The flea market is back. Once a local mainstay — bookending the spring and fall events calendars each year — the popular fundraiser by the Canby Historical Society will return to the Clackamas County Fairgrounds this Saturday, May 22.
One of the nonprofit’s primary fundraisers before the pandemic, the flea market will be held in the fairgrounds’ Main Pavilion from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.
Ken Daniels, CHS vice president and longtime chairman of the flea market, says the event will return after its year-and-a-half-long hiatus remarkably good health, with at least 45 vendors in tow.
The market will boast a wide variety of new, used, handmade and repurposed products, gifts and other useful items, including collectibles, antiques, kitchenware, scents and candles, quilts and other crafts.
“We’ll have a lot of variety, new and used things,” Daniels tells The Canby Current. “We’ll have nursery stock on the front porch. You can find almost anything.”
Parking is free, but the CHS will be collecting its usual $2 door fee — which goes toward the Canby Depot Museum and the volunteer-run society’s other operations.
The biannual flea market is the society’s primary fundraiser, along with the July Fourth pancake breakfast — which Daniels says has been canceled the second straight year due to Covid-19.
Fortunately, the group has stayed afloat thanks to the hard work of CHS President Nora Clark and other volunteers in successfully wooing several grants, including one from the Oregon Cultural Trust — and another from Clackamas County Business and Community Services that went toward refunding vendors from last year’s canceled flea markets.
A unique, socially distanced fundraiser took shape over the holidays. From 1990 to 2013, the Canby Area Chamber of Commerce had commissioned and sold a Canby-themed ornament each year.
In 2020, the chamber donated decades worth of unsold ornaments — featuring local treasures such as the W.H. Bair House, Gribble Barn, Canby Grove, Wait Park and the Barlow House — to the Canby Historical Society for resale.
“We’re in OK financial shape,” Daniels says, “But we’re glad to be back with the flea market. We hope a lot of people can come out to see us.”
