Centreville Carousel

Toronto Ontario, Centre Island

Here I is again, carrying on about carousels, and I has another goodie for you.

This posting and the last are actually part of my ‘what I did on my summer vacation’ well, vacation type thingy, and actually happened to occur during my official vacation. What I did, well what I am still doing as of this writing, is to chase down carousels (and most of them travel at a very sedate speed I can tell you, although this one, that I’m about to talk about, I swear is a faster beast than most).

I don’t know how I miss these things, like the Looff carousel in Pt Dalhousie. I may have already mentioned in some blog article that Toronto Island is a secret gem of the city (or other such phraseology). This carousel, which again for years had slipped under my radar, is one of the ultimate proofs of that.

Although it is rare this isn’t a C. W. Parker carousel, it isn’t a Charles I. D. Looff either, this carousel happens to have been manufactured by the G. A. Dentzel Steam and Horsepower Company of Germantown Pennsylvania. Wow, what a mouthful.

An interesting tidbit of information is that it suffered a lot of damage in the hurricane of 1938 but was rebuilt by one of the master carvers of the Detzel yadda yadda yadda, of Germantown Pensylvania.

And it is a true menagerie: Lions ...check.

Tigers ...check. 

Bears, ...um sorry (although it should be said that there was a twirling bear ride for the kiddies not far from this attraction).

But it did have bunnies, or are they hares? We'll have to ask Alice.

And how about deer?

And ostriches.

Well, the ostriches are shy, they're sort of checking you out from the other side of the horse.

Even pigs, or are these boars? I get so confused sometimes.

And cats with fish in they mouths.

And again, what I fell in love with, beautiful horses.

This carousel has 53 animals, which are 3 abreast. There are 36 jumpers and 2 chariots.

This time I had to take a ferry ride from downtown Toronto to Centre Island (it costs $7 bucks return) and so, on this hot and pleasant day, I made my way to the island and to the amusement park there, Centreville.

I had met the mayor of Centreville before, a few years ago, and gotten day passes for all the attractions for me and my sons, but it’s weird, somehow (again) I missed out on the carousel (it’s sorta’ on one edge of the amusement area and I guess I was herded in the other direction and ended up with the bumper cars). I guess it just wasn’t time for me to take it in. Life is like that. I guess carousels are like that too.

But they come around.

So, as I mentioned, this is a fast sucker. It’s gotta’ be a whopping 9 or 10 mile an hour.

But it’s certainly a beauty, and the music (which I haven’t really mentioned in the last couple of entries) was fun to listen to (we could get into a whole long discussion about vintage Wurlitzer organs and what they are worth today).

I’m running out of superlatives and so I guess I’ve come to an end of this narrative. You’ll just have to come and take it for a spin and let me know what you think.

And once again I did the photographs.