Every autumn, a scattering of century-old community halls tucked along the back roads of Clearview Township, Ontario, fill up with fiddles, whisky glasses, hypnotized volunteers, and audiences who drove past cornfields to get there.
That’s the Small Halls Festival, a multi-week celebration that turns some of Simcoe County’s smallest and oldest gathering spaces into stages for touring musicians, comedians, playwrights, and storytellers.
In 2026, the festival runs from September 18 through November 7, spreading twelve ticketed headline shows and several free community events across venues in villages many GPS systems still mispronounce: Creemore, Duntroon, Nottawa, Singhampton, and Sunnidale Corners.
What began in 2014 as a single-weekend fundraiser for a handful of aging township halls has grown into one of Ontario’s more distinctive fall festival circuits, the kind that draws repeat visitors who plan entire weekends around a whisky dinner or a documentary screening.
Here’s how it started, how it evolved, exactly what’s on the 2026 calendar, and what to know before buying a ticket.
What Is the Small Halls Festival?
The Small Halls Festival is an annual, multi-venue arts and culture series run by Clearview Township, a rural municipality in Simcoe County roughly ninety minutes north of Toronto.
Rather than gathering everyone in one field or arena, the festival spreads its programming across the township’s community halls, small, community-owned buildings that have hosted euchre nights, wedding receptions, and 4-H meetings for generations.
The 2026 edition runs for seven weeks and includes twelve ticketed headline events plus several free or low-cost community gatherings, among them farmers’ markets, a car show, a guided hike, and a Halloween euchre tournament. Venues in use for 2026 include Creemore Station on the Green, The Duntroon Hall, Dunedin Village Hall, Nottawa Memorial Community Centre, and Singhampton Community Centre, with Sunnidale Corners Community Centre also hosting a show.
Audiences range from a few dozen at an intimate staged reading to a full house at a headline concert, and most nights include a cash bar, local food, and enough breathing room to chat with a performer after the set.
The festival is funded in part by the Government of Ontario and Tourism Simcoe County, is presented in partnership with Tim Hortons, and has been named a Top 100 Festival in Ontario by Festivals & Events Ontario every year since 2017.
How the Small Halls Festival Began
The festival traces back to 2014, when Clearview Township launched it as a way to draw attention, and dollars, to the community halls scattered across the municipality.
Many of these buildings, some over a century old, survive on rental income, bingo nights, and volunteer fundraising, and the festival was conceived as a fundraising initiative for the halls themselves, a way to keep them financially viable while introducing new audiences to spaces they might otherwise never enter.
The concept fit into a wider pattern: a touring small-halls festival had already been running in Prince Edward Island since 2008, and that model had inspired a similar festival in Australia. Clearview’s organizers built their own version around the same basic premise, bringing professionally touring talent into small, unglamorous rooms and letting the setting do half the work.
The first Small Halls Festival brought Juno Award-winning rapper and songwriter Buck 65 to Avening Hall in 2014, an unlikely pairing of a nationally touring recording artist with a wood-frame township hall that normally hosted potlucks. It set the tone for what followed: touring acts playing rooms built for a few hundred people at most, often followed by a chance to linger over coffee and pie with the performer.
The following year brought folk-rock band Skydiggers back to Avening Hall, along with television personality Terry Grant, known for Mantracker, and comedian Ron James at Duntroon Hall, a lineup varied enough to signal early on that the festival wasn’t going to lock itself into one genre.
Word spread through central Ontario’s arts and tourism circuits quickly.
By 2016, acts including Elliott Brood and River Town Saints were playing township halls alongside classical guitarist Jeffrey McFadden, and by 2017 the festival had already picked up its first Top 100 recognition from Festivals & Events Ontario, a designation reserved for events judged to carry significant economic and cultural weight in their region.
History of Small Halls Festival: From a Single Weekend to a Fall-Long Series
For its first several years, the Small Halls Festival ran as one concentrated weekend, packing multiple shows into two or three days each fall.
That format held through 2019, a year that saw performers including Ken Yates, Nice Horse, and Simcoe County singer-songwriter Jamie Williams take the stage across Avening, Brentwood, and Sunnidale Corners.
Then came 2020. Like nearly every live event in Canada, the Small Halls Festival was cancelled for two consecutive years because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the halls that normally filled with music sat empty.
Organizers marked the loss with a short video in which a bell is rung to remember the festivals that came before, a small gesture meant to signal an intent to return once it was safe to gather again.
The festival came back in 2022, but not in its old shape.
Rather than compress everything into one weekend, organizers stretched programming into a full series running from September through November, spaced across roughly seven to eight weeks. That structural shift turned a weekend event into a genuine multi-month festival, giving visitors more flexibility to plan a trip around one specific show rather than trying to catch everything in a single pass, and it has remained the format ever since.
The 2026 lineup follows the same series structure, opening September 18 with a concert and closing November 7 with a whisky-and-prime-rib dinner seven weeks later.
Inside the 2026 Small Halls Festival Lineup
The 2026 Small Halls Festival runs seven weeks and includes twelve ticketed headline shows spread across five different halls, in addition to several free community events described further down. Here is who’s performing, where, and what to expect from each one.
Sink or Swim with Sean McCann — September 18, Creemore
The festival opens at Creemore Station on the Green with Sean McCann, the Newfoundland singer and founding member of Great Big Sea, performing his solo show Sink or Swim from 7:00 to 11:00 p.m. McCann built a substantial solo career around themes of recovery, resilience, and community after stepping away from Great Big Sea, and this tour blends new original material with the singalong favourites that made his name.
Tickets are $40 and the show is a 19-plus event, with mocktails and light refreshments available and no ATM on site.
Dayna Reid — September 19, Duntroon
The Duntroon Hall hosts a night of country music built around Dayna Reid, an Elmvale-raised singer-songwriter who broke through with her Top 40 single “She’s Me” and was named iHeartRadio’s Future Star. Reid released her debut album She’s Me in 2024 and has since been nominated for Breakthrough Artist and Female Artist of the Year at the CMAO Awards, with performance credits at Boots & Hearts, Calgary Stampede, and Cavendish Beach Music Festival. The evening opens with Two Lane Hwy, the duo of Mike and Erica McCarthy, running 7:00 to 11:00 p.m.
Tickets are $50 and the event is open to ages twelve and up, with a cash bar and food truck on site.
We Lend a Hand: Documentary Screening — September 20, Dunedin
Dunedin Village Hall hosts a daytime program built around We Lend a Hand: The Forgotten Story of the Ontario Farmerettes, a documentary about the roughly 40,000 teenage girls who volunteered on Ontario farms during and after the Second World War to sustain food production. Running from 11:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., the event includes two screenings, at noon and 3:00 p.m., each followed by a question-and-answer session, plus a vendor market featuring local female farmers and artisans throughout the day.
General admission is $20, and the event is open to all ages.
Shane Cloutier & The Bloodflowers — October 3, Sunnidale Corners
Sunnidale Corners Community Centre turns into a blues-rock venue for The Bloodflowers, fronted by singer-songwriter Shane Cloutier and rounded out by bassist Rups Yu, drummer Clay Skinner, and keyboardist Gabor Szepesi, who also serves as artistic director of the Wasaga Beach Blues Festival. The band’s sound draws comparisons to Gov’t Mule and Incubus, mixing blues influence with a modern rock edge across a high-energy set.
Running 7:00 to 11:00 p.m., tickets are $45 for this 19-plus show, and food is included with the ticket price alongside a cash bar.
That Hypnotist Guy Comedy Show — October 8, Nottawa
Billed as Ontario’s only full-time professional comedy hypnotist, That Hypnotist Guy brings an audience-participation show to Nottawa Memorial Community Centre from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., pulling volunteers on stage for improvised, family-clean comedy that changes every night depending on who’s brave enough to sit up front.
Tickets are $35 for this 19-plus event, with complimentary appetizers and a cash bar provided.
Amazing Race Clearview: Small Halls Edition — October 17, Creemore
Creemore Station on the Green serves as home base for a daylong, team-based scavenger hunt modeled on the reality show it’s named for, running 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Two-person teams travel by car between checkpoints across Clearview Township, completing challenges for clues, with costumes encouraged and bonus points awarded for effort. The event is marshalled by Julia Viola and Olivia Curto, contestants from Season 10 of The Amazing Race Canada, and the $50 ticket covers both lunch and dinner for competitors.
It’s a 19-plus event.
Queen Milli of Galt: A Staged Reading — October 17, Dunedin
The same evening, Dunedin Village Hall hosts a staged reading of Queen Milli of Galt, a play by Gary Kirkham based on a true story: in 1972, an elderly Galt, Ontario woman had her tombstone engraved claiming she was the wife of the exiled Duke of Windsor, formerly King Edward VIII, and the play flashes back to a 1919 royal visit to Canada to explore how that claim came to be.
Running 8:00 to 10:30 p.m., standard admission is $30 for this 19-plus show, with a $150 VIP option that adds a five-course farm-to-table dinner and wine at 5:30 p.m., prepared by a local chef and shared with the cast.
Elbows Up Whisky Night — October 24, Singhampton
Singhampton Community Centre, a converted former church, hosts a curated Canadian craft whisky nosing featuring selections from distilleries across the country, paired to highlight each spirit’s character. Running 7:30 to 10:00 p.m., the evening also includes a silent auction and a cash bar, with mocktails available for guests who’d rather skip the whisky.
Tickets are $85 for this 19-plus event.
Hike the Bruce Trail — October 25, Singhampton
Singhampton Community Centre serves as the meeting point for an escorted walk along the Bruce Trail, taking in the escarpment lookouts and limestone crevices the area is known for. Hikers gather at 1:00 p.m. sharp for a guided route running until roughly 3:00 p.m., with organizers recommending advance registration so they can plan for group size. The hike is free and open to all ages and ability levels, with free parking provided at the community centre.
Participants are asked to dress for the weather and bring their own water and snacks, since there are no vendors along the trail.
Medium to Bloody Dinner Theatre — October 30, Creemore
Creemore Station on the Green hosts a Halloween-adjacent dinner theatre performance by the Collingwood Improv Artists, who attempt, unsuccessfully by design, to contact the spirit of Houdini across a chaotic, comedic séance. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. with complimentary hors d’oeuvres, dinner is served at 7:00 p.m., and the evening runs until 10:00 p.m.
Tickets are $70 for this 19-plus show, with a cash bar and no ATM on site.
The Stories That Determine Us: An Afternoon with R.H. Thomson — November 1, Singhampton
Award-winning actor, author, and arts advocate R.H. Thomson appears at Singhampton Community Centre for an afternoon talk on how inherited stories shape the way we understand war and remembrance, drawing on his book By The Ghost Light: Wars, Memory and Families and his work building The World Remembers-Le Monde Se Souvient, an international First World War commemoration exhibit. Thomson, a Member of the Order of Canada and recipient of the Governor General’s Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, is also known to television audiences as Matthew Cuthbert in Anne with an E.
The talk runs 2:00 to 4:00 p.m., includes a live Q&A, and is priced at $30 for ages twelve and up.
Songwriters that Rock: Women in Song & Stories — November 5, Nottawa
Nottawa Memorial Community Centre hosts an intimate songwriter circle featuring Romney Getty, Laura Somers, Motes & Oats, and Jess Bowman, four artists trading original songs and the personal stories behind them before joining together to back one another on stage.
Running 7:00 to 9:30 p.m., general admission is $35 and the event is open to all ages, with a complimentary pie and ice cream bar included.
Single Malt Whisky Dinner — November 7, Singhampton
The festival closes at Singhampton Community Centre with a Scottish-themed dinner pairing single malt whisky sampling with prime rib, haggis, neeps, and tatties. Doors open at 6:00 p.m. with dinner and whisky nosing beginning at 6:30 p.m., running until 8:30 p.m., and a silent auction runs alongside the meal.
Tickets are $150 for this 19-plus event, and Scottish attire is encouraged though not required.
Free and Family-Friendly Events Around the Festival
Alongside the ticketed headline shows, the 2026 season includes several lower-cost or free events aimed at local families and day visitors.
The Brentwood Farmers’ Market runs Thursdays from September 4 through October 9 at Brentwood Community Centre, from 3:00 to 7:00 p.m., while the Creemore Farmers’ and Craft Market runs Saturdays from September 5 through October 31 at Creemore Station on the Green, from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Singhampton Park hosts a Show and Shine classic car display on October 3 from 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., timed to coincide with the Bloodflowers concert that evening.
Hikers can join a guided walk of the Bruce Trail departing from Singhampton Community Centre on October 25 from 1:00 to 3:00 p.m., and cardplayers can close out the month with a Halloween Progressive Euchre Tournament at Sunnidale Corners Community Centre on October 31, from 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.
How to Buy Small Halls Festival Tickets
Tickets for the 2026 Small Halls Festival went on sale Monday, July 27, at 12:00 p.m., through Ticketscene.
Prices across the 2026 lineup range from $20 for the daytime documentary screening up to $150 for the Single Malt Whisky Dinner and the VIP dinner option at Queen Milli of Galt, with most evening concerts and theme nights falling between $35 and $85.
Age restrictions vary by event rather than applying uniformly across the festival. Songwriters that Rock and the farmers’ markets are open to all ages, Dayna Reid’s concert and the R.H. Thomson talk are open to ages twelve and up, and the majority of evening concerts, comedy shows, and dinner events are restricted to guests nineteen and older.
All sales through TicketScene are final, and Clearview Township, which owns and operates the festival, does not issue refunds to ticket holders under any circumstances, so it’s worth confirming a date works before completing a purchase.
Cash is the practical currency once you’re inside the halls. Because many of these venues are small and located in areas with limited high-speed internet access, most do not accept credit or debit cards at the bar or concession table, even for guests who bought their entry ticket online with a card. A handful of 2026 events, including Songwriters that Rock, note that debit is accepted in addition to cash, but the festival’s general guidance is to bring cash regardless of which show you’re attending.
The nearest banking options are a TD branch in Stayner and a TD ATM inside the Creemore Foodland grocery store.
How to Get to Small Halls Festival: Getting to Clearview Township and Planning Your Visit
Clearview Township sits in Simcoe County, roughly ninety minutes north of Toronto, and is reachable via Highway 26 connecting to the Highway 400 corridor, or via Airport Road, also known as County Road 42, and Highway 124 for visitors coming from the Greater Toronto Area or the Kitchener-Waterloo region.
Parking is free at every festival venue, with a mix of on-street parking and municipal lots serving each village; accessible parking is limited at some of the older halls, though organizers note they work to accommodate guests who need it.
Because the festival’s five 2026 venues sit in five separate villages, spread roughly twenty minutes apart by car, visitors attending more than one show often build a weekend around it rather than a single evening.
Bed-and-breakfast accommodations are scattered throughout the township for those staying overnight, and downtown Creemore and Stayner both offer local shopping and dining, with several merchants running promotions tied to the festival for visitors who mention it.
Schedule changes and last-minute updates are posted on the festival’s own site and social channels as well as through Clearview Township’s tourism arm, Discover Clearview, so it’s worth a quick check the morning of a show, particularly for the outdoor events like the car show and the Bruce Trail hike, which are more exposed to weather than the indoor concerts and dinners.
Small Halls, Big Season: Get Your Ticket and Enjoy the Autumn/Winter Season
Twelve ticketed shows, five villages, and seven weeks is a fairly precise way to describe a festival that started with one band playing one hall for one weekend back in 2014.
The 2026 season keeps the format that’s defined the festival since its 2022 return, spacing marquee names like Sean McCann and Dayna Reid alongside smaller, stranger bookings like a Houdini-themed dinner theatre and a hypnotist show, all inside buildings that most visitors would otherwise drive straight past.
Meet a fundraiser for aging community halls that has, over a decade, turned into a genuine reason to plan a fall trip north of Toronto.
For anyone weighing which date to book first, the two whisky-focused nights and the Queen Milli VIP dinner tend to sell their limited seating fastest, while the documentary screening and Songwriters that Rock remain the most accessible entry points for a first visit.
Tickets, full show details, and any schedule updates are available through the festival’s official site and Ticketscene. Get your tickets here.
