The Calgary Stampede is an annual rodeo, 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 and features one of the world's largest rodeos, a parade, midway, stage shows, concerts, agricultural competitions, chuckwagon racing, and First Nations exhibitions. In 2008, the Calgary Stampede was inducted into the ProRodeo Hall of Fame.
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, the first Monday in September. With approximately 1.6 million visitors each year, the CNE is Canada's largest annual community event and one of the top fairs in North America. The fair is a combination of agricultural exhibits and events, carnival rides and entertainment, live music, food and special events. Special events include the Warriors' Day Parade, the Labour Day Parade and the Canadian International Air Show.
Canada's Wonderland, formerly known as Paramount Canada's Wonderland, is a 330-acre (130 ha) amusement park located in Vaughan, Ontario, a municipality within the Greater Toronto Area. Opened in 1981 by the Taft Broadcasting Company and the Great-West Life Assurance Company, it was the first major theme park in Canada and remains the country's largest. Cedar Fair purchased the park from Paramount Parks in 2006, and they have owned and operated the park since then. In 2019, it was the most-visited seasonal amusement park in North America with an estimated 3.9 million guests. The park still retains this record, with an estimated 3.8 million guests in 2022 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
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 197-acre (80 ha) site includes exhibit, trade, and banquet centres, theatre and music buildings, monuments, parkland, sports facilities, and a number of civic, provincial, and national historic sites. The district's facilities are used year-round for exhibitions, trade shows, public and private functions, and sporting events.
Playland Amusement Park is an amusement park in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. The amusement park is located at Hastings Park and is operated by the Pacific National Exhibition (PNE), an organization that hosts an annual summer fair and exhibition adjacent to Playland. Playland opened at its current location in 1958, although its predecessor, Happyland, operated at Hastings Park from 1929 to 1957. Playland was formally made a division of the PNE in 1993.
A midway at a fair is the location where carnival games, amusement rides, entertainment, dime stores, themed events, exhibitions and trade shows, pleasure gardens, water parks and food booths cluster. The midway is located between the entrance and the big top of a circus; thus, a carnival is essentially a travelling midway.
Ottawa SuperEX 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 buildings on site and outdoors on the grounds. The Central Canada Exhibition Association operated a fair annually from 1888 until 2010, except during World War II. The fair was on hiatus due to plans to redevelop Lansdowne Park and the Association continued to work towards finding opportunities to bring back SuperEX. It was announced in December 2015 that the Ottawa SuperEX board had disbanded a year earlier and the Ex would not be returning.
Calaway Park is an amusement park and campground in Springbank, Alberta, Canada. The park occupies approximately 160 acres (65 ha) of land, although the amusement park only occupies 90 acres (36 ha) of it. The park is western Canada's largest amusement park, and is situated approximately 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) west of Calgary's city limits.
The Red River Exhibition is a ten-day festival hosted every summer, in June, in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The event takes place at Exhibition Park and features a midway, concerts, stage shows, and agricultural exhibits. The park is operated by the Red River Exhibition Association, a not-for-profit organization. Winnipeg's The Guess Who played there in 2015, and the Crash Test Dummies played there in 1992.
A traveling carnival, usually simply called a carnival, travelling funfair or travelling show, is an amusement show that may be made up of amusement rides, food vendors, merchandise vendors, games of chance and skill, thrill acts, and animal acts. A traveling carnival is not set up at a permanent location, like an amusement park or funfair, but is moved from place to place. Its roots are similar to the 19th century circus with both being fitted-up in open fields near or in town and moving to a new location after a period of time. In fact, many carnivals have circuses while others have a clown aesthetic in their decor. Unlike traditional Carnival celebrations, the North American traveling carnival is not tied to a religious observance.
Carnivàle Lune Bleue is a live entertainment event in Ottawa, Canada. It was created by Executive Producer and Founder, Wayne Van De Graaff. Van De Graaff has stated that after watching the HBO series, Carnivàle, he was inspired to pursue his lifelong dream and recreate a vintage Depression-era carnival.
Sunnyside Amusement Park was a popular amusement park in Toronto, Ontario, Canada that ran from 1922 to 1955, demolished in 1955 to facilitate the building of the Metro Toronto Gardiner Expressway project. It was located on the Lake Ontario waterfront at the foot of Roncesvalles Avenue, west of downtown Toronto.
The Canadian Lakehead Exhibition (CLE) is an annual regional fair in Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada. Similar in nature to the Canadian National Exhibition in Toronto, it features local and regional artisans and farmers, a midway, concessions and numerous other activities geared towards families and people of all ages. The exhibition takes place yearly in early August and is held on the CLE grounds in the Intercity area.
Fiesta Shows is a traveling carnival that entertains and visits over 60 communities throughout the New England region. It is New England's largest carnival.
World's Finest Shows is the largest traveling carnival in Ontario, Canada. They are best known for providing a majority of the rides at the Central Canada Exhibition before its cancellation. They generally provide rides and equipment for fairs between 2 and 5 days long. Some events last over a week long. Their typical season runs from late-April to mid-October.
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 million fairgoers every year in 20 states and 4 Canadian provinces. In 2018, NAME was recognized as the leading midway provider to the top 50 fairs of North America.
Yukon Striker is a steel roller coaster at Canada's Wonderland in Vaughan, Ontario. Designed as a dive coaster from manufacturer Bolliger & Mabillard, the ride opened to the general public on 3 May 2019 in place of SkyRider, a roller coaster that was removed from the park in 2014. Featuring a height of 68 metres (223 ft), a length of 1,105 metres (3,625 ft), and a maximum speed of 130 km/h (81 mph), Yukon Striker is the world's tallest, longest, and fastest dive coaster, sharing its height record with Valravn at Cedar Point. Its four inversions and drop length of 75 metres (245 ft) also set world records among dive coaster models.
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 the "World's Largest Midway."
The Canadian National Exhibition is an annual fair held at the end of August in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. It was established in 1879 as a modest industrial exhibition and has expanded to an annual fair that attracts over one and a half million persons during its two-and-a-half week run.
