09/20/2022
i need something like this right here at treetops...
For several years Saint John’s iconic Rockwood Park was turned into a summer fair grounds based on Coney Island, featuring rides, nightly fireworks, bars and restaurants, and daring performances.
Rockwood Park began in 1894 by a newly formed group called the Saint John Horticultural Association, led by Sir Leonard Tilley. The group was determined to establish an urban park in Saint John, and began purchasing up little plots of land to form a larger park. One of these modest plots was called Rockwood, which is where the name came from. By 1967 it was the largest urban park in Canada.
Much of the early work building the park was done by prisoners from local jails. There was even a little prison cell on the park’s grounds, in case the prisoners attempted to escape.
The Horticultural Association imported exotic plants, flowers, bulbs and shrubs for the park’s elaborate gardens. They were proud of their patriotic publicity efforts, such as when they grew Tuberous Begonias in the shape of Lord Nelson’s ship HMS Victory to commemorate the Battle of Trafalgar.
They were particularly proud of Rockwood Park’s swans which had been donated in 1902 by the Vintners Association of England, and had been sent all the way from Manchester.
However Rockwood Park was struggling. Meeting minutes reveal “constant trouble is experienced in the Park” with some astonishing difficulties, from bears terrorizing visitors, to wild cats eating pets, and “rough and ignorant persons who visit and throw sticks and stones at the animals.”
More daunting though, were their financial problems.
Those led to the startling announcement on November 17th 1906 that genteel Rockwood Park would be turned into a public carnival ground. Frank White, a well known local athlete turned candy maker who sported a bushy waxed upturned mustache, had launched the effort.
It was to be hypermodern for its time. Electricity was still relatively rare, and the whole park was going to be lit up with electrical lights. There would be music played on gramophone records. There would be a restaurant offering ice cream, soda pop, and picnic foods, as well as refreshments including alcohol (except, of course, on Sundays). It would feature rides like a merry-go-round, boats for rent to paddle round Lily Lake, hot lunches, and dancing.
In a manner that modern readers may find familiar, there was a vocal reaction to the proposed changes. Newspapers were flooded with angry letters calling the development everything from “a change for the worse” to “degenerate,” and “a shame to any decent community,” that would “lead to peanut shells being littered everywhere.”
Nonetheless, Rockwood Park’s grand opening on a sunny and warm July 1st 1907 was attended by thousands of people.
The Sun newspaper deliberately sent a reporter who opposed the changes to cover its launch. He began his article complaining that Rockwood Park’s “religious quiet was shattered by a merry-go-round … its sacred waters streaked with the wakes of dozens of baldy rowed boats handled by untrained paddles.”
Nonetheless, the reporter was impressed, writing “it made a markedly favourable impression. Thousands of men, women and children streamed in … exclamations of delightful surprise burst forth from youthful and adult lips. As if some good fairy had created the pleasure paraphernalia with a wave of her magic wand, there stood ice cream rooms, a soda bar, merry-go-round, shoot-the-chutes, ferris wheel, a flood of bunting and electric lighting.”
The reporter seemed overwhelmed, particularly when he was screeched at by “a lordy peacock.”
Frank White approached him “beaming most invitingly,” and urged the reporter to take a ride on the 25 foot tall Ferris wheel.
It was the first Ferris wheel Saint John had ever seen, featuring six cars, each of which could seat four people. Only the brave dared go on it, while most people gathered around at the bottom to watch.
The reporter was too afraid to go on the Ferris wheel, so Frank White invited him to try the merry-go-around instead. He reluctantly agreed, getting on as the lone adult among 50 children.
He wrote the merry-go-round “whirled into space … This dizzy reporter avers [the ride lasted] ten minutes but the gleeful wee chap on the horse next to me is sure it was only 39 seconds.”
The reporter begrudgingly admitted that it was “a stellar attraction.”
Five days later, the park was “formally” opened, with remarks from the Mayor, a fireworks display, and free soda pop – an eagerly sought after novelty at the time. An astonishing 12,000 of the city’s 41,000 residents visited that day.
What everyone wanted to see was the first ever “shoot-the-chutes” act, a remarkably dangerous looking giant slide that would launch a daredevil on a bicycle into Lily Lake.
A stuntman named Jack Armour had been hired and had come all the way from Montreal to perform the feat, but as soon as he saw the shoot-the-chutes he balked at how unsafe it looked, refusing to go down it.
Meanwhile, there was a commotion around the slide, as crowds pushed in, and “police had some words with some men who were too eager.”
In this highly charged atmosphere, much to everyone’s astonishment a young caterer named Charles Fish volunteered to ride a bicycle down the giant slide. As a waiter, he had never done this before, and didn’t have any safety gear.
The Sun wrote “the many onlookers held their breath.”
Charles Fish got on the bicycle at the top and went careening at breakneck speed down the slide. Instead of having his bicycle launched up into the air, he hit the bottom too hard and was launched over the handlebars, flying headfirst into the lake.
Saint Johners, having never seen the feat performed before, assumed this was what was supposed to happen, and erupted into rapturous applause.
Charles Fish would become a Saint John celebrity, and go on to form his curious feat every evening while the park remained open.
Frank White had signed a 10 year lease, but his carnival didn’t last that long. It was pared down during the First World War, and never quite regained its early splendor.
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Photo Information: Provincial Archives of New Brunswick P46\897
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This week has a very special edition of the Backyard History Podcast, in which our narrator Andrew MacLean ventures out of the Maritimes all the way to Canada’s North to explore an abandoned rocket launching site that was once SpacePort Canada.
https://podcasts.apple.com/nl/podcast/backyard-history/id1593957909
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Find more articles like this at www.backyardhistory.ca
