Toronto: The CNE/The Ex
Before you start singing the lyrics to the Dears song “Expect the Worse Cos She’s a Tourist,” let me explain something…Canada has always been sort of a home away from home for me. I grew up very close by and visited Toronto and Ottawa several times a year (Kingston as well a few times) Toronto especially was a family vacation place for which I saved up all of my allowance money all year round. We’d spend about two weeks every summer camping in Glen Rouge, located just outside of Toronto. Canada is really the only place I feel safe and my very earliest childhood memories are there.
That said…these pictures are sort of meant to capture not only the visual aspect of Toronto but the experiential aspect. I only spent about half a day downtown, another at the CNE, half a day at Woodbine and another at Canada’s Wonderland so they are still somewhat limited. They are organized into categories and this will be a very extensive post and may take longer to load. I apologize for this but hopefully the pictures will be worth it.
The first set is all of the CNE/the Ex….there’s over three hundred pictures that I have to post so I will have to do these in shifts.
The FOOD BUILDING. When I was about seven, I was somehow separated from my mother at the food building in the middle of a very crowded lunch hour. She and I remained apart for what seemed like hours to my young self but was, in actuality, probably only about fifteen minutes. Still, we were both convinced we’d never meet again and the joy which we felt upon eventually colliding into eachother again like molecules was almost unbearable for my smaller body.
I love the food building. You take away the chain food you can find anywhere and what you really have is a huge and fulfilling mix of all different ethnicities where you can taste this and that for hours. Saturday was mostly Indian and Greek food for us. All along the middle are huge long tables laid out where everyone comes together eating with eachother. In a way, you feel closer to complete strangers that way.
Also, often times new products are premiered at the food building.
The CNE has been for me about horses in a large way. I even spent some quality time in my mother’s womb watching horses. We missed the horse show this year as it wasn’t on for this weekend but as we walked through the lines of stables, we saw a group admiring this one.
Mom and I always love going to the garden show…the smell of it for one is amazing. It’s just the most wondrous smell of lavendar and flowery essential oils. There’s some great landscaping that goes on and wins prizes and my favorite year of all is when there was an entire carousel made out of flowers. This year, it was a sand sculpture display but I didn’t like that as much as the rock sculptures (below)
I can never recall the official name of this building is but it’s right by the gardening and you can go through it to get to the international building. There is alot of miscellaneous things here. In this picture, a boy sits at a splendid piano for sale while nearby Chinese pottery is for sale.
Okay one thing about the CNE is that you see just about everything imaginable as far as gadgets and miracle stain removers. And these people draw their own crowd as they show you a new and improved glass cutter or frying pan device or chopper. It’s really quite an experience. This animated man was talking about how this same product is sold in America but it’s the same price in Canada, which means Canadians are saving money by buying it there. To the right, a man is wearing a shirt that says, “Not Only Am I Perfect, I’m Canadian Too!”
There was also an art exhibit in this area of modern artists that had created inventions based on the sketches of Leonardo Da Vinci. This one was hanging from the ceiling.
The Better Living Centre
FARMING AND AGRICULTURE
This is the entrance to the farm and agricultural building. On the far right, this little girl kept tapping the fake cow’s tail as if she thought it might come alive and move. It was very cute.
Inside this same building. We had just eaten at the food building so technically, we owed a famer some thanks. This place was always a great place to see little baby pigs and different cows. But after I became a vegetarian, it was soooo hard for me when I realized some of these animals would undoubtebly be eaten.
Another shot of inside. To the far right, you can see the butter sculptures (closeup below) For many years, my parents and I would watch the dairy princess competitions in which young women from all over Canada would come to compete for a prize. I think the grand prize was something like a cow and free butter for a year. I love Canada.
Also inside the agricultural building was a cat show going on this weekend. Now, I am not big on parading any kind of animals around and I heard that the cat show was a bit biased towards beauty because the cats didn’t have to answer any difficult essay questions.
Still, I love cats. I really do. And the animal rights people were there so I got to sign a petition for spaying and neutering strays in Toronto so that I wouldn’t feel so guilty taking pictures of these.
Many of the women’s restrooms at the CNE are set up in a way in which two mirrors face eachother which allow for a very interesting effect. My mother is to the left of this one and you will see several reflected images behind her.
There was an Ice and Acrobatics Show that had a very Russian flare being put on that I took these pictures of.
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THE INTERNATIONAL BUILDING
For as long as I can remember, my favorite building has always been the international building. It’s really probably the only place in the world where you can travel mere steps and buy things from Egpyt and India or Israel and Thailand. It’s also a very crowded place with many sights and sounds and different cultural performances usually involving music and dance. The following pictures are taken from this building.
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The Charm of the Highway Strip
Outside of the buildings is a large area where you can play skeeball, gamble, win all kinds of prizes by playing various carnival games, eat, and ride rides. When I was about eleven or twelve, my father decided he was going to teach me a valuable lesson against gambling. And so, we were passing by a Crown & Anchor booth and he said to me, “This is how not to gamble.” He promptly placed a couple of loonies on a random symbol without looking and even more quickly won fourteen more loonies to which my mother was probably horrified. My father never taught me how not to gamble ever again.
Here are some pictures from this broad and wonderful expanse.
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RIDES
An important thing to know about me is that I get scared very easily. Like old dracula movies (SCARY!) and cheesy slasher flicks (*trembles*) and lame ghost stories (*becomes an insomniac*) so knowing this, it should come as no surprise that this first ride in the series of pictures, a spook house, probably scarred me for life. I wasn’t even ten when I went on it with my older cousin Michelle. Michelle was babysitting me at home in Rochester and trying to teach me how to make crepes and telling me about how when she grew up she was going to name her first two kids Strawberry and Banana (she has one son now and his name is Cohen). I looked up to her tremendously. She was tall and thin with long blonde hair-just beautiful. She’s now an elementary ed teacher in Florida.
Anyhow, getting to the point here…after a week of babysitting me, my parents took her along with us on our annual late summer vacation to Toronto. Because I looked up to Michelle so tremendously, I allowed her to talk me into riding this CNE haunted house ride with her. Now, the pathetic thing of it is that I didn’t even look at what was inside. I squeezed my eyes shut, plugged my fingers in my ears, and bent really low with my head between my knees to prevent any ghoul from touching me.
Yet, of course, I still had recurring nightmares from this. The odd thing is that in my nightmares, I was always at Canada’s Wonderland and I don’t think they have ever had a spook house there. It was always a favorite place of mine nonetheless. The nightmare was reocurring and in it, my parents and I are entering the spook house ride. Slowly, both of them disappear and end up as ghosts themselves and I am the only one left. I’d be living out the entirety of my life without them and soon, I might also be a ghost like them. I always woke up before that point.
Most of these are blurry on purpose for effect. I like to take pictures of experiences whenever possible. I purposefully went out in the dark rain for these so I hope someone appreciates them.
I have to interject here to say that as I was taking these pictures, there was a certain blaring song that came over one of the ride’s PAs…I won’t say exactly what song it was but the band in question has a name that rhymes with Stef Shepherd and the song involved a baking experiment gone awry 
( merry go round)
(close up of merry go round)
(now playing: Shawn Hewitt & The National Strike: The Soft Society)