Under the Big Top

Circuses and Sideshows

It was always a holiday when the circus came to town, and the travelling menageries, whether real or a hoax; fascinated Canadians of all ages.  Death defying acts, two headed dogs, fire-eaters and sword swallowers; all captivated their audiences, and even the Native Canadians enjoyed a good circus, or 'Freak Show' as they often turned out to be.

For weeks in advance, colourful posters could be seen about town, generating excitement as everyone anxiously awaited it's arrival.  There were usually two shows a day, for the admission price of 50 cents per show, relatively high for the period; but they always packed them in.  Favourites were General Tom Thumb and the beloved elephant Jumbo, whose images appeared on post-cards, cans, advertisements, trade cards and on all kinds of products.

Aside from the circus, there was a constant procession of travelling theatrical groups; playing at inns and taverns, when there was no theatre; and winter evenings were filled with lecturers from England, France and the United States, their talks ranging from mesmerism to the new electricity, spiritualism, photography, and the popular 'science' of phrenology.

Mr. and Mrs. Tom Thumb

Phrenology was the fad of assessing a person's abilities and personality by examining the bumps on their skull, and many books and magazines of the period provided charts showing the bumps and their attributes, for those who wished to try this in the privacy of their own parlour. Even medical men employed this examination to diagnose patients, and travelling professors of phrenology always had a full house, especially after Queen Victoria herself had her son's head examined (no pun intended) to see why he was not more like his father.

Another popular event that created a lot of hype beforehand, was the annual Agricultural Fair, which was a means of spreading new ideas on husbandry, to improve stock, and to introduce the machines that were gradually making an appearance.  Associated with this were flower shows, seed competitions and exhibitions; displays of spinning, weaving, blankets, shawls, carpeting and counterpanes. There was livestock and "pedlars with Yankee notions" and of course, no fair would be complete without the 'Medicine Men'. They also, always had a huge wheel of cheese on display, made of the finest milk obtainable, and one such fair in 1853, had a cheese wheel weighing seven hundredweight, "not made of 'double skimmed sky-blue', but of milk of the richest quality, which, from its size and appearance, might have feasted all the rats and mice in the province for the next twelve months".  (Life in the Clearing Susanna Moodie)  Sights like this, inspired the poet James McIntyre of Ingersoll, Ontario, who in the 1880's tells of a monster wheel that eventually went to London where it astounded everyone; and that was before the days of refrigeration:

"To prove the wealth that here abounds One cheese weighed, eight thousand pounds Had it been hung in air at noon Folks would have thought it was the moon, It sailed with triumph o'er the seas, 'Twas hailed with welcome, queen of cheese."

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