MUSIC FAIR AT DIXIE PLAZA (1958–1960)

The remarkable three summers when Broadway came to Lakeview and Port Credit, Ontario

For three extraordinary summers, from June 1958 to the autumn of 1960, a giant green circus tent erected beside Dixie Plaza in what is now Mississauga brought the excitement of Broadway musical theatre to a suburban community on the shores of Lake Ontario.

Known as Music Fair, this professional theatre-in-the-round attracted celebrated performers from Broadway, Hollywood and television. Audiences enjoyed lavish productions of American musicals, operettas and stage comedies, often featuring performers whose names were familiar from New York theatre marquees and motion-picture screens.

Its significance extended beyond the performances. The theatre recruited Canadian singers, dancers, musicians and stagehands, created opportunities for emerging artists, and brought an international theatrical community into close contact with residents of Lakeview, Port Credit and the surrounding neighbourhoods.

Although commonly associated with Port Credit, Music Fair was situated in Lakeview, in the former Toronto Township, on land beside Dixie Plaza and the Lakeview Golf Course. The two neighbouring communities shared in its brief cultural flowering.

1. A Broadway theatre rises beside Dixie Plaza

The story began on November 25, 1957, when American theatrical producer Lewis Fisher, president of Music Fair Limited and associated with the successful Niagara Melody Fair operation in New York State, leased land from Principal Investments, the owners of Dixie Plaza.

His ambition was to introduce Canada’s first outdoor theatre of its kind: a professional summer theatre built around a central circular stage, bringing performers unusually close to their audiences.

Construction took place on part of the former Pallett farm, west of Dixie Road, beside the Lakeview Golf Course. The facilities were ambitious for a suburban community in the late 1950s.

AUDIENCE CAPACITY
2,000
Seats surrounding the stage

CENTRAL STAGE
35 ft
Diameter of circular platform

TENT FOOTPRINT
20,000
Square feet, as recorded

PARKING CAPACITY
1,000
Automobiles

The green canvas tent had a blue-and-orange interior, with 2,000 seats arranged around a removable stage. A substantial adjoining building housed dressing rooms, offices, workshops, concessions and the box office. Unlike a conventional proscenium theatre, performers could be viewed from all sides.

On April 30, 1958, Toronto Township Reeve Mary Fix broke ground for the theatre. She officially opened it on June 23, 1958, ceremonially illuminating the tent before a packed audience.

The occasion was attended by local dignitaries, including former Ontario premier T. L. Kennedy and Port Credit Reeve Stephen Bradley.

For a growing suburban municipality, the arrival of professional musical theatre was an exceptional cultural event.

2. The inaugural season: Summer 1958

Music Fair opened with Irving Berlin’s Annie Get Your Gun, starring Broadway performers Betty Jane Watson as Annie Oakley and William Shriner as Frank Butler.

The inaugural summer presented six major productions, typically running for two weeks each.

Dates, 1958	Production
June 23 – July 5	Annie Get Your Gun
July 7–19	Silk Stockings
July 21 – August 2	Song of Norway
August 4–16	Happy Hunting
August 18–30	Oklahoma!
September 1–13	The Boy Friend

1958 performance dates recorded by local historian Kathleen A. Hicks in Lakeview: Journey From Yesterday, pp. 268–269.

The productions offered audiences a remarkable range of musical styles: Irving Berlin’s popular American songs, Cole Porter’s witty Broadway sophistication, Rodgers and Hammerstein’s celebrated musical storytelling, and European operetta traditions.

A particularly memorable performance was Silk Stockings, featuring Broadway actress Rae Allen. One theatre enthusiast who attended as a youngster subsequently recalled walking approximately five kilometres along the shoulder of the Queen Elizabeth Way to reach the Saturday matinees. He returned regularly throughout all three seasons, describing how the productions transported audiences to the imagined worlds of Paris, Scotland, Oklahoma and Manhattan.

3. The stars who came to Dixie Plaza

The 1959 and 1960 seasons continued the ambitious mixture of Broadway musicals and popular stage comedies.

Among the performers documented in historical accounts were:

James Garner — John Loves Mary (1960)

Already a television celebrity through Maverick, Garner appeared in this romantic stage comedy. He also played golf at the neighbouring Lakeview Golf Course, where professional Larry Edwards remembered him as an accomplished player.

Eve Arden — Goodbye, Charlie

The celebrated stage, film and television comedienne brought her comic talents to Music Fair in George Axelrod’s popular play.

Red Buttons — The Teahouse of the August Moon

The Academy Award-winning actor and comedian appeared in the stage comedy set in postwar Okinawa.

Roddy McDowall — Meet Me in St. Louis

Already famous from his youthful film roles, McDowall appeared in this nostalgic American musical alongside singer Jill Corey.

Dorothy Collins — South Pacific

The Canadian-born singer and television personality appeared in the celebrated Rodgers and Hammerstein musical.

Other featured artists included Rae Allen, Gretchen Wyler, Nancy Andrews, British musical-theatre star Jeannie Carson in Finian’s Rainbow, and French entertainer Geneviève in Can-Can.

Historical accounts and audience reminiscences also identify productions of Brigadoon, Show Boat, The King and I, Bells Are Ringing, The Most Happy Fella, The Student Prince, The Mikado, and The Pirates of Penzance.

On July 9, 1960, a performance of My Fair Lady was also recorded by a local attendee, Harold Kennedy. The surviving local history includes a photograph of former Music Fair employee Colin Hamilton in costume from that production.

The sources establish that these works appeared during Music Fair’s three seasons, although complete verified performance dates and cast lists for 1959 and 1960 remain to be reconstructed from original theatre programs.

4. Broadway’s creative talent behind the scenes

Music Fair was not simply a parade of visiting celebrities. It was a working professional theatre company employing directors, conductors, choreographers, dancers, musicians and technical personnel.

A contemporary September 1957 report in Billboard described the planned venture as a $200,000 theatre corporation backed by American and Canadian interests. Alongside Lewis Fisher, the organizers included Frank Abate, Max Clarkson, Kenneth Gill, James Alexander Renwick and Bertram Wilkes.

Among its most distinguished artistic personnel were:

• Zachary Solov, choreographer and former ballet master of New York’s Metropolitan Opera. His career spanned Broadway, television, opera and summer theatre. His professional papers are preserved in the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.
• Mario Bernardi, musical conductor, who subsequently became the founding conductor of Canada’s National Arts Centre Orchestra in 1969.
• John Fenwick, conductor and musician, later associated with the Charlottetown Festival as its music director from 1964 to 1977.
• Richard Casey, identified in local historical records as a stage director at Music Fair.
• Victor Braun, a young chorus performer who subsequently developed an international operatic career.

These connections demonstrate that Music Fair was part of the broader North American theatrical circuit, drawing on talent associated with major performing-arts institutions.

The productions were organized through a sister-theatre relationship with Melody Fair in North Tonawanda, New York. An eyewitness recalls a rotating system in which performers spent approximately two weeks at one theatre, rehearsing their next production before moving across the border.

This arrangement gave the Toronto Township audiences access to a succession of professional performers and productions. Importantly, these were locally staged summer-stock productions, rather than necessarily complete original Broadway companies travelling intact from New York.

5. When Broadway performers became neighbours

Perhaps the most charming and least formally documented aspect of Music Fair was the relationship between its visiting performers and the surrounding residential community.

As recalled in local accounts, performers, dancers, directors and other theatrical personnel were billeted in homes or accommodated within nearby neighbourhoods during their engagements.

The image is an evocative one: a New York dancer staying in a quiet Lakeview household; a visiting stage director walking along a suburban street; performers discussing the previous night’s production over breakfast before rehearsals under the big tent.

These were the kinds of everyday encounters that brought an otherwise distant theatrical world into the neighbourhood.

Published local history confirms that Broadway and Hollywood personalities could be seen around Dixie Plaza during these summers. A 2007 Heritage Mississauga publication specifically recalls celebrity sightings in the shopping centre.

One particularly well-documented encounter occurred next door at the Lakeview Golf Course. Former golf professional Larry Edwards remembered James Garner visiting the course and playing exceptionally well, regularly scoring in the low seventies.

For residents, encounters like these would have blurred the line between a distant celebrity and a temporary neighbour.

Historical qualification: Although the surrounding-neighbourhood billeting tradition is an important part of the story, the published sources I located do not independently identify particular host families, boarding addresses or which performers stayed with them. These details deserve further investigation through oral-history interviews, advertisements and surviving company records.

6. A training ground for Canadian performers

Music Fair’s contribution to Canadian cultural development may have been as significant as its imported celebrity talent.

Local performers were employed alongside visiting professionals. Singers, dancers, musicians and stagehands gained experience with demanding production schedules, established theatrical techniques and the particular challenges of performing in the round.

For aspiring Canadian artists, these opportunities provided practical exposure to professional standards without requiring them to leave Canada.

The young singer Victor Braun, for example, participated in the chorus before establishing his international opera career. Mario Bernardi’s involvement also places Music Fair within the formative history of major Canadian performing-arts institutions.

A young local resident, Colin Hamilton, worked in the theatre’s box office and subsequently pursued acting. His participation is another illustration of how Music Fair connected the neighbourhood with a wider theatrical world.

7. The curtain falls: Autumn 1960

Despite its ambitious programming, major performers and enthusiastic audiences, Music Fair survived only three seasons.

The explanation preserved in Kathleen A. Hicks’s local history was a persistent engineering problem: the theatre had been constructed above an underground watercourse associated with the neighbouring golf course.

Flooding repeatedly affected the site. Eventually, the water damage became too severe, and the theatre closed in the autumn of 1960.

The great green tent disappeared, but memories remained.

Former Mississauga mayor Ron Searle, who attended performances with his wife Mollie, later described the pleasure of having a Broadway show in one’s own backyard.

The theatre’s closing marked the loss of an unusual cultural institution that had, however briefly, transformed an ordinary suburban shopping-centre property into a major stage.

8. The legacy of Music Fair

Music Fair deserves recognition as an important but often overlooked chapter in the cultural history of Mississauga, Port Credit, Lakeview and Canadian professional theatre.

It offered more than summer entertainment. It demonstrated that internationally recognized performing arts could flourish outside established downtown theatrical districts. It enabled Canadian talent to work alongside accomplished American performers and created a cultural connection between New York State and Toronto Township.

It also gave a young suburban community an identity as a place where ambitious artistic projects could be undertaken.

Today, Dixie Plaza survives in transformed form as Dixie Outlet Mall, while the Music Fair itself has largely vanished from the physical landscape.

Yet for those who attended, and for families who remember its performers becoming temporary neighbours, the tent was never merely a structure. It represented three summers when the music, glamour, comedy and artistry of Broadway came astonishingly close to home.

From 1958 to 1960, Music Fair brought Broadway to the suburbs — and, for three unforgettable summers, made Lakeview and Port Credit part of the wider theatrical world.

Historical sources and further research

The most useful documentary sources for preserving and expanding this history are:

1. Kathleen A. Hicks, Lakeview: Journey From Yesterday (2005), pp. 268–269. The most substantial accessible local history, including the opening ceremony, original productions, visiting celebrities, flooding and closure. It also reproduces a contemporary illustration of the tent from the Port Credit Weekly. Read the book, hosted by the City of Mississauga.

2. Heritage Mississauga, Heritage News, Winter 2014 and Fall 2007. Additional historical accounts of the theatre and its association with Dixie Plaza.

3. Billboard, September 9, 1957. A contemporary entertainment-industry report describing Music Fair’s planned development, financial backing and organizers.

4. Willy Or Won’t He, Mercoledi Musicale (2018 and later). First-person audience reminiscences describing many productions, performers and the cross-border summer-stock arrangement. Read the eyewitness recollections.

5. New York Public Library, Zachary Solov Papers. Professional archival records potentially useful for identifying original production programs and choreography. Explore the collection.