Hay, no fair! – Sandwich Fair canceled for the first time in 101 years

SANDWICH — Dan Peaslee has been helping to run the Sandwich Fair for years. Yet, earlier this week, he issued an announcement he hoped he’d never have to make: the Sandwich Fair won’t be held this year due to the coronavirus, please come back in 2021.

“It was painful, it truly was painful. I lost sleep for three weeks over this,” said Peaslee, president of the Sandwich Fair Association.

The Sandwich Fair, held each year on Columbus Day Weekend, serves as the ending punctuation for the northern New England country fair season. But, Peaslee said, the fair association had to make a decision soon, to decide whether to spend tens of thousands of dollars on marketing the fair, and to let the company that brings the rides and attractions know if they would need to register all of their equipment.

There was a business angle to worry about. Last year’s fair drew a robust 37,000 people. Most years hover around 30,000, though, and Peaslee said the fair association doesn’t make any profit off of the fair – money it uses to maintain and improve the fairgrounds – unless they get at least 27,000 paid attendees. There’s a likelihood that people still won’t want to be part of any crowd this fall, which would mean that the nonprofit association stood to lose a lot of money.

The decision was made, though, for a different reason. Peaslee said that on each of those sleepless nights that he spent perseverating over this decision, one fear loomed over dollars and cents – the health of his neighbors.

Sandwich’s roughly 1,500 year-round population includes a lot of older residents, and even if those at-risk people steered clear of the fair, it’s likely their friends and family members would still attend. Peaslee said he consulted with the office of state epidemiologist Dr. Ben Chan, and was told there’s a possibility that the coronavirus will ebb this summer, only to flow back this fall.

“Our main and biggest concern is our community. Sandwich is a mature town, and October is the beginning of the flu season,” Peaslee said, explaining why the association’s board was in unanimous agreement to call off the fair.

Peaslee said he thought the decision was historic and that the Sandwich Fair had never before been canceled. In fact, it happened once before, 101 years ago. He has been informed by the Sandwich Historical Society that the 1919 Sandwich Fair was shut down because of the Spanish Flu.

He doesn’t know who was in charge of the Sandwich Fair 101 years ago, but he pointed out that, whoever it was, they were able to call off the celebration for that one year and still bring the tradition back for future generations. Peaslee said he knows how they were feeling at that time, and he hopes history repeats itself in that respect.

“Good God, we want to run the fair, it’s what we spend our lives doing,” he said, noting that the fair association works year-round to keep the crowds coming back. “I hope I see everyone back in 2021, we’re going to miss the fair as much as anyone.”