Under the Electric Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

weren’t coming to Neverland, Neverland would have to go to the people, he figured. So in the spring of 1925, Bill Lynch and a fellow by the name of Ray Rogers formed a partnership to play the small villages around the Maritimes. Lynch supplied the Merry-Go-Round and Rogers operated the concessions, which in this case meant those tricky games of chance. They travelled the rural communities of the Maritimes by rail in one baggage car, setting up wherever a place would have them. The two parted ways after the end of that first season. Rogers went on to form Barnett Bros. Circus, which operated as a successful enterprise in the States for some years, and Lynch stuck to his native territory where he would, in a matter of a few years, become the renowned Showman Bill Lynch. “Smilin’ Bill,” as one paper called him, “who never gets sore, he gives more than you pay for every time. That’s Bill’s motto...”
    By the start of the 1926 season, he had acquired a string of concessions of his own and continued to travel the small community circuit. Two years later, he was playing small venues with a Ferris Wheel, a chair-o-plane and the old steam-powered carousel, which still had a little magic left in its creaking platforms to offer weary Maritimers.
    Lynch was never content to play only small towns. He harboured a much larger vision of his carnival and worked hard to see it born into this world. In what would prove to be the biggest leap of his career, Lynch put a bid in for the Halifax Exhibition of 1929 and won it. Although he only possessed three rides and three shows, the venue demanded seven of each. Lynch cashed in his savings that winter, borrowed wherever he could and by August had acquired the necessary amount of each. And by all accounts, the show went well.
    It was the second year of the Halifax Exhibition’s revival after the war and promoters were counting on it to make money as it had the previous year. There were feelings amongst a lot of citizens that the exhibition was a drain on the taxpayer, but two years of profit would have proved the doubters wrong. And although the first year of its resurrection had proved successful, there were a few problems. The editorial board of The Halifax Herald were sufficiently annoyed after the 1928 exhibition to express their concern for a group of 12 or so American carnies who had managed through cunning, of course, to seize control of a few concessions and work the grift. They were subsequently arrested after local police raided their stands. There was no place for this kind of behaviour in Halifax, the Herald made it known.
    â€œThe slick gentry who regard the public as so many ‘rubes’ and ‘suckers’ to be ‘trimmed,’ must be taught that there is no place for vicious games at the Nova Scotia Exhibition,” proclaimed the editorial in the August 24, 1929, newspaper. “Things went on in the midway last year that provoked most vigorous protests from press and public. It should not be necessary this year to repeat the warning.”
    Lynch’s contract did not call for concessions, so those matters were out of his hands. But the rides and entertainment he provided were impressive enough to earn Lynch an invitation back. The show made money and the directors declared the whole exhibition a success for the second year in a row. There was the grim business of the Minister of Natural Resources being struck and killed by a streetcar on Gottingen Street as he made his way home from the Ex Grounds one night, however. John Mahoney was killed in his automobile as he passed through an intersection and collided with an oncoming streetcar.
    Twenty-six-year-old Bill Lynch had problems of his own arise shortly after fulfilling the exhibition date. Ben Williams, the Glace Bay barber who had established himself as an American showman and held with great esteem the sobriquet of “Carnival King of the Maritimes,” took