Arts and Entertainment

Celebrating 29 years: The history behind the Headwaters Arts Fall Festival

September 4, 2025   ·   1 Comments

By Constance Scrafield

The Headwaters Arts Fall Festival Art Show and Sale will celebrate its 29th Fall Festival this year.

Opening night and reception are Thursday, Sept. 18, from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. at the Alton Mill Arts Centre in Alton.

The festival runs until Oct. 5, with a long list of activities and events, held in the Headwaters Arts Gallery at the Mill throughout that time.

The safe passage by which this festival has blossomed over the years has been part of an actual renaissance here in Orangeville and Dufferin County, over the 1990s, through the hands and efforts of many people to promote and support the arts.

Perhaps Orangeville’s Independent Bookstore BookLore began the swell. Already well established from its first days, opening in December 1989 by Nancy Frater and Ellen Clare in the Credit Creek Mall, selling books mattered, but so did giving back to and being involved with the community. This was largely managed by Frater’s inviting of well-known authors, including a youthful Margaret Atwood, to come give readings of their new books. The proceeds from ticket sales went to support local charities.

In 1994, Signe Ball launched her fabulous quarterly magazine In the Hills. Nancy Frater was among the first to readily support the magazine by placing an ad in the initial issue.

Theatre Orangeville was founded in 1994 by Jim Betts, for which the home was the newly renovated Orangeville Opera House. Betts took on the role of artist director. In 1999, he passed the baton to David Nairn, who immediately transitioned it from a summer theatre to a regional theatre with programming from September to May.

The Museum of Dufferin (MoD) opened the doors of The Big Green Barn in 1994, too. The MoD is the curator and preserver of antiquities of the 1880s, but it also hosts events, rotating art exhibits in the Silo Gallery, and it invites interesting people to speak at staged events.

Sue Powell is the media person for Headwaters Arts and a fine artist herself. In the call for history notes about the growth of the Headwaters Arts Festival, she brought responses and chances to interview from a number of individuals who were there in the 1990s and doing their share.

Al Pace founded Farmhouse Pottery on Hockley Road in 1977, with a studio in a stunning log house he had built. He was the chair of Headwaters Tourism, which he founded in 1994.

At the time, Pace was also supporting numerous studio tours around Dufferin, Caledon, south of Highway 89, and Mulmur north of Highway 89. He had worked on a map, showing the roadways and identifying studio locations.

In an email from Signe Ball, she recalled that she and Jim Lorriman ( a wood turner) were on the Board of Headwaters Tourism, and they co-chaired the committee that produced the first arts fest in 1996.

As Ball points out in her email, the “original idea of the festival was to promote artists all together under an umbrella marketing scheme. The Festival became independent from the tourism association in 2000, registered as a non-profit, expanded considerably, and launched the first Festival Art Show at the museum (MoD), later at SGI.”

Then Diana Hillman took on the chair for the Festival Art Show subcommittee.

Without confident dates, Ball remarks that HAF merged with Headwaters Arts. In due course, an arts partnership with the Alton Mill Arts Centre was struck. The Headwaters Arts Fall Festival Art Show and Sale was secure.

There were parts of the Alton Mill in ruins when the Grant brothers bought the building from their father in the mid-1990s. Finances and advice encouraged them to sell the building and land, but they wanted to hang on. Extensive renovations really began when, in 1999, a wood worker, Carl Borgström, offered to have his shop in the mill and show others that it can work.

Anne-Marie Warburton took a space for her Gallery Gemma, her “first lease in 2006 when the building was still under construction.”

She said, “The current board is doing a fantastic job.”

Jefferson Mappin also saw the possibilities that kept the Grants determined to bring the building to its full potential. The year 2024 was the fifteenth anniversary of the totally renovated Alton Mill.

Actor, producer, Jefferson Mappin was deeply involved in advancing the role of artists and the arts in Canada. He was the National Vice President of the Alliance of Canadian Radio and Television Artists (ACTRA) from 1997-2002.

He was a director of the Headwaters Arts Festival for four years and President between 2003 and 2007, in the Hills of Headwaters region north west of Toronto from 2001 to 2008 (from www.jeffersonmappin.com).

In a telephone interview, Mappin commented, “I had been producing films, doing motion pictures,[Unforgiven with Clint Eastwood and much more] acting, won awards; I hope to get back to producing a bit.”

He continued talking about the “29-year journey of our local arts festival, recalling that Nancy Frater took over the kid fest- inviting kids authors and staging kids events.”

He mentioned Frater and David Nairn formed a partnership between BookLore and Theatre Orangeville to collaborate on bringing well-known authors to Orangeville for their Authors on Stage, an ongoing series, the proceeds of which go entirely to support playwrights to develop new works.

“Nancy sells tickets for everything at the store,” he commented.

For his own part with the arts associations, Mappin said, “It was an important part of my life for the five to six years I was involved in it.

“Artists wanted to have their own arts show – Gallery Gemma has been there since the beginning. She always been a good supporter.”

There were people driving all over the place going to see the many artists, so many and so diverse; they were going to various studios.

“Sue is one of the best water colourists I ever met,” was Mappin’s praise. “She’s a great promoter. When she was working in the government, and was helpful with their grants.”

Indeed, Powell’s understanding and coaching on how best to complete grant applications and her success with them did bring in much needed funds as the renovations proceeded.

What matters most, in Mappin’s opinion, is that the Mill and the Festival have brought all of the artists together. They were toiling away in their own studios and didn’t have a way to get out into the community, but the festival introduced them to each other and the community.

Speaking of the Grant brothers, Mappin noted that the Alton Mill has been the arts centre in this area. All a product develops over the years and the festivals.

“When we joined with them as an art partnership, a major part [of what] the Grant brothers deserve kudos for [is] keeping the arts alive in the area,” Mappin made the point. “They do it with limited funding. They could have done other things with the property for more profit-centred ideas, but they gave it over to the arts community.

“We are blessed and lucky in this area. People come just to be here.”

There have been revelations, and what Mappin observed, “This I admire the most: people banded together and worked hard not only for themselves.There were great little stories how everyone worked hard together – accepted the fact they are not always the best judge of their own art and learned to let the hangers do their jobs for an exhibition.”

The Headwaters Arts Fall Festival Art Show and Sale really did bring the artists together and is drawing tourists.

Said Jefferson Mappin, “It’s been great for making a community.”

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