Free Samples and 5-Cent Thrills
In the 1950s, on Children’s Day at the Canadian National Exhibition, flocks of children alighted from streetcars. With a pocket full of saved nickels, we felt like millionaires. From age 11, I was part of that flock, along with my younger brother Johnny.
Like homing pigeons, we headed straight to the Pure Food Building. Our plan was simple — find every free sample and gobble it up. Toronto was still in the culinary Dark Ages, so at the Ex, we were introduced to exotica such as Lancia spaghetti, served in small paper cups. We tasted Gouda at a time when Velveeta was considered fancy.
Annually, we lined up at the Heinz 57 booth for samples ranging from relish to soup. Heinz also gave us a green pickle pin. Johnny always spent five nickels on a Neilson’s bag, containing five chocolate bars and a paper crown.
My forage list always included the Robertson’s marmalade booth, where they gave away pins and fans featuring their logo — a “golliwog” in a little red jacket. (In those days, it wasn’t considered discriminatory.) I also regularly visited the Peek Freans’ booth, selling Playbox biscuits frosted with action figures.
I recall the Grandstand show in 1954, featuring cowboy Roy Rogers and Dale Evans. I was a fan and loved Roy’s singing, but Johnny was more enthralled by the Hell Drivers’ daring car stunts.
In 1955, the Shell Tower opened, and we climbed to the top. I recall the shock we felt when we saw the new-fangled Dufferin Gates (1959). Near the gates, we visited Borden’s Elsie the Cow in her flowered stall, with her husband Elmer and their calf-children Beulah and Beauregard.
The games were their own kind of spectacle. Every year, there was the tenor voice of the barker at the Pink Poodle, a booth where you could win a live pup. “Get your doggy, ‘oggie, ‘oggies here,” he called out. At another booth, you could win a budgie. How I loved the kewpie dolls on sticks, clad in frilly magenta feathers.
Ah, the midway, with its stirring smell of greasy onions, horses, candy floss, and always a dirigible flying overhead. Tawdry freak shows and gypsy fortune tellers created a forbidden ambiance.
On Children’s Day in the midway, certain rides were a nickel. So, after riding the Flyer and the Wild Mouse with all the other children, we would trek back to the streetcars, lugging paper sacks full of candy, free samples, cardboard hats, and coupons. Oddly, parents never gave a thought to our safety.
In my teens, Johnny was replaced by girlfriend Doreen. By then, we had summer jobs to finance our CNE adventures. We never missed the gigantic butter sculptures in the Coliseum. Doreen remembers Queen Elizabeth’s horse-drawn coronation coach. We wandered through the Agricultural Building to view prize-winning vegetables, pickles, pies, and livestock. The be-ribboned Clydesdale horse demonstration was our favourite event.
At the Conklin booth, we purchased warm waffle ice cream sandwiches, and we never missed the wee Tiny Tom Donuts, swirling in fascinating machines that dropped dough into sizzling oil. We paid 15 cents for a dozen.
It was a rite of passage to go on the Rocket ride — two large capsules that swung way up, around, and down — and also the Round Up, where centripetal force pinned us against the wall. Horrifying and stomach-churning. We always strayed into the Bingo tent, where numbers were shouted over the wail of Hank Williams’s “Your Cheatin’ Heart.” I once won a Brownie camera and a kitchen canister set.
Doreen and I annually had our picture taken. We would stuff ourselves into a tiny booth behind filthy curtains, where there was a photograph machine (four poses for a quarter).
In our late teens, we went with boyfriends. The boyfriend, in my case, was George, who worked each summer at a midway game. He had perfected a technique for throwing dimes onto a plate. One year, he won six vivid plush poodles, including a lime-green one that came home and rested on my bed.
The day ended as the last of the fireworks faded into the dark. Through the sultry night, we would head back to the streetcars and to the reality of our humble homes.