Conklin Shows was the largest traveling amusement corporation in North America. The 75-year-old company operated
traveling carnival
A traveling carnival (American English), usually simply called a carnival, travelling funfair or travelling show (British English), is an amusement show that may be made up of List of amusement rides, amusement rides, food vendors, merchandi ...
s at various summer agricultural shows across North America and is based in
Brantford, Ontario
Brantford (Canada 2021 Census, 2021 population: 104,688) is a city in Ontario, Canada, founded on the Grand River (Ontario), Grand River in Southwestern Ontario. It is surrounded by County of Brant, Brant County but is politically separate wi ...
, and formerly also in
West Palm Beach, Florida
West Palm Beach is a city in and the county seat of Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It is located immediately to the west of the adjacent Palm Beach, Florida, Palm Beach, which is situated on a barrier island across the Lake Worth Lag ...
. The company has a long history in Canada, providing entertainment for generations of children and adults. The organization used to operate the
midway services for some of Canada's largest summer fairs including the
Canadian National Exhibition
The Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), also known as The Exhibition or The Ex, is an annual fair that takes place at Exhibition Place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on the third Friday of August leading up to and including Labour Day (Canada), ...
in
Toronto
Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...
, the
Calgary Stampede
The Calgary Stampede is an annual rodeo, fair, exhibition, and festival held every July in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The ten-day event, which bills itself as "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth", attracts over one million visitors per year a ...
, and Edmonton's
K-Days
K-Days, formerly known as the Edmonton Exhibition, Klondike Days, and Capital Ex, is an annual 10-day exhibition held in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada mostly in late July. It runs in conjunction with the Taste of Edmonton, the Great Outdoors Comedy ...
. In 2004, Conklin Shows International route and equipment were sold to
North American Midway Entertainment
North American Midway Entertainment, LLC (NAME) is an American provider of midway services based in Farmland, Indiana, that describes itself as "the world's largest traveling outdoor amusement park." NAME provides rides, games and food to over 15 ...
.
Two of the remaining companies, ''World's Finest Shows'' and ''Conklin Super Shows'', still are part of the Conklin Group of Carnival Companies. World's Finest Shows' route includes more than 60 fairs, all in Ontario, Canada. They are both based in Ontario, Canada.
Conklin Shows, as it was known in Canada and the US, now operates under North American Midway Entertainment (NAME). The carnival provides the midway at fairs and exhibitions, including, Miami, Florida's ''Miami-Dade County Fair'', Edmonton, Alberta's ''K-Days'' Calgary, Alberta's ''Calgary Stampede'' and Toronto, Ontario's ''CNE'', The ''Canadian National Exhibition''.
History
Conklin Shows was founded by James Wesley "Patty" Conklin, who was born Joseph Renker in 1892 in
Brooklyn, New York
Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...
, and died in 1970.
He was brought up by foster parents. By 1906 he had begun selling peanuts without a permit at Madison Square Gardens whenever a circus was in town, and newspapers on the streets of New York, before becoming a sideshow host at
Coney Island
Coney Island is a neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach to its east, Lower New York Bay to the south and west, and Gravesend to ...
.
When he was 21, his father dropped dead and Patty inherited .
By 1915, he was running his own gambling games at various
midways across the southern United States. After meeting James Wesley Conklin (1861–1920) around 1916, he adopted his surname, Conklin, as his own.
[
In 1916, Patty and J. W. Conklin established Clark & Conklin Shows. Lasting four seasons playing at various shows around the mid west, the company folded after the death of the father. In 1921, Patty moved full-time to Canada.] He moved the show north to play at the Winnipeg Exhibition. Due to a problem with the fair, their participation was canceled. While returning to the United States with a train car full of prize merchandise, Patty stumbled upon a show just outside Winnipeg. They joined up with the operator of the fair, International Amusement Company and worked all of the remaining Canadian shows that year.
War years
After working the road hosting small fairs coast to coast for 20 years, Conklin Shows bid on and won the midway contract for the 1937 Toronto Canadian National Exhibition
The Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), also known as The Exhibition or The Ex, is an annual fair that takes place at Exhibition Place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on the third Friday of August leading up to and including Labour Day (Canada), ...
. The fair, one of the largest in the world, was a prized show. By 1941, the company played at 98% of all the major fairs across Canada. To accommodate travel to the various shows, they ran a 45-car specialized train cars. Specialized boxcars painted bright orange long were fitted with custom doors to accommodate speedy loading and unloading of gear. The train carried 15 feature attractions and 21 rides and 700 people including performers and crews. Patty Conklin himself traveled in style with his Mexican stylized 5-room 'mansion on wheels' private car.
Having the CNE contract helped turn it into a profitable company in the early 1950s Conklin Shows borrowed over half a million dollars and began to build permanent attractions on the CNE fairgrounds of Exhibition Place
Exhibition Place is a publicly owned mixed-use district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located by the shoreline of Lake Ontario, just west of downtown. The site includes exhibit, trade, and banquet centres, theatre and music buildings, monuments, ...
. In 1953 they constructed the Mighty Flyer, a wooden rollercoaster, that lasted until the early 1990s.
The early 1970s saw the company begin to diversify, including establishing Maple Leaf Village (now Casino Niagara
Casino Niagara is a commercial casino located in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. It opened on December 9, 1996, on the site of the former Maple Leaf Village amusement park. Situated adjacent to Clifton Hill, the casino was originally envisione ...
) in Niagara Falls, Ontario, along with running a venue at the base of the CN Tower
The CN Tower () is a communications and observation tower in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Completed in 1976, it is located in downtown Toronto, built on the former Railway Lands. Its name "CN" referred to Canadian National, the railway co ...
in Toronto.
In 1975, Conklin Shows' biggest rival, Royal American Shows
Royal American Shows (RAS) were a leading American traveling carnival company that operated from the 1920s to the 1990s in the United States and, until the 1970s, in Canada. The company promoted itself as the "Most Beautiful Show on Earth", with t ...
, declined to return to fair dates in Canada due to later disproved charges of tax evasion, charges that several Canadian carnivals aided and encouraged. The next year, Conklin was awarded the contracts previously held by RAS – including the Calgary Stampede
The Calgary Stampede is an annual rodeo, fair, exhibition, and festival held every July in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The ten-day event, which bills itself as "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth", attracts over one million visitors per year a ...
and Vancouver Pacific Exhibition, largely due to Conklin being a Canadian business. The 1980s and 1990s were a time of growth for Conklin as it operated across the prairies with stops in Winnipeg, Edmonton, Calgary, Regina and Saskatoon. It also opened up a number of smaller fairs as well as provided a schedule and route for many smaller independent shows such as Lauther Amusements and Billy Truax Amusements. These companies, although bound by contracts to the larger Conklin Shows, operated as separate shows.
Conklin also became known for its very large and quite unique collection of rides, many of which were large, European built rides rarely seen in North America, and some never even traveled north of the border. One of the most of famous attractions in Conklin's line up was the "Doppel Looping", North America's first and only traveling double loop roller coaster which was imported in from Germany in the mid 80s. This mammoth coaster, which took 28 trailers to move, only made the trip as far north as Toronto, and even this was not financially feasible after the late 90s. The coaster was eventually sold off in 2008. Some of the other Conklin rides that were one of a kind in an American traveling carnival
A traveling carnival (American English), usually simply called a carnival, travelling funfair or travelling show (British English), is an amusement show that may be made up of List of amusement rides, amusement rides, food vendors, merchandi ...
included the "Drop of Fear" and the "G-Force".
As time progressed, Conklin began to show signs of financial strain that was synonymous with the entire traveling carnival industry. Favorites such as the Zipper and the Octopus, as well as The Kamikaze and The Rainbow were phased out and sold as cost-cutting measures. Independents that had long traveled as a part of Conklin Shows were also phased out. Finally other rides such as the Drop of Fear, G-Force, Enterprise, Gravitron, Starship 2000, Flying Bobs, Aladin, Break Dance, Crazy Flip, Hi-Roller, Rotor, Devastator, Swiss Bob, Hully Gully, Tip Top, Flic Flac, Tango, Evolution, Spin Out, 1001 Nacht, Chaos, Inverter, Flipper, Touchdown, Cobra, Scorpion, Double Sky Wheels, Paratrooper, Hurricane and the Mark 1 & Wildcat roller coaster were sold to competing companies or shelved in West Palm Beach
West Palm Beach is a city in and the county seat of Palm Beach County, Florida, United States. It is located immediately to the west of the adjacent Palm Beach, Florida, Palm Beach, which is situated on a barrier island across the Lake Worth Lag ...
, Florida.
In 2004, Conklin Shows was purchased for . It was merged with the former Farrow Shows from Jackson, Mississippi, Thebault-Blomsness (Astro Amusements and All Star Amusements), and former president and CEO of Ticketmaster Group, Frederic Rosen, to form the newly minted North American Midway Entertainment Co. or N.A.M.E. This became official in Columbia, South Carolina in 2004. In January 2006, N.A.M.E. also acquired Mid America Shows, and several contracts and rides from Cumberland Valley Shows.
N.A.M.E. provides rides at over 145 fairs and events yearly. Now included are Cinco de Mayo in New Orleans as well as the Dade Co. Fair, Illinois State Fair, Kentucky State Fair, Indiana State Fair, and Big E Eastern States Exposition. New and more expensive rides have been added to its line-up but at the cost of many of the old favorites. Frank Conklin, while owning part of N.A.M.E., has left the management of the combined company to others.
In 1984, Jim Conklin donated many antique midway rides from his collection to Calgary's Heritage Park historical village. These restored rides now make up the majority of the rides at Heritage Park's Conklin Lakeview Amusement Park.
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Current operations
Conklin Group is made up of two operating units: World's Finest Shows and Conklin Supershows.
This is a list of some of the venues they provided midway services for in the past:
*Edmonton: K-Days
K-Days, formerly known as the Edmonton Exhibition, Klondike Days, and Capital Ex, is an annual 10-day exhibition held in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada mostly in late July. It runs in conjunction with the Taste of Edmonton, the Great Outdoors Comedy ...
*Toronto: Canadian National Exhibition
The Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), also known as The Exhibition or The Ex, is an annual fair that takes place at Exhibition Place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on the third Friday of August leading up to and including Labour Day (Canada), ...
*Ottawa: Ottawa SuperEX
Ottawa SuperEX (officially the Central Canada Exhibition) was an eleven-day annual exhibition that took place every August at Lansdowne Park in Ottawa, Ontario. The exhibition provided exhibits, entertainment and amusements indoors in the buil ...
*Regina: Regina Exhibition Association
*Vancouver: Pacific National Exhibition
The Pacific National Exhibition (PNE) is a nonprofit organization that operates an annual 15-day summer fair, 12-day winter fair, a seasonal amusement park, and indoor arenas in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The PNE fair is held at Hastings ...
*West Palm Beach: South Florida Fair
*Miami: Miami-Dade County Fair
*Calgary: Calgary Stampede
The Calgary Stampede is an annual rodeo, fair, exhibition, and festival held every July in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. The ten-day event, which bills itself as "The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth", attracts over one million visitors per year a ...
Conklin Supershows
Conklin Supershows is one of Conklin Shows' smaller sub-companies. It currently owns 13 game trailers, and 17 rides.
Current games
*Duck Pond
*Basketball
*Cork Guns
*Skee-Ball
*Chicken Ring Toss
*Punk Rack
*Water Racer
Current rides
*Chilly Willys
*Carousel
*Safari Carousel
*911-Fire Brigade
*Super Tilt-A-Whirl
*Heavy Haulers
*The Great Western Train
*Fire Trucks
*fun house
*Dragon castle glass house
Former rides
* Sea Dragon
*Dragon Castle Maze
*Super Scooter (Bumper cars
Bumper cars or dodgems are the generic names for a type of flat amusement ride consisting of multiple small electrically powered cars which draw power from the floor or ceiling, and which are turned on and off remotely by an operator. They are ...
)
*Emergency 911
*Victory Lap Slide
*Super Space Sled
*Super Silver Streak
*Super Bumper Cars
*Jolly Roger
*The Round Up
*The Hard Rock and Roll
*The Himalaya
*The Super Loop
*The Gravitron
*Gee Whiz
*The Rainbow
*The Zipper
* The Holiday Bounce
* Toboggan
* the Love Bug
Conko Inc
Conko Inc still continues various operations today, among them is a traveling show train, permanent show train and carousel in Chinguacousy Park, various games and rides, and ice cream waffle stands at Canadian National Exhibition.
World's Finest Shows
One of Conklin Shows' more successful sub-companies is the World's Finest Shows, which travels throughout Ontario, Canada. The company owns more than 40 rides and concessions.
See also
* Maple Leaf Village – A now defunct small amusement park in Niagara Falls Ontario.
*Canadian National Exhibition
The Canadian National Exhibition (CNE), also known as The Exhibition or The Ex, is an annual fair that takes place at Exhibition Place in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, on the third Friday of August leading up to and including Labour Day (Canada), ...
– former client (now operated by North American Midway Entertainment
North American Midway Entertainment, LLC (NAME) is an American provider of midway services based in Farmland, Indiana, that describes itself as "the world's largest traveling outdoor amusement park." NAME provides rides, games and food to over 15 ...
*Exhibition Place
Exhibition Place is a publicly owned mixed-use district in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, located by the shoreline of Lake Ontario, just west of downtown. The site includes exhibit, trade, and banquet centres, theatre and music buildings, monuments, ...
– Toronto, site of one of the world's largest fairs
* Lake Ontario Park- Kingston, Ontario
Kingston is a city in Ontario, Canada, on the northeastern end of Lake Ontario. It is at the beginning of the St. Lawrence River and at the mouth of the Cataraqui River, the south end of the Rideau Canal. Kingston is near the Thousand Islands, ...
– rides removed after 2005
References
{{Reflist
External links
Conklin Shows Official Web Site
– Conklin Shows Official Web Site.
CBC Archives
Patty Conklin gives a tour of the CNE with CBC Radio (1958)
CBC Archives
CBC Television story about Patty Conklin (1971).
– CBC Television
CBC Television (also known as CBC TV, or simply CBC) is a Television in Canada, Canadian English-language terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcasting, p ...
special, ''The Life and Times of Patty Conklin''.
Entertainment companies of Canada
Traveling carnivals
1916 establishments in Ontario