The Fair That Keeps Outliving Its Purpose | The Story of the CNE

Every August, about a million and a half people walk through a gate on Toronto's waterfront to spend a day at a fair. Almost none of what happens there now is what the CNE was built to do. Over 147 years, the Canadian National Exhibition has been an agricultural lobbying tool, a young country's shop window, a permanent institution built in stone, a trade-show centre, and an annual habit. In 1971, Metro Toronto approved a plan to demolish thirteen of its buildings and replace them with a concrete plaza called Canada Square. Most of those buildings are still standing. This is the story of how the CNE kept losing its purpose, and kept finding a new one. References: - Metropolitan Toronto Planning Board, Proposals for the Rehabilitation of Exhibition Park (April 1971) - City of Toronto Planning Board, report on the Metro proposals for Exhibition Park, adopted at the Board's 357th meeting, 14 March 1972 - Municipality of Metropolitan Toronto, Management Review of the Canadian National Exhibition Association, Volume 1 (September 1979) - James Lorimer, The Ex: A Picture History of the Canadian National Exhibition (Toronto: James Lewis & Samuel, 1973) - Mark Osbaldeston, Unbuilt Toronto: A History of the City That Might Have Been (Toronto: Dundurn, 2008) - Keith Walden, Becoming Modern in Toronto: The Industrial Exhibition and the Shaping of a Late Victorian Culture(Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1997) - Ross Fair, Improving Upper Canada: Agricultural Societies and State Formation, 1791–1852 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press) - CNE Heritage (cneheritage.com) - Exhibition Place - Toronto Public Library, Digital Archives - City of Toronto Archives - Jamie Bradburn, Historicist columns on the CNE - Toronto Journey 416, "Lost Buildings of the CNE / Exhibition Place" - Fort York Commons Maps Blogspot - The Globe and Mail - CBC News - CP24 - Toronto Star Credits: "Fox Tale Waltz Part 1 Instrumental" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Egmont Overture" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ "Waltz (Tschikovsky Op. 40)" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/