This is the fifth and final piece in a series of reports from the 2012 Canadian National Exhibition. In my first report from this year’s CNE, I quoted Vincent Massey’s opinion from 1952 that the CNE tells the story of Canadian achievement more graphically than any book, and I expressed some puzzlement about what kind of story the CNE is telling today. After exploring the fair end to end, I can’t...
This piece is the fourth in a series of reports from the 2012 Canadian National Exhibition. In a previous post I alluded to the CNE’s status as an essentially urban fair, but with all the animals and farm displays it would be just as accurate to call the CNE rural. As Shawn Micallef observed in his book Stroll, “The Ontario hinterland comes to Toronto during the Ex, providing a connection that...
If there’s one thing that’s kept the CNE in the headlines in recent summers, it’s food, and especially the stunt foods that keep getting more and more outrageous. First there was deep-fried butter, then the Krispy Kreme hamburger, and now this year there’s a bacon funnel cake, which weighs half a kilo and contains more than two thousand calories. The one-upmanship doesn’t seem like it’s going to...
This piece is the second in a series of reports from the 2012 Canadian National Exhibition. The first report covered the opening ceremony. A frequent complaint about the CNE is that it’s always the same, year after year. And it’s hard to deny that there’s a lot of truth to this complaint. The architecture of the grounds has largely stagnated, and more structures have been demolished than built in...
This piece is the first in a series of reports from the Canadian National Exhibition that will be appearing in Chirograph over the next two weeks. I’ve been working on a book about the history of the Canadian National Exhibition for several years now, but to the best of my knowledge I’ve never seen the opening ceremony that kicks off each year’s installment of the fair. In this...