MOOSE JAW — While hundreds of visiting Shriners gathered in Moose Jaw last week for the Midwest Shrine Association (MSA) convention, the event also offered local entrepreneurs a chance to shine.
At the three-day marketplace inside the Moose Jaw Exhibition Grounds, business owners Darlene Baylis and Diane Loos said the gathering provided valuable connections with both residents and out-of-town visitors.
Baylis, owner of Uranus Fudge — a name that tends to draw a chuckle as often as it draws customers — said her business is as much about fun as it is about flavour. Over time, she has created more than 200 varieties of fudge, often rotating between 10 and 14 options at each show. Among the selections was a particular mango fudge that quickly stood out as a crowd favourite.
“I’ve always wanted to have a fudge business, so I was trying to find something for a name that would be catchy,” Baylis said. “Somebody suggested the name ‘Uranus Fudge,’ because even though it’s pronounced YOOR-uh-nuhs, everybody says yer-AN-us, which is just comical.”
Nearby, Loos greeted customers at her “K9 & Feline Treats and Things” booth. She said she prides herself on using local, farm-sourced ingredients for her healthy pet products, with beef and pork supplied by Mayberry Cattle Co. & Meats just 40 kilometres south of Moose Jaw.
Loos said she personally samples each of her homemade treats before offering them to customers, reasoning that if they are good enough for pets, they should be good enough for her as well. She even demonstrated this at the trade show, happily nibbling on her own creations. Not every experiment has been a success, though — she recalled one spleen-based recipe that left such a lingering aftertaste she decided to retire it altogether.
Both vendors said that, while traffic was a little quieter than expected, the opportunity to meet people from across North America was worthwhile.
“You know, it’s been quieter than I expected … but still, this event has been very supportive,” Loos said. “People who have come through are very supportive in purchasing items, talking to us, and sharing stories — and that’s important too, right? We get to meet people and make connections.”
The convention drew more than 600 Shriners and their families, boosting hotel bookings, filling restaurants, and giving local businesses a rare chance to showcase themselves to an international audience.
Both said they valued hearing stories from travellers who had noticed everything from Saskatchewan’s gravel roads to its prairie winds. Many American visitors remarked that they were struck by how quickly paved highways gave way to long stretches of gravel once outside city limits — a common feature for locals, but an unusual sight for guests from more densely populated states.
While gravel roads are not uncommon in the U.S. Midwest, visitors noted that Saskatchewan seemed to have far more of them stretching across the open prairie, making the contrast especially noticeable on their drives to Moose Jaw.
For Baylis and Loos, the real value of the convention was how it turned casual chats about farms, weather, and gravel roads into something larger — an exchange of perspectives that put Moose Jaw’s small businesses and prairie way of life on display for an audience that might never have discovered them otherwise.
For more information about Uranus Fudge, email [email protected] or call 306-550-4604. K9 & Feline Treats and Things can be reached at [email protected] or by phone at 306-630-3008.
To learn more about the broader Shriners MSA convention, visit MSA2025.com.
