CNE 2010: PART ONE

As summer begins to slowly wane, the days are growing shorter and if I face south towards Lake Ontario, I can feel a coolness on the breeze and smell cotton candy and deep fried butter

Yes, it's once again time for the Canadian National Exhibition.

This will be the first of two posts detailing our trip to this year's fair. Collette and I always go at least twice, once to just experience the midway and the Food Building and some of the free attractions (see the video below) and another day to see the Air Show. That post is yet to come

This one deals with our first visits to the Ex this year. We've already gone twice. We went Tuesday, the first time we've visited the fair during the week. It was a bit strange. Usually on the midway and in some of the buildings, you can barely move. It was rather nice to be able to stroll or browse without having what feels like (and probably is) hundreds of people competing for your personal space.

We enjoyed a couple of stunt shows: Two men on 80 ft high sway poles and the same two guys on motorcycles inside The Globe of Death. We also went to see the Super Dogs, a favorite of ours. We enjoy watching all the dogs play and compete but the border collies seem to hold a special fascination for us .. I wonder why that is? Again, see the enclosed video for high lights of these events.

It was a scorching hot today, but free of humidity so not unpleasant. There is a fire station on the Ex grounds (except for this two weeks when everything is closed off, these are just streets after all) and the house has this lovely antique feel to it. And the firefighters went old school, bringing out a couple of hoses and squirting the kids in order to cool them off, something that probably rarely happens in the rest of Toronto. And yes, we went child like and walked through the spray, it was entirely welcome.

We knew we could not stay Tuesday. But we noticed that there was to be a nighttime show on Princess Blvd that looked interesting: MANA: Cirque Fantastique. The Ex has hosted many many memorable night time shows but we just couldn't linger Tuesday to watch this one.

But ... (there's always a but isn't there) if you come after 5 pm the admission is only 5 bucks.

So Thursday night we returned to the Ex. First stop: The Food Building. Of course. Yes, the big attraction at the Ex this year, food wise, is the deep fried butter. And no, I did not go for it. Just the thought of it makes me queasy. But hey, we have one more visit to go, so you never know.

After gorging ourselves and wandering the midway a bit, it was time to go watch this show. I had no expectations of what we were going to see. It turns out that it was quite eclectic, and quite entertaining

The show used the frame of a fantasy world, where some kind of king, (the musical director who created a lot of the sound himself) demanded favours from his minions

This setup allowed for a variety of performers to come on stage and do their thing. And variety is the proper term. We got to see a little bit of everything, from illusions to fire eating ...

.. to a BMX biker ..

... to a woman who did remarkable things with a huge wooden hoop

And a young man who did remarkable things with an enormous metal square frame

And another young woman, who showed off her aerial skills on the Russian beam (is it truly Russian? Nowadays it seems that if you want to add a certain cachet to something, you put the word Russian in front of it)

And of course, every show needs a spectacular ending and this one did not disappoint

So all in all another successful sojourn to our beloved Ex. This show was great but it was icing on the cake. We're happy to just wander around, absorbing the sights and sounds, sort of soaking it in. It's a harbinger of the end of summer, is the Ex, and that's a bit sad but still, we look forward to it every year. As we are looking forward to the Air Show this year.

CNE 2010 from Victor Kellar on Vimeo.