From a Garage Sale to a Festival: The UAFest Origin Story

The festival took place on September 13, 2026. This story was written before it.UAFest 2027: join the waiting list →

In spring 2023, Carleton Place resident Gloria Bradley organized a single community garage sale to help Ukrainian families who had just arrived in Lanark County, fleeing war and rebuilding their lives from nothing. Nobody involved that day imagined it was the first chapter of what UAFest would become.

The funds raised went straight into launching the first Ukrainian Fest Lanark County later that same year — a modest gathering built almost entirely by volunteers, for the people it was meant to help. About 1,000 guests showed up. It was enough to prove the idea worked.

A year later, the festival was roughly three times bigger. By 2025, more than 4,000 people spent their day in Riverside Park for it. The zones changed and the crowd grew, but the reason for doing it never has: one day, freely given, to bring a community closer together.

That's still the shape of UAFest today — a free, grassroots, volunteer-run festival that started as one person's answer to a hard year, and grew because a community leaned in. See how September 13, 2026 went.