Toronto Canadian National Exhibition (CNE)
And then came Toronto – the last spot of the season for me,
and anyone else who wasn’t going to the US to do the winter fair circuit down
there. Originally I wasn’t supposed to go to Toronto
– I was going to leave after Prince Albert to get back to Red Deer on time for
when college started at the beginning of September. The CNE plays through Labour Day, so it meant
being about two weeks late to start college.
Terry and the crew worked really hard at convincing me to do Toronto with
them. It’s the longest, and by far the
busiest, spot of the Canadian season and they needed me. I balked, and Terry finally convinced me by
promising me that he would pay for me to get home after Toronto by any means
that I chose. I think he expected me to
choose to fly, but I chose the train.
We didn’t get our week off between Regina and Toronto, but
we did get one complete day off and I spent it going off the lot exploring
around Toronto a little bit. I walked
around Queen Street and through the Fashion District a little. That kind of blew my little-city on the
prairie brain.
The CNE is twenty-one days long; opening daily at 10:00AM
and closing down around 12:30AM. This
year, though, we rarely got out before 2:30AM.
The local crew who was hired to clean up the grounds after we closed was
on strike because they were only making $16/hour. So, us Conklin employees, who average about
$2.00 to $2.50/hour after everything is said and done, had to stay late after
work every night and weren’t allowed to leave until every last scrap of litter,
every last cigarette butt was picked up.
Toronto was busy enough that our privileges had to be
stripped, and sometimes we were lucky to get one one-half-hour long break a
day. If we did get a longer one and then
it got busy, we’d have to come back to work if Terry could find us. So, I didn’t even go home on my good breaks;
I disappeared instead.
Toronto was also when Lee came to work with us. She’s a nice lady, but I didn’t enjoy working
for her. She had been John’s manager for
six years but then finally quit because she hated it. The money called her back, but it was really
too late by then – things had moved on.
John was a manager by then, and you can’t have two managers for one
joint. Terry knew that, but Rusty
couldn’t say no to Lee, and so Lee and John and I all walked on eggshells in
Toronto. Lee completely destroyed the
well-oiled machine that had been the big joint while John and I had been the
team working it.
After the first couple of days in Toronto, Ian
disappeared. I suspect he went to his
girlfriend in PA who had him convinced he had gotten her pregnant, even though,
obviously, if the girl was pregnant, Ian wasn’t the father. They hadn’t known each other long enough for
her to be certain she was pregnant if Ian were the father.
Toronto tires a person to the core. Seven or eleven days at one spot is
endurable, but twenty-one days non-stop is harrowing. It doesn’t help that Toronto is the most
objectionable, snotty crowd of people you’ll ever see when they’re at the fair. I couldn’t stand people by this time, so I
spent as much time as I could hiding in the back sticking hot dogs. I resented it if John or Lee even helped me
because I wanted to do it all; it stopped me from having to serve all the
(shudder) people.
One of my favorite memories is leaving the cookhouse,
following about 20 feet behind CJ, one of Rick’s roommates. We were in the middle of the CNE, and
everyone was beyond exhaustion. CJ was
walking so slowly… shoulders stooped… that he was almost standing still. A very pretty young woman walked past him,
and in slow motion, he turned his head to watch her walk by. I thought to myself wow… you’re completely
exhausted but you still have that in you… I’m impressed. When he’d turned nearly completely around, he
saw me watching him. I laughed. He laughed.
We shared a laugh, but not a word.
Then we went, slowly, back to work.
Because everyone is so tired during the Toronto show,
there’s an incredible amount of injuries during the time. Rick was one of them. He was fixing a Scare on his dark ride - a
witch that jumps out of a barrel - and accidentally stuck his finger into the
“scissor action” workings of the machine.
Chopped the end right off. (That
was good for about two hours off to go to the hospital).
I wasn’t so thrilled with my crew anymore, either. Sue was driving me absolutely nuts. She got away with murder because of her
relationship with Terry. I was still mad
about the night we were tearing down in PA (EVERYONE helps tear-down, even
Rusty when he’s around). All Sue did was
carry her ferret back and forth between the two joints, so the ferret could
watch us all working. I was furious with
Terry for letting her get away with everything she got away with, and I was
furious with Rusty for letting Terry let Sue get away with it. And Lee and John were always on each other
about who was supposed to be running the joint.
Heading Home
After I agreed to finish out the Canadian season, Terry
tried really hard to convince me to continue on past Toronto, heading down into
the US to do the winter fair circuit down there. I wasn’t completely sold on the direction I
was going with college – I was still doing general studies trying to sort out
what my path would be – and maybe I could have been persuaded, but Rick and I
wanted to stay together and because of his criminal record, he wasn’t able to
cross the border into the states.
I declined to continue on with corndogging my way through
life, and I asked Terry to buy me a train ticket back to Red Deer. In 1987 we still had passenger trains that
went across the country. Rick and I
booked train tickets together, and he, thankfully, insisted on getting a berth
so we’d have a decent place to sleep.
I checked into a divey hotel in Toronto with bugs and a
shared bathroom, and I waited for Rick.
Although I was done at the end of the Toronto spot, Rick had been asked
to drive his truck to the border before leaving his crew. There was a bit of a snafu at the border, and
Rick was told that it was ok for him to drive the truck beyond the first border
crossing booth and then turn around.
When he got there, though, the authorities (I’m not sure if it was the
Canadian or American authorities) nabbed him for trying to cross into the
United States. It took him a while to
convince them that he was NOT trying to cross into the US – he’d specifically
made an effort to stay in Canada.
He was several hours late getting back to Toronto, and if he
hadn’t convinced them to let him go, I would have assumed he’d changed his mind
and left me there, and I would have gone to get on the train by myself. Thankfully, he did show up, though, and the
two of us traveled to Alberta on the train.
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