s like, ‘I can’t do this anymore, you know. This is embarrassing.’”

Soutar’s mother, Iris Friesen, was the one who started the pie contest at the Chilliwack Fair in 2007, hoping to liven up the Kitchen Arts displays. She encouraged Soutar to enter, even though she had rarely had time for pies when Soutar was growing up. 

Soutar stopped sending her pies to the judging table a decade ago. She is now in charge of the contest her mother began, and encourages others to participate in the friendly competition.

The perfect apple pie

Some people prefer Granny Smiths. Soutar prefers transparents.

“I think that the apples can make a big difference,” she says. The transparents, which she picked from the tree she planted at her old house, are a soft fleshed, pale-skinned apple, and one of the most tart varieties you can grow. Soutar prepared the apples ahead of time, and they are now defrosting in a bag in the sink.

“It’s okay that it’s still a little frozen,” she says, dumping the half-frozen apples into a bowl. “It’ll soften up really quick.

“A lot of people swear by another kind of apple,” she continues. “They like a Granny Smith. It’s quite hard, and they like their pie to be firm. We like it mushy.”

We go back and forth between the cookbook and the bowl of apples, adding a scant cup of sugar, two tablespoons of flour, and a teaspoon of cinnamon.

“I’m not a creative cook. I follow a recipe,” Soutar says. “I think it’s really important for baking to be exact. How can you reproduce something if we didn’t measure?”

But, she notes, sometimes a little creativity is just the ticket for making a memorable dessert. It could be an unusual taste—like the cinnamon-flavoured pie that won over judge and former Chilliwack mayor Sharon Gaetz. Or it could be a distinctive style, like the peach and blueberry pie that won last year.

“Peach pie is pretty,” Soutar says, “but those little blueberries poking up added a lot of interest.”

Prettiness was also important to Soutar’s mother. Friesen grew up during the depression, a time of her life that Soutar describes as “a bit beige and a bit grey and a bit scanty.” In spite, or perhaps because of it, Friesen always loved things that were beautiful, colourful, and elegant. 

“She loved beautiful things and she liked fun things,” Soutar says. “She liked the elevated kitchen arts.” Friesen spent much of her adult life raising her four daughters alone, and that left little time for baking. But in her senior years, she began to establish herself as a volunteer at the Chilliwack Fair. By her mid-60s, she had taken over as chair of the home and garden display. 

“You could say it’s my ‘community thing,’” Friesen told the Chilliwack Progress in 2005. “This community was nice to me when my kids were little and serving as the Display Building chair is my way of saying thanks—while having fun at the same time.”

But things in the building weren’t as fun as Friesen felt they should be. Always competitive, she decided a little live-action judging was just what the fair needed. 

In 2007, Friesen launched the apple pie contest, inviting celebrity judges like then-MP Chuck Strahl, Airport Coffee Shop owner Barbara Mitchell, and Gourmet on the Go owner Gayle Hames to taste test apple pies from Chilliwack bakers. The contest was an instant success, and quickly grew to have a life of its own, inspiring a dozen bakers each year to submit their pies for accolades and much more lucrative prize monies than the fair typically offers.

Friesen remained in charge of the pie contest until her death four years ago. The transition wasn’t as smooth as many would have hoped. In 2021, the pie contest was set to go ahead after a COVID hiatus. But no one was there to run it. 

Soutar was volunteering with the student garden exhibits when her friends told her the news: the pies were there, but nothing was ready. Soutar took over, sourcing plastic forks, picking impromptu judges from the crowd, and emceeing the event with her teacher’s voice when no microphone could be found. Afterwards she went to the fair and offered her services as a pie promoter.

Now, the contest is run by Soutar and two of her three sisters. They will continue the fruit pie contest this year, kicking off the judging at 10:30am on Saturday, Aug. 10. (The fair itself runs from Friday, Aug. 9 to Sunday, Aug. 11.) Soutar didn’t say how many entries the contest had this year, but past years have seen between 10 and 15 pies entered in the competition. The entertainment had always been an important part of the contest, and that will also continue, with Soutar’s singing group performing sea shanties as The Pie-rates.

“I’m turning into my mother,” Soutar jokes. “She always had a clipboard. I have a spreadsheet.”

A women’s history of home and garden

Long before there was a pie contest, there were the home and garden exhibits.

The first Chilliwack Fair was held in the “Crystal Palace”—that is, Jonathan Reece’s barn on Ashwell Road—in 1872. The fair, like others in the region, was primarily an agricultural exhibition focused on improving and celebrating livestock. But, domestic arts also played an important role in the evolution of community fairs in Canada.

Judey Nurse, in her book Cultivating Community: Women and Agricultural Fairs in Ontario, explains how “women-centric exhibits” were important parts of the success of agricultural fairs across Canada. They offered opportunities to share skills, engage in friendly competition, and most importantly, develop community. Even though male writers used a paternalistic tone when writing about the home exhibits, they also understood the importance of those entries in boosting the fair’s attendance.

“The ladies will no doubt do everything in their power to make their department in the fair excel previous years,” the Chilliwack Progress wrote in advance of the 1896 Chilliwack Fair, “and if we might make a suggestion, would say, that as many of their exhibits require a great deal of care and skill to prepare, the ladies cannot begin too soon to elaborate new designs in their various works of art; the floral department we consider is one of their specialties, and nothing adds so much to the attractiveness of the Hall as a prettily arranged floral and art display.”

Although women clearly had their own department, the gender divide between agriculture and home was somewhat fluid in Chilliwack’s early fairs. In 1891, Chilliwack’s married women won prizes for their homemade bread, butter, cheese, preserves, jellies, drawings, crochet, embroidery, knitting, and floral arrangements—some men were represented too, although usually only if they made preserves for work. Later fairs focused on the role of the “housewife,” bringing in businesses to exhibit advances in “modern housekeeping.” Both boys and girls participated in 4H clubs, winning trophies for their well-bred cattle.

(If you want to learn more about the early history of fairs in the Fraser Valley, you can check out our article on fairs through wars, floods, and COVID.)

Today, the home and garden section encompasses the entire third barn of the Chilliwack Fair, highlighting the efforts of gardeners, bakers, artists, hobbyists, and florists in the community. The exhibits are less segregated than they once were—particularly in the children’s categories—but women still make up a large contingent of the home and garden competition.

(Soutar says that nearly all pie contestants have been women, many of whom are young mothers testing their skills. Based on my own observations, many of the home and garden entries at recent fairs were also submitted by women.)

And although the Chilliwack Fair still promotes agricultural excellence as one of its main goals, along with education in “household sciences,” the strongest unstated goal is community—the same as it has been for generations.

“For many women, fairs were occasions where they created life-long friendships, supported community causes, … and simply enjoyed themselves,” Nurse wrote in her book. “The joy, pride, and achievement they experienced motivated most of them to return annually,” and even generationally.

The joy part

Marion Robinson attended her first fair as a young girl in Mission, when that city was branding itself the strawberry capital of Canada. She continued as a horse-loving teen, and later brought her own children to the Mission fair. Now, she watches as her three grandchildren send their vegetables, artwork, maple leaves, and sewing projects to the fair each year.

They are here with her, sitting in the living room of their Rosedale home strewn with bits of Lego and dress up clothes. Jane Sache, 7, and her little brother Stanley, 4, are perched on the couch with their Oma. Edith—a year and a half younger than her older sister—is crouched on the floor, building while we talk.

“The children have done very well,” Robinson says, referring to the many fair entries the siblings have completed over the years. “These three kids, generally, every year enter into the vegetables. And last year you guys did very well. I think Stanley won the biggest maple leaf.”

“He was the only one entered into the maple leaf,” Edith interjects from the floor.

But that didn’t make his win any less important, Robinson says. “Where will the kids start? If you want to start, enter the biggest maple leaf.

“The Sache cousins have classically always placed in biggest maple leaf. It must be Uncle Jim’s tree,” she adds. “It’s a joyful competition because, on some level, the competitors know each other and it’s friendly.”

A joyful competition. The words echo throughout our interview about the fair, burrowing their way unstated in each answer about art entries, garden plots, and prize money.

Jane won a Best in Section rosette for one of her paintings last year, an achievement that left her feeling “excited” and “impressed.” Stanley took home more than $11 in prize winnings last year—one of the reasons he likes entering the fair. And Edith nearly beat her elder sister for the biggest pumpkin, but was a good sport about coming in second.

Kate Sache, Robinson’s daughter and mother to the three prize-winning contestants, has also been a frequent contributor to the fair, entering scarecrows, eggs, quilts, and more. (The quilting entries are her favourite.) For her, competing is a way to keep the fair alive.

“It’s really a privilege to have it happen in our town,” she says. “There’s a lot of towns that don’t have fairs—and having a fair is quite a lovely thing.”

Why is it lovely? As Robinson puts it, it’s “the joy part.” The community spirit, the affordable entertainment, and the competitive camaraderie.

“You don’t have to put in lots,” Sache counsels. “You can pick one thing, and enter that category, and see if you win … Don’t overwhelm yourself by thinking you need to enter every category.”

After all, it’s all for the joy.

Judging the crust

The crust of a pie is everything. Anyone can mix fruit, sugar, and seasoning into a delicious filling. But it takes both technical skill and a bit of luck to bake a firm, flaky, and golden pie crust.

“I shed a lot of tears in my early married life. A lot,” Soutar says, looking at the recipe card that holds her pie crust recipe. “I threw away a lot of play dough.”

That was during her attempts with cold water pastry—a recipe that uses extremely cold water to bind the fat and flour together for a flaky crust. When her mother-in-law gave her a new recipe, one that uses an egg and vinegar to wet the dough, she never turned back. (“Why mess with something that works?”)

The steps are relatively uncomplicated: sift the dry ingredients together, then cut in a suspiciously large amount of vegetable shortening. (You can use butter, but Soutar prefers Crisco because it doesn’t burn as quickly.) Once the shortening and flour create pea-sized balls, it is ready for cold water, egg, vinegar, and some thorough mixing. Once the dough comes away from the edge of the bowl, it’s ready to roll out.

Having made it time and time again, Soutar is confident in her crust recipe. But, there is always uncertainty—much like the fair competition itself.

The Chilliwack Fair has 706 home and garden categories, and two judges make their determinations in each category. (The pie contest has three judges.) Each judge will need to follow a rubric to determine the top three entries in each category. For the pie contest, that includes considerations about crust structure, taste, filling consistency, and overall appearance. For garden entries, it includes examining the item’s form, colour, size, condition, and uniformity.

You can buy guides to judging standards for horticulture and floral designs from the BC Council of Garden Clubs, which contain more than 600 pages of information. As Robinson notes, most exhibitors are not so invested. It’s better to simply talk to the volunteers in the home and garden department, or people who have judged fruits, vegetables, flowers, and baked goods in the past.

“We didn’t know the first time we entered rhubarb not to cut it flush. You’re supposed to leave an inch to show the leaf,” Robinson says. Meeting a former Agassiz Research Centre employee who is now judging at the fair let them learn that particular trick.

Although judging is as fair as it can be, there is always room for subjective taste. It’s how Gaetz’s love of cinnamon influenced the winning pie when she was a judge. It’s how one YouTube-taught teen contestant won a prize for her bravery in pie making even when she didn’t have a winning recipe. (She won for best pie the following year, after baking one each week until she got it right.)

Many of Chilliwack’s pie winners are two-and-done contestants: once they’ve won twice, they know it wasn’t a fluke, and they can retire from competitive pie making. Others return year after year.

Soutar plans to keep the fruit pie contest going into the future, maintaining the entertainment in the home and garden building her mother had inspired so many years ago.

But, she says, everything should change over time. The fruit pie contest has evolved from apples to fruit, and Soutar is considering whether she and her sisters should open it up to tomatoes and pumpkins as well. She says she would love to have the competition as part of a hierarchy of pie contests—the way fairs used to run in the past.

(Up until around the 1990s, local fairs would earn competitors points that would take them to a provincial level at the PNE.)

One thing, however, should stay the same. The community. The joy.

“It’s not like a hockey parent,” Robinson explains. “There’s nobody leaning over the rail going ‘Kill, kill, kill.’ In fact, we take joy in whoever wins. When other people win too, we’re happy for them. Usually we know them.”

Out of the oven

The pie has been in the oven for a while now, and the kitchen smells of sugar and apples. That’s how we know it’s done.

“I have found over time that you can smell when something’s ready. You can smell when the toast is ready. You can smell when the butter has reached the right temperature to put the eggs in,” Soutar says. But, she adds, “the timer for this recipe works really well.”

So at exactly 50 minutes, she grabs a pair of oven mitts and pulls the pie out of its 400F oven. The top is golden brown and the haphazard letters spelling out “wild”—our homage to this year’s fair theme—have crisped up on the crust.

We leave it to cool, and I cut the first piece after lunch when I return home.

Was it an award-winning pie? Although the bottom crust was soggy, the filling was both tart and sweet, and the top crust flaky and rich. The cinnamon complemented the acidity of the apples, and although the crimping lost its definition in the oven, the pie remained well-sealed.

Maybe it could have won. But I also remember the advice of Jane Sache, who has competed in more fair categories during her seven years than many grownups have in their adult lives.

We are standing in front of her garden where she is growing corn, sunflowers, and zinnia for the fair. She is wearing the handmade apron she entered last year. She is holding a fistful of ribbons in one hand, her Best in Section rosette in the other. I point my recorder at her.

“For kids who are entering the fair for the first time this year, what do you think is the most important thing they should remember?” I ask.

She looks off into the distance, brow furrowed, thinking.

“It’s okay to lose,” she says finally.

“We do it for fun right?” her mom adds. Jane nods, then smiles.

It’s always about the joy.