The Festival at Fort Willow was held Saturday at the conservation area in Springwater Township, just outside Barrie.
As historical re-enactors dressed in period regalia walked the grounds, hundreds of visitors had a chance to experience what life was like pre-European contact, during the fur trade and the War of 1812.
Visitors could make candles, find out what items were traded between Indigenous peoples and Europeans, experience first-hand how sailors work on ships, see how food was made by settlers, watch live wood-carving demonstrations, chat with the Barrie Garden Club about the Three Sisters Indigenous gardening practices, muster up and march in the King’s army and listen to the cannons roar.