Celebrating local history and community pride at the Fort Langley Cranberry Festival
The festival, recognizing cranberry farming in the village and harvest season, featured over 200 vendors
The Fort Langley Cranberry Festival attracts about 35,000 attendees each year. (Shayoni Ganguly)
The Fort Langley Cranberry Festival returned for its 29th year on Oct. 12, featuring vendors, food trucks, live entertainment, and, of course, cranberries.
The festival started in 1995 to celebrate the harvest season and Fort Langley’s long history of cranberry farming, festival organizer Rachelle Cashato wrote in an email statement to The Runner.
“Cranberries have been farmed on the outskirts of the village for generations,” she wrote. “[The festival] has become a deep-rooted community tradition which continues to promote local food production.”
The festival, held each year on the Saturday before Thanksgiving, sees around 35,000 people attend annually, its website reads.
“While celebrating the region’s history and tradition, with the Cranberry Festival, we want to create a great day out, support local businesses and vendors, entertain and bring the community and visitors together in the heart of Fort Langley,” the website reads.
More than 200 vendors were at this year’s festival, selling a wide variety of items such as artisan goods, local produce, plants, flowers, baked goods, and crafts.
One vendor was Lumière Leslie Candles, a home-operated small business that specializes in creating non-toxic, clean-burning soy wax candles. The candles come in a variety of scents, including fall classics like apple pie and maple syrup, and are packaged in glass jars.
The Fort Langley Cranberry Festival brings pride, tourism, and economic development to the local community, Cashato wrote.
“[It’s] a great expression of community pride and a fun day for the entire family,” she wrote.
In 2020, the Eric Woodward Foundation, in agreement with the Fort Langley Business Improvement Association, assumed long-term stewardship of the Fort Langley Cranberry Festival, the event’s website reads. The foundation was created to transition the holdings of Eric Woodward, the mayor of Langley Township, for charitable purposes.
Cranberries have grown naturally in Fort Langley for centuries, and their cultivation can be traced back almost 200 years, according to the BC Cranberries Marketing Commission. The Hudson’s Bay Company established Fort Langley on the banks of the Fraser River as a trading post in 1827.
Here, cranberries were often traded with Indigenous Peoples and packed into barrels to be shipped to San Francisco, according to the commission. Cranberries were also often used on sailing ships to prevent scurvy, a disease caused by vitamin C deficiency.
For more information about the Fort Langley Cranberry Festival, visit www.fortlangleyproject.org/community/cranberryfestival.
