Waldheim Museum (Museums Association of Saskatchewan)

By Nick Nielsen

Folk in the Forest

Waldheim hosting first ever fall festival

Sep 5, 2025 | 5:00 AM

For the first time ever, the town of Waldheim is planning to host a fall festival, titled the Folk in the Forest Fall Festival, coming up on September 21. The festival itself has a ton of different things planned from art workshops and Indigenous cultural activities, to a interactive re-enactment of a story from the area’s past.

Recreation and Community Development Manager for the Town of Waldheim Morgan Hamm has been hard at work organizing the festival, with all proceeds generated going towards an accessible playground for toddlers.

“It’s the first ever – we’ve never done a fall festival – so this is my attempt at our first ever fall festival. Our town name means ‘into the forest’, so I’ve called it Folk in the Forest because it’s kind of a cultural heritage festival.”

The festival is set to have all kinds of different events and attractions from beading workshops, farmers markets, truth and reconciliation speakers, and art in the park events just to name a few. The main goal with all of these different attractions is to help raise money for an important addition to the town.

“This coming year, we have a big goal to put a new addition into our park that’s toddler friendly and accessible, so we’re hosting our first ever fundraiser at this event where we’ll be serving different kinds of heritage and fall-themed beverages as a fundraiser for our park funding. We’ll also have a booth set up that’s kind of like a family photo area where you can take pictures and just get your family photos in front of a nice backdrop, and that backdrop is actually a teaser to our upcoming ‘Light up the Park’ massive event we host in November. So it’s kind of all-encompassing with a couple fun things.”

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The most unique attraction coming to the Folk in the Forest Fall Festival is going to be a live production of a famous scandal from the area that took place in the 1910s and 1920s. A company called Live History will be performing an interactive production based around the life of Sgt. John Wilson, a Scottish immigrant who left his family in Scotland in search of a better life, joined the RCMP (then called the Royal North West Mounted Police) in the 1910s, but then found a mistress in Saskatchewan and murdered his wife when she came overseas looking for him.

Sgt. Wilson’s story has been told in the book ‘The Secret Lives of Sgt. John Wilson: A True Story of Love and Murder’ by Lois Simmie. Now, people attending the fall fair will have a chance to relive the investigation around his wife’s death through Live History’s interactive show.

“It’s basically a murder mystery, but it’s based off the Sgt. John Wilson story that happened in the early 1900s between Blaine Lake and Waldheim. I gave them basically a couple pieces of information and some websites with some information on it so they could look it up and get to know the story, and then they are going to do their thing and work that into their skits, and we’re also doing a couple workshops with them.”

The festival has a heavy focus on art, not only in showcasing the art made by people who consider themselves artists, but also encouraging people to create something of their own. Hamm said that was an important part of capturing the town’s spirit.

“One of the things that I’ve noticed, at least in our community, is we have a lot of artists, local artists, budding artists, and we’re a very creative community. Just recently, one of the other businesses in town, the Prairie Forest Boutique, hosted our first Waldheim Comic Con convention in town, and that went over fantastic. So in my opinion, focusing on that arts and culture would be fantastic.”

The Folk in the Forest Festival is set to take place on September 21, and they are still accepting additions to the festival’s events and markets. If interested in joining, you can contact Morgan at m.hamm@waldheim.ca.