The Moose Jaw Senior Centre, inside the old Timothy Eaton's building at 510 Main Street North, is not the first place most people would look for a tattoo artist, a tea-leaf reader and a rack of second-hand clothes. On October 24, 2026, that is exactly what will be there. Lavender Moon Market, organized by PRISM Community Services Inc., is a free, all-ages market built around what its organizers describe as a witchy, inclusive, queer and alternative celebration of the season.
Erin Hidlebaugh, a PRISM board member who serves as the organization's event and volunteer coordinator, told Discover Moose Jaw that the market is meant to do several things at once. "We are putting on a witchy, inclusive, queer, alternative market to celebrate the season and celebrate queerness and to celebrate everything kind of witchy and spooky," she said.
The lineup is deliberately unusual for a prairie craft fair. About 20 vendors are expected, with offerings that range from tattoos and tea readings to an author. There will be a pre-loved clothing sale, which the organizers frame as a chance to find affordable clothing in a warm and affirming environment rather than a scramble through bins. A small canteen will serve baking donated by Savem Sweets. Among the vendors is a young person selling jewelry with specifically queer designs, which Hidlebaugh described as a meaningful way to show a loved one that they are seen and supported. For anyone inclined to get a head start on Christmas shopping, the market is timed to make that possible, whether the gift is for someone else or for oneself.
Admission is free, and visitors who are able are encouraged to bring a donation for the Moose Jaw Food Bank, and non-perishable goods will be collected on site. The reasoning behind the drive is straightforward. Hidlebaugh noted that many people in the queer community rely on food bank services, which makes the collection an opportunity to support local families rather than an afterthought.
The origin of the market is less about commerce than about company. Hidlebaugh said the idea grew out of the board's expanding interest in alternative markets and alternative therapies, combined with a simpler impulse to bring people together. "We just really wanted to celebrate everybody who's just needing a little bit of community and that sort of thing," she said.
That impulse runs through everything PRISM does. The organization describes itself as a grassroots nonprofit formed to support, connect and celebrate the 2SLGBTQIA+ community in Moose Jaw and the surrounding rural areas, and it is candid about why it exists: the community had become isolated and unsupported, and the founding board set out to rebuild it. PRISM Community Services Inc. became a legally incorporated nonprofit in Saskatchewan on June 25, and its founding story is a very prairie mixture of pragmatism and loneliness. One of its founders, Sarah, jokes that she started PRISM to find a date, but the account on the organization's website is more melancholy: after her partner of ten years left shortly after the move to Moose Jaw, she discovered how hard genuine community and connection could be to find there. Rather than simply complain about the gap, she started building something to fill it.
The group's stated values are safety, visibility and belonging, and its programming reflects an awareness that not everyone it serves lives in town. Alongside peer support gatherings, monthly connection events and community-led sessions on mental health, allyship and intergenerational understanding, PRISM runs a support initiative for 2SLGBTQIA+ people moving to Moose Jaw or living in rural Saskatchewan, offering guidance, safety tips and local connections. Its members, as the organization puts it, include queer veterans, newcomers, allies and longtime Moose Jaw residents. A market with tarot-adjacent tea readings and oddities on the tables is, in that light, less of a novelty and more of a statement about who gets to feel at home in a small city.
The setting suits the theme better than it might first appear. Timothy Eaton Gardens occupies the historic Timothy Eaton's Building, a Municipal Heritage Property in downtown Moose Jaw that once housed an Eaton's department store. Putting a queer alternative market inside a former department-store landmark is the kind of accidental poetry that a small-city community group could hardly plan better.
One practical note for anyone planning to attend: the published times vary. The Discover Moose Jaw article announcing the market lists Saturday hours of 11 a.m. to 5 p.m., while PRISM's own event page and events listing give 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The organizer's own listing is the safer bet, so check PRISM's page or social media before setting out. The date itself, October 24, 2026, is consistent across sources, as is the free admission and the food bank collection.
What the market will not be is a typical vendor hall. It is a room full of tattoos, tea leaves, handmade goods, vintage finds and donated baking, assembled by a nonprofit that is still in its first years of existence and still, by its own account, in the early stages of building something lasting. The entry is free. The point is the company.