The Personality of American CitiesHungerford, Edward
History
The Personality of American Cities
Hungerford, Edward
Cities and towns -- United States; United States -- Description and travel; United States -- Social life and customs -- 1865-1918
In the autumn there is the big fair--officially the Canadian National
Exhibition--which has grown from a very modest beginning into a real
institution. Last year nearly a million persons entered its gates,
there were more than a hundred thousand admissions upon a single very
big day. Delegations of folk came from as far distant as
Australia--there were special excursion rates from all but three of the
United States. It is not only a big fair but a great fair, still growing
larger with each annual exhibition. Toronto folk are immensely proud of
it and give to it loyalty and support. And the Canadian government is
not above gaining a political opportunity from it. We remember one
autumn at Toronto three or four years ago seeing a great electric sign
poised upon one of the main buildings. It was a moving sign and the
genius of the electrician had made the semblance of a waving British
banner. Underneath in fixed and glowing letters you might read:
ONE FLAG, ONE KING, ONE NATION
* * * * *
To see Toronto as a British city, however, you must go to her in May--at
the time of her spring races. The fair is very much like any of the
great fairs in the United States. The race-meet is distinctly different.
In the United States horse-racing has fallen into ill-repute, and most
of the famous tracks around our larger cities have been cut up into
building lots. The sport with us was commercialized, ruined, and then
practically forbidden. In Canada they have been wiser, although the
tendency to make the sport entirely professional and so not sport at all
has begun to show itself even over there. But in Toronto they go to
horse-races for the love of horse-racing, and not in the hopes of making
a living without working for it.
The great spring race-meet is the gallop for the King's Guineas. It is
at the Woodbine and in addition to being the oldest racing fixture in
America it is also just such a day for Canada as Derby Day is for
England. If you go to Toronto for Plate Day--as they call that great
race-day--you will be wise to have your hotel accommodations engaged
well in advance. You will find Plate Day to be the Saturday before the
twenty-fourth of May. And, lest you should have forgotten the
significance of the twenty-fourth of May, permit us to remind you that
for sixty-four long years loyal Canada celebrated that day as the
Queen's birthday. And it is today, perhaps, the most tender tribute that
the Canadians can render Victoria--their adherence to her birthday as
the greatest of their national holidays.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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