Under the Electric Sky was a finalist for the 2011 Evelyn Richardson Memorial Literary Prize for Non-Fiction at the Atlantic Book Awards.
“Christopher A. Walsh shines as bright as the Bill Lynch Shows’ lights in his first book.”
– Saint John Telegraph-Journal
“If you’ve ever dreamed of running away and joining the circus... you’ll be fascinated by Under the Electric Sky.”
– Fredericton Daily Gleaner
“We could use more writers willing to savage Canadian politeness with bare knuckles and a broken whiskey bottle.”
– BeaconNews.ca
“...a fascinating and lively account of one of the biggest and longest running carnivals in Canada.”
– CKUA Radio Network
“…[a] notable book…”
–Halifax Chronicle-Herald
“The story is a bit like Hunter S. Thompson meets Lucy Maud Montgomery... a fine marriage of creative styles...”
– Lesley Choyce
Under The Electric Sky
The Legacy of the Bill Lynch Shows
Christopher A. Walsh
“What’s the difference between the carnival and the circus?
The circus locks their animals up at night.”
--Old Showman’s proverb
Author’s Note:
I have to admit now that I never once felt the impulse as a child to run away and join the carnival.
But I have come to understand well the urge to abandon everything when the time seems right and escape in the night to follow something you hear calling, something you can’t get out of your head. Those are the kinds of urges nurtured secretly over years, eventually eating away at your soul until you confront them. Everybody has those moments, when you know you had better act on them or forget them forever and settle down to a comfortable existence.
The first urge to run away with the carnival crept up on me as a student reporter at Dalhousie University’s campus newspaper, where I first concocted the notion of writing an article about a world all of us have encountered at one time or another but that few of us understand. I was curious about life on the lot, the people who worked the carnival and why they had chosen the transient existence many look down on. I wanted to see for myself if the prejudices were justified, if carnival workers were as scary as urban legend has led a number of people to believe.
So, in 2008, in my late twenties, I quit my job as a reporter at a newspaper in Stettler, Alberta, to write the story I had been contemplating for five years. The timing was good and I knew I had to write it now or never. The life of a freelance journalist is not all that different from the life of a carny, I soon realized. There is no money in it these days, there was probably a glorious past that has long since evaporated, and the sacrifices that need to be made are not likely to be accepted by everybody. I had left a steady paycheque, borrowed money from friends and family and was about to embark on a story I wasn’t sure I could even sell to anybody, let alone for the amount that I needed to do it, which it turns out, doesn’t exist for freelancers or anyone else who acts on irrational urges in the middle of the night.
I was researching a few different carnivals across the country while deciding which show to travel with when I stumbled across a brief history of the recreational use of McNab’s Island in Halifax. That the Bill Lynch Shows had started on the island was enough incentive to draw me home – the place I had felt another, separate urge to leave three years earlier. I had lived almost my entire life in Halifax and Dartmouth and, like many others, was completely ignorant about the history of the island I saw everyday out in the harbour, let alone that the travelling carnival was born there.
I contacted the owner of the current incarnation of the Bill Lynch Shows who agreed to let me write about life on his carnival, indicating that he had “nothing to hide” and that it might give people a better understanding of how difficult the job is. Whether he had anything to hide was inconsequential because he allowed me to write whatever I pleased and never once asked me to ignore some aspect that may have shown the operation in less than a flattering light. I am thankful to Jack Adams for that opportunity. For the first three weeks, I met up with the workers off and on at a few different stops around Halifax, and for the last week of research I travelled to New Minas where I took up residence in a bunk on the lot. I was given full access to everything available and lived as a worker would: up in the morning and down in the wee hours of the next morning and up to do it all over again.
It was there that I met the carnies, those dark souls who, in the end, gave the book a lot of its colour. They accepted me rather quickly and most of them turned out to be down-to-earth, real people without pretense, who were open and honest with me about everything I asked them. I am grateful to them for that.
This book started as a magazine piece but it became clear early on there was no way to fit the unusual story of living on a carnival and the fascinating history of the Bill Lynch Shows into one article. There was just too much to explain, too many human curiosities, as they used to say. The only way to properly tell the story of the travelling carnival in the Maritimes and the carnies who made it up was to show them in as fair a light as possible, even if that meant brutal honesty in exposing the types of social proclivities “polite society” might cringe at initially. The whole story of the travelling carnival in the Maritimes could not be explained without providing the context of the history they were the products of... and what a fascinating one it is. The history of the Bill Lynch Shows is one of the Maritimes’ strangest and most compelling yet is often ignored.
Writing about the carnival has rarely consumed the passions or imaginations of Canadian writers or historians and subsequently very few factual documents or even fiction exist about carnivals in this country – especially the Maritimes. I was fortunate to benefit from the writings and private historical collection of the late Fred H. Phillips of Fredericton – the “staid civil servant who would get up every once in a while and run away with a show,” as he once described himself. Phillips was a writer, a man who understood the value of running away, an old showman at heart, and his articles on the Bill Lynch Shows over the decades served as a great resource for this book.
To say that the Bill Lynch Shows was a carnival like no other is difficult to prove, but its devotion to the people of the Maritimes has become legendary. It is hard to imagine any other carnival outfit with a deeper commitment to its home, one that became a part of the culture of its region more than this show. Most of that is due in no small part to the vision of men like Bill Lynch and his successor, Soggy Reid, who saw the potential of the carnival as a vehicle for providing much more than cheap entertainment. Then there were the professional carnies and showmen over the years who gave the show its character, men who heard those electric lights calling and answered: Bill Harroun, George (Twitter) Johnston, Boxer Mercer, Blab Brothers, Jimmy Penny, Ed Waters and John Drummey, to name just a few. I am also grateful to Betty MacLean for her insight into her brother Soggy Reid’s life as the boss.
This is not a pretty story at times, but in the end it should provide a better understanding of the people and the carnival that so many of us have grown up enjoying at one time or another. I leave it to readers to draw their own opinions of the nature of carnival workers and the carnival as it is and was in many Maritime towns.
Some names in this story have been changed to protect the innocent and guilty, alike.
One Man Show
By George (Twitter) Johnston
The Poet Laureate of the Maritime
Carnival
Presented to William P. Lynch
By His Good Friend
Howard (Dooley) Morash
On opening day 1959
In fancy oft I’m turning to a little one-man show—
The flashy tents, the half-smart gents, the Jenny running slow,
An old doll rack, a bucket joint, the boss in the office tent.
Now who could say in that far day: “This kid’s a big show gent.”
Well, time rolled on as roll it must. Few with that show would stick.
Some would blow with all the dough: “We’re through with this bum trick.”
But those who strung along with him he helped in every way.
Now view that sight some summer night. It’s pretty grand, I’d say.
So many a spring some game I’d bring around that little show.
The boss was kind and didn’t mind. He’d never crack for dough.
I spotted good as he knew I would. Why not? The space looked free.
Yet he’d often yell, “Throw that to hell,” and I’d square with a cup of tea.
I’d play the odd date with a Ferris Wheel crate, nail anything I’d see.
I could borrow cash and also the flash. That gent was good to me.
And when I did fold—if the truth were told—mine was the greater loss.
Things are not the same down Memory Lane since our paths no longer cross.
That small show grew, with faces new, as some sifted through the mesh.
Yet all it took was an honest count – taboo that pound of flesh.
Sure, I know this Gee. Believe you me, he really isn’t blind.
If you are with and for that show, no better friend you’ll find.
I’ll ne’er forget the day we met—to agree to disagree.
A cruel fate that I got the gate. There’s nothing else I see.
But that is neither here nor there since there’s plenty one must learn.
Yet what seems clear is that every year for that old show I yearn.
Perhaps someday back there I’ll stray to gaze around the lot;
To view with pride some flash ride. Some pips he now has bought.
Yes, every year he’s added one; some years he’s added two.
I know myself I lost the count. Boy, how that small show grew.
And little did the old mob think, as they paid off in the dark,
That that same boy would have a toy to fill a city park.
Yet bigger things were still to come, one hadn’t long to wait—
Circus sideshows, big free acts, and then a ten-cent gate.
Then came a year there would appear a unit neatly planned;
And again we see in Number Three the touch of that master hand.
These smaller shows play smaller spots; for them they’re just the thing.
What? Ill advised? Don’t be surprised. A circus he could swing.
The years are many since we two/kipped on the cookhouse floor;
Bill dreaming dreams: “There’ll come a night I’ll sleep in the Commodore.”
And as I close these simple lines not very many know
In all these years he played a few bum steers – and it’s still a ONE MAN SHOW.
“You’ll know it... if you hit the ground”, Port Hawkesbury, 1976
One night the sky opened up and swallowed a man whole. Within seconds, his heavy body came whistling hard through the twilight, as if spit out by the gods, crashing into the slick pavement of the mall parking lot.
His son followed a few feet away, screaming the entire twenty-five-foot fall to the ground. The father lay on the pavement motionless, blood silently soaking into his chest cavity from a ruptured aorta. The seven-year-old boy sat up, crying but making no sound now. It was the cruellest shock to the central nervous system imaginable and all the boy could do was quiver and tremble at the sight.
The Paratrooper continued its cycle overhead, the cars swinging out from the main wheel, all of them spinning in unison above the dead father and wounded son, like vultures circling moribund remains in the desert. It had rained earlier in the day, but the clouds had cleared as the cool Cape Breton dusk settled into the fairgrounds in Port Hawkesbury.
The impeccant music played out in the background, the smell of cotton candy, French fries and grease lingered around the lot. There was laughter and talking in every direction, all of life on the carnival swerving around in a grotesque mockery of death.
Joan Isabell Blue had a feeling the ride was unsafe as she and her daughter were fastened into a chair a few minutes earlier. It was more intuition than any mechanical defect she noticed in the structure of the ride, but it was a strong enough impression that she felt obligated to mention it to the operator. Her concerns were quickly dismissed by a man who was tired of listening to people ask whether the rides were safe.
“You’ll know it, lady, if you hit the ground,” the attendant responded curtly and started up the Paratrooper.
Blue and her daughter held on tight the entire cycle out of fear and both let out a scream when the man came crashing past them through the sky. It was a troubling scene for a lot of people and one that would be etched into their memories forever. It was not your typical day at the fair to see a man fall from a ride and plunge to his death. This was not a high-priced sideshow, no high-wire act, no daredevil spectacle. This was a regular man who one moment was feeling the air rush over his skin and the next, the blood through his lungs. It was hard to make sense of it all.
The Paratrooper was not high on the list of thrill-seekers looking for the fastest and scariest ride on the midway in 1976. In fact, this particular Paratrooper had been converted from an old 1950s Spitfire ride that most enthusiasts would classify as tame family fun. The Paratrooper spins its riders around a giant wheel that lifts on an angle in umbrella-covered cars that seat two. Not particularly frightening or even fast, as far as rides go, unless the safety gate lock popped open and the hard reality of gravity came rushing up.
To watch an old Paratrooper in action on any carnival is enough to lure one into a mild daze, certainly not a thrilling dizziness or even nervous tension. There were other rides on the Bill Lynch Shows that year that could turn knuckles white and stimulate adrenaline through the bloodstream like the Spider, the Pirate Ship and the Zipper, for instance. Those were the pinnacle rides of thrill and excitement on the lot in those days, not the old-time umbrella ride.
June 29, 1976, marked the first death on the midway in the fifty-one years the Bill Lynch Shows had operated. It was an impressive streak when you consider how many times the machines were set up and torn down over the years. Every summer in countless towns throughout the Maritimes, hundreds of thousands of people were “scared to death in the safest way possible,” as the old pitch used to go.
But the carnival trades in fear – it’s their biggest seller. Part of the excitement is the exhilarating rush on a fast ride that seems to spin toward death, but always on the way to the ground or into another machine a near collision is averted at the last minute by a fortuitous twist or flip of the cage. Certain people pay for that kind of thrill and there are enough of them out there to keep ride manufacturers busy inventing terrifying new machines. They have rides out now with names like the Crazy Shake, the Freak Out, Vortex, Shocker and the ominously named Kamikaze.
Watching one cycle of any of these rides would have swelled the bladders of anyone on the lot that day with piss and butterflies. They sound vicious and look deadly and are exactly the edge of excitement people crave from the carnival. It was hard to believe that someone would die on the Paratrooper. It was a safe ride, all things considered, and not one likely to stir the same bowel-shaking gravity as the Zipper.
Of course, there has always been the other kind of ride anxiety often reflected on and nev
er articulated in the quiet moments before engaging one of the machines. Any right-thinking individual concerned with their personal safety must assess the ride, its motions, patterns, time its intervals, feel the rhythms and eventually conclude whether they want to risk it. Risking it, in terms of carnival rides, means accepting on at least some level the possibility that something could happen. The machines play out staid patterns with all the real malice of an egg beater. But the carnal fear is something much heavier, something never discussed among carnies and best left in the minds of the nervous and timid: that death is only a loose pin away. Anyone who has conquered the big rides has done so with the queasy suspicion that the cycling orbit is a quick shot from cage to casket. But in that is the rub, as they say – the incredible feeling of surrendering yourself to the moment, and a fairly good number of thrill seekers from different pursuits believe that in order to experience life fully, you must first come close to death or accept it as a probable and sometimes unavoidable outcome.
That danger was never immediate on the midway. The Bill Lynch Shows’ unblemished safety record was grounds for bragging, if anyone was interested in the fatal pastime of tempting fate.
Port Hawkesbury Mayor W. J. MacLean was a serious man, unready to take chances, and ordered the show closed pending the result of an investigation into the fatality. Donna Marie MacEachern and Lorraine MacLean, both from West Bay Road, Nova Scotia, told investigators at the scene that the gate on their seat had popped open and had to be slammed shut on the same ride earlier in the day. Nobody was sure who to blame for what happened and as far as the mayor was concerned, it could very well have been the result of a drunken carny who shirked his responsibilities and didn’t properly secure a passenger. Or it could have been one of those long-haired punks with tattoos up his arms who sucked back too much marijuana and forgot to screw in the right bolts when the machine was erected. A magisterial inquiry was ordered into the incident, but before the results were made public the famed Bill Lynch Shows—as Maritimers knew it—was heading for ruin.
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