Let's Go! Canada's Wonderland Amusement Park

A cool summer morning outside Canada’s Wonderland, outstanding amusement park in Vaughn, suburb north of Toronto, 2018

I arrive early while acres of plentiful parking still flank the park’s tall white fences, behind which colourful metal twists of amusement rides loop across a blue cloud-dotted sky.

Waiting at the gates now. A few ecstatic kids run up, barely containing themselves. Families trickle past burly guards and through turnstiles then surge in small stampedes towards the rides.

A few calm adults stop for a photo opp next to a flowerbed planted as Canada flag. Fibreglass Wonder Mountain and its huge artificial waterfall loom in the background.

A cavalcade of kids scamper then bump up against a closed internal gate. Still a few excruciating minutes before the most coveted coasters open.

At the stroke of ten the guard draws back the gate. Unleashed kids sprint ecstatically to the Backlot Stunt Coaster, Orbiter and Psyclone.

I follow them for a bit then stop for shade in an empty arcade. Arcade machines flash and sound as an old Genesis prog-rock hit, "Turn It On, pours out of speakers. A very satisfactory start to the day.

Empty rides begin their rehearsals, warm up their implausible, trajectories. The Sledgehammer draws it seats up at the ends of "arms," flings open its "fingertips," spins the seats sickeningly.

Certain kids look longingly at the centrifugal torment of it all --I don't.

Riderless wild horses on a merry-go-round, including a snarling mint-coloured horse, rotate aggressively to charming old-timey organ strains. Petrified forelegs rear and nostrils flare as carved animals rotate forever in a circle.

I step into one of the fairground’s many forested patches, looking for good vantage for photos. Small stands of tall evergreens dot the park, break up the mechanical mayhem. There, willing visitors can rest and watch daredevils reeling on rides through cedar branches.

Splashworks opens at 10AM to holders of the Season Pass. From the coward section, I watch a few kids shoot down a short blue undulating waterslide on their fronts while clutching inflated blue pillows. On the third watery bump a six-year-old boy takes air!

Thanks to begging and two attendants bending the rules at Kidzville, I ride two preschooler rides more my speed: The Flying Canoe and Treetop Adventure, a ride of cartoonish helicopter-shaped cars slowly trundling along a track that runs about 10 feet above Kidzville.

Next to the helicopter ride is a ride called Soaring Eagles.Streamline fibreglass "eagle" carts hang from chains dangling from a stem. My languorous helicopter trundles past as a dramatic announcement advises Soaring Eagles passengers:

“Attention pilots. For a mild flight, keep the fin steady. For a wild flight, gently move the fin from side to side. Do not shake the fin violently. Now please, get ready to take flight!"

Then the ride starts up, and many passengers frighten themselves anyway by swinging the fin wildly.

As my copter continues chugging along the tracks, an actual raptor --a dappled young hawk-- flies casually alongside then settles, eye-level, in a tree.

Some time later, at Planet Snoopy, a comically defensive pimply teenaged female bodyguard leads a life-sized Snoopy mascot through banks of starstruck, hysterical children.

The two sensations arrive at a patch of shade for photo ops, and, all through the shoot, the bodyguard keeps shooting out to body block Snoopy-fanatic children unwittingly photo bombing other children’s portraits as they fling themselves at Snoopy's padded costume.

Back at the waterpark, gangs of thrilled teenaged boys in tropical shorts dash about wildly, climb to a high cabana sitting on stilts five stories high then fearlessly chuck themselves down through four tubular blue and green waterslides shooting straight down like giant straws from the cabana's base. Somehow a few shallow twists of plastic break their fall before they explode out the bottom two seconds later in hysterical splashes of blue water.

From a group of Adirondack chairs, I shelter in the shade while watching damp kids and adults float languidly by on green floatation donuts. They bob happily on the sun-dappled current of The Lazy River, a pristine-seeming artificial waterway roving the waterpark’s perimeter.

Over at Riverside Snacks, a suntanned, bulky boy dips a chicken strip in sauce as an agog baby chews fries for the first time.

Suddenly, a coaster emerges from the fibreglass interior of Wonder Mountain, and right close to the summit, it tips off the edge, plunges down, inverts riders upside down so their heads dangle a foot above the placid surface of a fake lake. Some of the people's hair even dips in the water and they scream before being righted by the mechanism and plunged back into a hole in side of Wonder Mountain. Nearby, a flock of Canada geese munch manicured grass indifferently.

Another coaster’s twisted centipede of tracks flips you, pitches you, ramps you, lurches you, ratchets you up, hangs you and then drops you back down to do it all over again --this time backwards(!)

I watch the whole thing safe in a stand of trees. Absolutely wild!

The last group was terrified. This group is only scared.

Skyhawk is a very cool ride. People sit in small and winged one-seaters then ascend along a 100-foot towering column that eventually flings them wildly in a circle like temporary birds.

Alas comes the disappointing announcement: "SkyHawk is now closed due to high winds.” The line of people waiting expectantly disbands, miserable, disbelieving…

Now a recorded baritone voice calls everyone’s attention to a bald and bearded highdiver wading through the waters at the edge of Victoria Falls sixty feet up!

The voice explains the treacherous details of the imminent show as booming symphonic music pumps up the peril:

“Divers! Hit the water! At speeds of seventy kilometres! With only three-point-five metres! Of water! To stop! Their! Fall!!”

The bald diver, head oiled, climbs out to the "first level" of an artificial rock very high up nonetheless. Then a diving colleague also wades through the water at the very edge of the falls. He’s wearing the same dark blue diving shirt and mid-blue shorts as the first diver but has long, dark, dynamic hair.

He juts the tips of his toes right over the edge of Victoria Falls, spins around suddenly then flips backwards off the falls to plunge feet-first into the three-point-five metres of water!

Fanfare!!

Now the music gets quieter and everybody waits.

The bald diver climbs to the second level of the high-rock promontory as a third diver wades to the the edge of the falls and launches his body into an elegant swan dive, falling spread-eagled and slowly at first then drawing his arms tight for an accelerated plunge into the water!

Applause!!!

Now the bald diver climbs still higher to the highest point on the artificial rock promontory above the falls. He pauses for a moment to position himself then casually launches into a flip and forward dive seventy feet into the pool! Spectacular!

As the baritone voice bids the crowd adieu, we disband in search of more rides, more food, more amusement je ne sais quoi.

As for the food, the whole theme has to be: “You can’t eat that. It’s unadvisable.”

Then you eat it.

I see a boy and his grandmother eating piles of sweetened blue ice arranged like mountains. Individual teen boys carry their own personal full-size pizzas like they can’t believe what’s happening.

A slim man sitting on a curb sets his angle of attack over a plate-sized funnel cake loaded with half-a-litre of vanilla ice cream, crumbled Oreos and chocolate syrup. The impossible treat clearly feeds something in his imagination.

That’s what the fair is for: the impossible made possible. Machines defying gravity. Food defying all reasonable standards. Characters from dreams strolling around. "No" becoming "yes"…

Overheard at Kidzville:

"Problem is: I have to work Monday."

"Dots are my favorite, too. It’s like ice cream, but it’s not."

"Cuz we’ve gone on enough rides already!"

Five year old: "Woah! Woah! Woah! What the shit!?"

Mother: "Hey!!"

Little brother pulling sister’s hair.

Sister: "Waaaaahhh!"

Mother: "No!…no!"

Father unconcerned.

"What a fantastic day!"

The chef Anthony Bourdain once said: “Your body’s not a temple. It’s an amusement park.”

Maybe it's the amusement park that's a temple: of the gladness of life, the gladness of families, the gladness of summer, the gladness of other people’s gladness, and the acute gladness of one’s own heart.

BONUS PHOTO: Richmond Night Market by Day, Richmond BC, 2019

Let's Go! Canada's Wonderland Amusement Park

I arrive early while acres of plentiful parking still flank the park’s tall white fences, behind which colourful metal twists of amusement rides loop across a blue cloud-dotted sky.

Waiting at the gates now. A few ecstatic kids run up, barely containing themselves. Families trickle past burly guards and through turnstiles then surge in small stampedes towards the rides.

A few calm adults stop for a photo opp next to a flowerbed planted as Canada flag. Fibreglass Wonder Mountain and its huge artificial waterfall loom in the background.

A cavalcade of kids scamper then bump up against a closed internal gate. Still a few excruciating minutes before the most coveted coasters open.

At the stroke of ten the guard draws back the gate. Unleashed kids sprint ecstatically to the Backlot Stunt Coaster, Orbiter and Psyclone.

I follow them for a bit then stop for shade in an empty arcade. Arcade machines flash and sound as an old Genesis prog-rock hit, "Turn It On, pours out of speakers. A very satisfactory start to the day.

Empty rides begin their rehearsals, warm up their implausible, trajectories. The Sledgehammer draws it seats up at the ends of "arms," flings open its "fingertips," spins the seats sickeningly.

Certain kids look longingly at the centrifugal torment of it all --I don't.

Riderless wild horses on a merry-go-round, including a snarling mint-coloured horse, rotate aggressively to charming old-timey organ strains. Petrified forelegs rear and nostrils flare as carved animals rotate forever in a circle.

I step into one of the fairground’s many forested patches, looking for good vantage for photos. Small stands of tall evergreens dot the park, break up the mechanical mayhem. There, willing visitors can rest and watch daredevils reeling on rides through cedar branches.

Splashworks opens at 10AM to holders of the Season Pass. From the coward section, I watch a few kids shoot down a short blue undulating waterslide on their fronts while clutching inflated blue pillows. On the third watery bump a six-year-old boy takes air!

Thanks to begging and two attendants bending the rules at Kidzville, I ride two preschooler rides more my speed: The Flying Canoe and Treetop Adventure, a ride of cartoonish helicopter-shaped cars slowly trundling along a track that runs about 10 feet above Kidzville.

Next to the helicopter ride is a ride called Soaring Eagles.Streamline fibreglass "eagle" carts hang from chains dangling from a stem. My languorous helicopter trundles past as a dramatic announcement advises Soaring Eagles passengers:

“Attention pilots. For a mild flight, keep the fin steady. For a wild flight, gently move the fin from side to side. Do not shake the fin violently. Now please, get ready to take flight!"

Then the ride starts up, and many passengers frighten themselves anyway by swinging the fin wildly.

As my copter continues chugging along the tracks, an actual raptor --a dappled young hawk-- flies casually alongside then settles, eye-level, in a tree.

Some time later, at Planet Snoopy, a comically defensive pimply teenaged female bodyguard leads a life-sized Snoopy mascot through banks of starstruck, hysterical children.

The two sensations arrive at a patch of shade for photo ops, and, all through the shoot, the bodyguard keeps shooting out to body block Snoopy-fanatic children unwittingly photo bombing other children’s portraits as they fling themselves at Snoopy's padded costume.

From a group of Adirondack chairs, I shelter in the shade while watching damp kids and adults float languidly by on green floatation donuts. They bob happily on the sun-dappled current of The Lazy River, a pristine-seeming artificial waterway roving the waterpark’s perimeter.

Over at Riverside Snacks, a suntanned, bulky boy dips a chicken strip in sauce as an agog baby chews fries for the first time.

Another coaster’s twisted centipede of tracks flips you, pitches you, ramps you, lurches you, ratchets you up, hangs you and then drops you back down to do it all over again --this time backwards(!)

I watch the whole thing safe in a stand of trees. Absolutely wild!

The last group was terrified. This group is only scared.

Skyhawk is a very cool ride. People sit in small and winged one-seaters then ascend along a 100-foot towering column that eventually flings them wildly in a circle like temporary birds.

Alas comes the disappointing announcement: "SkyHawk is now closed due to high winds.” The line of people waiting expectantly disbands, miserable, disbelieving…

Now a recorded baritone voice calls everyone’s attention to a bald and bearded highdiver wading through the waters at the edge of Victoria Falls sixty feet up!

The voice explains the treacherous details of the imminent show as booming symphonic music pumps up the peril:

“Divers! Hit the water! At speeds of seventy kilometres! With only three-point-five metres! Of water! To stop! Their! Fall!!”

He juts the tips of his toes right over the edge of Victoria Falls, spins around suddenly then flips backwards off the falls to plunge feet-first into the three-point-five metres of water!

Fanfare!!

Now the music gets quieter and everybody waits.

The bald diver climbs to the second level of the high-rock promontory as a third diver wades to the the edge of the falls and launches his body into an elegant swan dive, falling spread-eagled and slowly at first then drawing his arms tight for an accelerated plunge into the water!

Applause!!!

Now the bald diver climbs still higher to the highest point on the artificial rock promontory above the falls. He pauses for a moment to position himself then casually launches into a flip and forward dive seventy feet into the pool! Spectacular!

As the baritone voice bids the crowd adieu, we disband in search of more rides, more food, more amusement je ne sais quoi.

As for the food, the whole theme has to be: “You can’t eat that. It’s unadvisable.”

Then you eat it.

I see a boy and his grandmother eating piles of sweetened blue ice arranged like mountains. Individual teen boys carry their own personal full-size pizzas like they can’t believe what’s happening.

A slim man sitting on a curb sets his angle of attack over a plate-sized funnel cake loaded with half-a-litre of vanilla ice cream, crumbled Oreos and chocolate syrup. The impossible treat clearly feeds something in his imagination.

That’s what the fair is for: the impossible made possible. Machines defying gravity. Food defying all reasonable standards. Characters from dreams strolling around. "No" becoming "yes"…

Overheard at Kidzville:

"Problem is: I have to work Monday."

"Dots are my favorite, too. It’s like ice cream, but it’s not."

"Cuz we’ve gone on enough rides already!"

Five year old: "Woah! Woah! Woah! What the shit!?"

Mother: "Hey!!"

Little brother pulling sister’s hair.

Sister: "Waaaaahhh!"

Mother: "No!…no!"

Father unconcerned.

"What a fantastic day!"

The chef Anthony Bourdain once said: “Your body’s not a temple. It’s an amusement park.”

Maybe it's the amusement park that's a temple: of the gladness of life, the gladness of families, the gladness of summer, the gladness of other people’s gladness, and the acute gladness of one’s own heart.

BONUS PHOTO: Richmond Night Market by Day, Richmond BC, 2019

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