Jackson Park, 1905–08: Moonlight, Music, and Motion Pictures under the Pines

The historic Pagoda Bridge at Jackson Park, 1910. Postcard, photo by Louis Mendel, Trent Valley Archives (TVA) 932, pcr-2092.

“The amusement park business is one which has made rapid strides during recent years, and in all the cities of any pretension they have, or are being established.” – Peterborough Evening Examiner, April 6, 1907, p.9.

“Jackson Park is one of the prettiest natural parks in Canada. It affords ample shade, and has a murmuring stream coursing through it, in which the children can play and wade to their heart’s content. It also has abundance of walks and seats and is in every respect an ideal spot. – Peterborough Weekly Review, June 23, 1905, p.3.

Turn of the (20th) century urban amusements: band music and motion pictures and games in the summer; skating and tobogganing in the winter

“ . . . one of the virtues of the modernity thesis is that it provides a framework for locating early cinema in relationship to other contemporary phenomena, such as department stores, world’s fairs, imperialism, and amusement parks.” — Ronald G. Walters, “Conclusion: When Theory Hits the Road,” in Fuller-Seeley, ed., Hollywood in the Neighborhood, p.253.

Before there were dedicated motion picture theatres in Peterborough, local entrepreneurship in the sphere of exhibition turned up early on, from a seemingly unlikely source — the city’s Radial Railway Company — and in a seemingly unlikely location: Jackson Park.

Peterborough, mid-summer, 1905: people from different social classes, and young and old and in between, turn out in massive numbers to hear music and see silent moving pictures screened in Jackson Park for the first time.

Moving pictures in a park: it was a scheme that had already been tried in other places. The so-called flickers, the latest thing of a new social and technological age, had been on display in amusement parks in North American cities, including Toronto, as early as 1901 and 1902. Summer parks – referred to by one scholar as “laboratories of the new mass culture” – had quickly established themselves as venues for regular screenings. The film-making Biograph Company, for instance, had taken aim at “Managers of summer parks,” sending out travellers with its projectors and films to parks everywhere from Birmingham, Alabama, to London, Ontario.

Catching onto the act, street-railway companies of the time had attempted to attract riders by operating amusement parks and providing entertainment along with sightseeing opportunities. In Ottawa and Toronto, for instance, streetcar lines were delivering passengers to amusement parks. Why not Peterborough too?

So, then, how did the local enterprises — a streetcar line, a power and electric company, a cereal maker, and park trustees — join up with city council to present moving pictures (and more) in the park?

*Examiner*, July 28, 1904, p.4. The street railway system arrives, with an extension to Jackson Park to follow.

A railway company spreads its wings: putting Peterborough on the map

Established in 1903 after the failure of a previous street-railway company, in the following year or two the Peterborough Radial Railway Company was operating trolley cars that went north and south through the middle of town and west along Charlotte Street. It had a line that turned south on Park Street to service the Canadian General Electric plant employees.

Map of Peterborough Street Railway network (1892-1926). The map shows, among other things, the 1904 addition that went north on Park Street, west on McDonnel (spelled McDonnell here), and then north on Monaghan to the Jackson Park corner. Trent Valley Archives (TVA), F50 4.033.

By November 1904 the city railway company was running cars that delivered passengers to the then-remote (and forested) corner of Monaghan and Smith (now Parkhill) roads, on the edge of the city limits and opposite the western entrance to Jackson Park.

Even thirty years later that area was said to be “on the outskirts of the city,” and in the first decade of the twentieth century the trolley line made it more accessible than ever before.

Peterborough was, as per usual, following a trend: it was one of eleven Canadian cities with an electric railway system. “At the turn of the century,” street-railway historian M. Peter Murphy wrote, “a city wasn’t ‘on the map’ if it didn’t have a street railway system.”

Building new sites of attraction: amusement parks

All over North America, trolley-line companies were also entering into another sphere of business: amusement parks. In city after city, these new sites of attraction were being established at the ends of the lines – as cinema historian Douglas Gomery puts it, “to encourage riders to journey through the entire system.” According to historian Lauren Rabinovitz, “If a town had a railroad line, the line was likely to terminate at an amusement park.”

The businessmen in Peterborough were paying attention. In spring 1905 the railway company and associates began to formulate plans with the Trustees of the Nicholls’ Estate (which oversaw the park), the Peterborough Light and Power Co. (which would supply energy and lighting), and the city council (which would give the go-ahead, provide a little money, and furnish some lamps). They all decided it was in everyone’s best interests to make the park a city showcase by introducing “improvements.”

They decided on a bandstand and weekly concerts as the first attraction, but that would be quickly followed by the decade’s very latest technological novelty — moving pictures.

Among the municipal leaders in this regard was Robert Stuart, the president of the American Cereal Company (soon to be called Quaker Oats), who had represented a local group in negotiations to establish the new Radial Railway Company, in combination with the Light and Power company. Years later an Examiner article applauded Quaker Oats for its initiative of engaging, “indirectly through a subsidiary . . . in the public amusement business in Peterborough.” According to the newspaper, the Quaker subsidiary, known at one time as the Peterborough Hydraulic Power Company, was instrumental in the outdoor presentation of moving pictures, “the foundling art that was faintly but hardly ominously then knocking at the door of the theatre.”

Credit also goes to the street railway’s “energetic” general manager, J. Herbert Larmouth — who was also manager of the Peterborough Light and Power Company. Larmouth, a clever guy, had a double whammy: his railway could earn money by delivering passengers to the park, and he would also provide the power and light to keep them there listening to band music and watching moving pictures, and more.

A summer (and then winter) amusement area

The Peterborough street railway car reaches the northwestern end of its line — at the amusement park. Trent Valley Archives (TVA), F148 McBride V14 file 328 CGE Streetcar Jackson Park 219.

The plan was to transform Jackson Park into a summer amusement area for the growing city population – indeed, as an Examiner writer would put it, “Peterborough’s pleasure resort.” The trolley cars took passengers to an oval turnaround or loop (about 180 feet in diameter) at Monaghan and Smith – you can, today, still see the vague remnants of an oval there, growing fainter over the years.

The railway company bought that vacant piece of land on the corner in early 1905, building the loop soon after and announcing “many attractions” to come the following summer, including band concerts to be held near the streetcar terminus.

*Review*, July 20, 1905, p.4. A band concert and “An evening beneath the sighing pines,” with Mr Joseph Guerin doing a step dance too. At an afternoon picnic, “games and other pleasurable pastimes.”

The park had previously been used for healthful walks and drives along its paths — and for bathing in its waters, special outings and picnics, sports activities, snow-shoeing, and hunting (including occasional turkey shoots). But in the summer of 1905 it proved to be an especially popular destination, both daytime and evenings, a place sought out, it was said, by “by hundreds of citizens during the week, there to enjoy a brief outing and sometimes to take tea.” On the May Victoria Day holiday the street railway estimated that one thousand people had passed the time there.

Seemingly overnight, Jackson Park became not only a prime site for summertime relaxation, strolling, horseback or buggy rides, family and church and business outings, and large and small picnics, but also a must-see stop for out-of-town excursionists.

When concerns were raised about ease and safety, the railway company installed lights and asked the town to supply a police constable to watch over things. (Robert Wilson was the officer in charge the first summer.)

Band concerts on the newly built bandstand began on Thursday, June 29, 1905 — performed by the 57th Regiment Band, led by Rupert Glidden of the city’s Royal Conservatory of Music. On Wednesday, July 5, an estimated 2,000 people – an enormous figure even by today’s standards – came to the park for an evening concert. A week later another 2,000 were reported.

Manager Larmouth, with his dual interest in the light and power company and the street railway, must have been feeling, at a nickel a ride, that he had cottoned on to a truly good thing. Although the company found that receipts went up in good weather – especially “sultry days” – and down in cooler days, as a whole the band concerts were pronounced “a veritable gold mine to the Company.”

Towards the end of July activity at the park moved up a notch.

*Review*, July 29, 1905, p.1. With motion pictures still in their infancy, the first outdoor screenings took place at the park on Monday evening, July 31, 1905.

Larmouth announced a new initiative: he had negotiated with a New York company to show moving pictures in the park. The “Free Moving Picture Entertainment” — to be presented every evening (except Sunday) for two weeks — would begin as soon as he had secured the pictures from New York. A projecting machine known as the Kinetoscope would “throw” the pictures onto a large screen, with “views . . . shown of many pageants, processions and life in various parts of the world.”

For the company, which always had trouble paying its way, the venture was yet another means of bolstering ridership and thus its revenue. The streetcar company also set up a skating rink at its southern terminus, at the foot of Lock Street, and in a retrospective years later an Examiner writer suggested: “Possibly the whole show was an afterthought, an enterprise in converting two dead ends of the railway into secondary and lateral channels of revenue by stimulating passenger traffic in the days of the five-cent fare.” Partly true, but it was more a business plan than an afterthought: the enterprise was entirely in keeping with the continent-wide street-railway trend.

*Review*, Aug. 1, 1905, p.1. A report from the day after moving pictures were shown in the park for the first time.

*Examiner*, Aug. 3, 1905, p.5. The “moving pictures being the moving spirit.”

In general the nighttime outdoor show proved popular, and the Peterborough street-railway company was merely picking up on what was a widespread phenomenon before the advent of large comfortable theatres fashioned primarily for picture viewing. As one commentator on outdoor showings argued a few years later, the screenings in parks attracted different classes of people, bringing them together in one spot — and so were “doing good missionary work in elevating the industry of the moving picture business.”

“Fine Set of Views at Jackson Park,” summer 1905

Now, in Peterborough, for a nickel patrons could hop on a trolley heading up to Jackson Park, where they could spend an evening listening to the band music and, as darkness fell, watch moving pictures that had come all the way from New York and were, according to different accounts, either shown “on a big white cotton screen . . . spread rather loosely between two of the tall outer pines” or “flashed on a large white board supported by stilts.” Perhaps it was both, at different times, since the screenings went on for four summers.***

Thanks to Matt Weller for this. The image appears in Heritage Designation Brief, Jackson Park Cultural Heritage Landscape, Peterborough Architectural Conservation Advisory Committee, September 2019, Appendix A.

***Unfortunately, after researching the topic for several years I have not yet found any photographs of the moving pictures shown at Jackson Park or of the gathered crowds. Perhaps evening darkness made photography difficult. I would be surprised if R.M. Roy, the city’s eminent photographer, did not take any shots of the activity (I do know he was there on at least one occasion), but so far none have surfaced.

One of the several “drives” in Jackson Park, this one to the west of the creek. The remnants of that little footbridge can still be seen today. Postcard, c.1905, courtesy of Jerry Allen; Trent Valley Archives (TVA) 136, F400.

Just where the film viewing took place remains something of a mystery. As far as I’ve seen, the reports of the time do not indicate exactly where the films were shown. We do know that the location was said to be on a slope and “in the shadow of the pines.” According to a later account, the spectators took their “seats” on “the grass expanse at the main entrance to the park,” with “the projecting lantern . . . set up temporarily, but effectively enough, somewhere out on the lawn.” One report indicates that at the bottom of the slope there was a flat area in front of the screen.

There had to be enough available space for a bandstand, a screen, and thousands of people to be packed in on an almost nightly basis. The outdoor amphitheatre would probably have been not far from the new bandstand, because the music and the moving pictures went together;

In any case, motion-picture goers and music lovers and picnickers alike would have arrived by the trolley cars, walked on foot, or used horse power. They could make their way across Smith Street and into the park via three entrances, finding places to sit on the slope or the small flat area in front of the screen, and near the bandstand. The majority of people would have entered through the main gates at the west end of the park, off Smith Road.

A Peterborough Radial Railway car, 1904, with a driver and conductor, shown at the line’s northwestern-most point where Monaghan Road meets Smith Street (now Parkhill Road). The railways tracks appear to veer to the right at Smith Street, but this was before the loop was constructed in spring 1905. The loop allowed the cars to be turned around more quickly; before this the trolley had to be reversed, with the motorman changing his position. The “Central Park” sign on the car must refer to what is now called Confederation Park, on George St. across from City Hall. The street railway ended its life in 1927. Photo no.115, Car at Jackson Park Peterborough Ont 1904, from John Fairbairn Anderson Collection, picyrl.com.

Unfortunately for the street railway company, not everyone had to pay the five cents for the ride to get there. Peterborough was small enough that many people could simply get there on foot; and a good number of visitors used real horse power to make the trip. The authorities issued warnings to them to keep their rigs off the grass and stay strictly on the “drives” that ran through the park.

At one point a worried railway company estimated that about half the people spending time at the park got there by walking. A letter-writer to the Examiner in summer 1905 complained about the dangerous condition of the plank sidewalk that ran west along Smith Street from Park Street. “One, two and three planks are missing at half a dozen different places,” he said, and that portion of the street was poorly lighted – yet “hundreds” of people were using it to come and go from the park in the evenings. The city, he suggested, should do better than this.

The 57th Regiment Band was the main attraction at Jackson Park before the motion pictures began to be screened in 1905. Here they are shown not in Jackson Park, but during an appearance in Brantford, Ont., probably July 1906. Peterborough Museum and Archives (PMA), Balsallie Collection, 2000-012-000482-2.

Peanuts and popularity: a pocket of democracy

The opening screening on Monday the 31st, as it turned out, took place in “unfavourable weather conditions,” under a threatening sky; but still a “good crowd” turned out out for the pictures, which were brought in by a representative of the Kinetograph Company of New York.

The pictures, said to be “of good variety,” were to be shown again on Tuesday evening, and then with “an entire change in the character of the views shown” on Wednesday.

The 57th Regiment Band, led by Rupert Glidden, the musical director of the Peterborough Conservatory of Music, also played, as it had been doing regularly (without motion pictures) since June; it was one of the city’s finest and most long-lived bands.

*Review*, Aug. 11, 1905, p.5. A possibly fictitious character sitting in an easy chair in the Oriental Hotel rotunda expounded on the Jackson Park experience. Why wouldn’t the park be popular? “It’s cheap.” And a good place to pursue a romance. Five cents worth of Billy Bowman's peanuts probably went a long way.

Peanut vendors did a good trade at the park. One of them, Jimmy Crebar, announced in July 1906 that he had “the best stock of fresh, roasted peanuts to be had in the city.” He sold them at both Victoria and Jackson parks. “Any peanuts that are not good,” he said, “are not sold by me.”

Another enterprising local man, Billy Bowman, was known well enough that his name popped up in passing in a short humorous piece about the romantic (and cost-saving) aspects of the park. I believe this was William A. Bowman, son of William H. Bowman, the proprietor of the Oxford Hotel until his death in 1901 (after which his wife, Mary, took it over). In 1898 son William A. (or Billy) was working as a clerk in the hotel. Billy appears to have been a great community character, well remembered over the years. A man of many talents, he was known not just for his peanuts but for walking around town on stilts and being, in general, a “showman.” (He also played the role of a “lecturer” at the Crystal Theatre, explaining to the audience what was being flashed on the screen.)

The “first operator of the projecting machine” was said, years later, to be a man named Herb Fife. This would most likely have been Herbert A. Fife, who had worked at the Peterborough Light and Power Co. as a lineman as early as 1897 and remained there for years as a foreman and then electrical foreman. By 1920 he had transferred to Quaker Oats, remaining there as an electrical engineer until the end of that decade.

*Examiner*, Aug. 3, 1905, p.8. The promised new pictures had gone astray, but R.M. Roy was there to save the evening.

On Wednesday, August 2, with better weather, the Examiner reported that “fully 4,000” came out – although another article on a different page the very same day estimated the number of people who made their way to the park at an even more astounding 5,000 (in a city of 14,391 as of autumn 1905). It was “the largest crowd on record at Jackson Park,” the Morning Times stated. “The great part” of the crowd, the Examiner reported, “went up at night to see the moving pictures, and to hear the band.”

It was a democratic happening; as one report put it, “a big gathering of all sorts and conditions of man, woman, and children” — a mass mixing of class and gender as well as age. As the Evening Examiner put it a year later, for a good many people in the city the park became “the only summer resort” that they would ever be able to get to, or afford.

The Morning Times report added another glimpse of a summer day’s sweet pursuit of pleasure:

“It is stated on good authority that 400 persons took tea in the park last night. These were made up of small parties who had gone out there by trolley to spend a few hours of the afternoon and take their tea. It is becoming popular for the young lady employees of the large city stores to take their tea at the park, and yesterday two of these pleasing little tea parties took place. At noon the ladies of Messrs. Robt. Fair & Co’s staff went out to the park for lunch, and in the evening the lady members of A.W. Cressman’s staff went to the park for tea and spent the rest of the evening there.”

*New York Clipper*, May 21, 1904, p.304. Edison films, obtainable through the Kinetograph Co., N.Y. (the source of the Jackson Park motion pictures). One of the films shown in summer 1905 was *Dog Factory* (1904), a Class A film sold at 15 cents per foot.

Alas, although a change of program had been announced for that Wednesday evening, “the new pictures had gone astray on the road” and did not arrive in time for the screening. Luckily R.M. Roy himself was able to step in and save the evening from collapsing into complaints or even worse. At the request of the programmers he came along to the park with a supply of several new photographic slides – including pictures of the Liftlock, “Peterborough Ben,” and several others. The Daily Review commented favourably on Roy’s “humorous and colored views.” The management promised that the missing motion pictures would be shown on subsequent evenings, and people who came out would then be able to see something new.

Already, there in the outdoors at Jackson Park, a distinct culture had sprung up around the silent motion pictures of the day: the demand for “new” – as it would ever be in the world of moviedom and, for that matter, mass entertainment in general. The trick for an exhibitor was established early on: change things up, keep people coming back. Assuming you managed to get the people to come out, you needed something different or special to keep them coming back, and back again. Of course, motion picture exhibitors would always mix their offerings with a certain amount of familiar and popular repetition too.

*Examiner*, Aug. 10, 1905, p.4. Drivers — please keep to the driveways! “Upwards of a hundred” had to be ordered off the grass.

The street railway did clearly benefit from the initiative. It carried more passengers on August 2nd “than ever before in one day,” with the moving pictures proving to be a compelling drawing card. The crowd at the park “broke all records,” packing the hillside slope that looked down on the canvas. The Morning Times noted: “The whole level spot fronting the screen on which the views were thrown was a solid, closely packed mass of humanity; for yards back, on the elevated ground, scores of hundreds more viewed the excellent pictures.” The Examiner estimated that some 2,000 of those who came had taken the street cars.

*Examiner*, Aug. 12, 1905, p.4. Please: we need the lights turned off during the pictures.

A minor mishap occurred. After the moving pictures were over and the crowd was dispersing, the paper reported, “The open car got off the rails at the oval,” causing a few minutes’ delay. In general, though, it was said, “The street car company handled the crowd in an expeditious manner considering the limitations of a one-track line.”

*Examiner*, Aug. 15, 1905, p.8. A report on various Civic Holiday options. “Jackson Park was popular . . .”

On Wednesday the 16th a brief notice appeared: “New Moving Pictures at Jackson Park this week.” Again that evening the event drew a large crowd, despite the coolness in the air. The gathering enjoyed a scenic trip through the Alps mountains and The Lost Child (U.S., 1904). It was not a “view” this time, but a “comedy chase” film, the sort of thing that would prove popular for years to come.

The park quickly established its popularity “as a place to spend an evening.” Following a weekend in mid-August, one writer commented that the park looked “like Coney Island after a hard Sunday.”

What they delighted in that first summer: Dog Factory (Edison Mfg. Co., 1904, USA, 4:55 mins). I truly hope no dogs were harmed during the making of this film.

Towards the end of August the audiences slackened off a bit, down to about 2,000 on Thursday the 24th. The films that evening included Dog Factory (Edison Mfg. Co., 1904, USA), a comedy about a fantastical shop that turned actual live and perhaps somewhat unfortunate dogs into frankfurters – but then (spoiler alert) it could also, on request, produce real dogs to order (with mayhem ensuing). Also on the bill, more notably, was An Impossible Voyage (France, 1904), a fantasy film that was a follow-up to Georges Méliès’s famous (and groundbreaking) A Trip to the Moon (1902). (Martin Scorsese’s 2011 fictional movie Hugo plays homage to Méliès and Trip to the Moon.)

By that point the park had suffered a little from the summer’s activity. It did “not now present the neat and pretty appearance” of the early summer. The grass had turned from green to yellow, with more dirt than grass in certain spots. The slope where people sat was “littered with paper bags, small boxes and peanut shells” – material evidence of the inexorable connection, from the very beginning, of motion-picture viewing and snacking.

The first summer of music and motion pictures was such a hit that when the season closed in the fourth week of September the company quickly announced that the amusement park would be back the following summer – only “on a considerably more elaborate scale.”

Wintertime: skating and tobogganing

Buoyed by the summertime success, in the following winter the street-railway company cars were also delivering skaters or tobogganers to the entrance of the park at the top of Monaghan Road. (For comfort in cold weather the cars had heaters under every seat.) In December 1905 the street-railway company constructed “an open-air rink” (with upwards of a hundred lights, each covered by a Chinese lantern) and toboggan slide in the park.

The toboggan slide, from its top end looking east, March 1911. You can see the steeple of St. Peter’s Cathedral in the distance. No. 176, John Fairbairn Anderson Collection, Picryl, Wikimedia Commons.

One account mentions that the toboggan run ran down through the hole created by the quarrying of stone for city buildings, which would have been in what is now Hamilton Park (to the south of Jackson Park and below Parkhill Road). Another writer, more specifically, said that it started “from the height out at the Jackson Park corner” and ran “southeasterly toward the site of Dominion Woollens and Worsteds where the creek crosses McDonnel street.”

At that time Bonaccord Street was open only at both ends, and the slide passed through the middle, closed section. This was also before the Bonner-Worth textile plant had established itself on McDonnel Street and along the creek. (The slide apparently traversed private property, because a few years later, in December 1908, the street railway was trying to get permission to use the land, without success.) Perhaps the route, like the motion picture screen, changed over the years.

In his book The Peterborough Story, long-time Examiner editor Wilson Craw told how “the skating rink was formed by the oval inside the circle where the cars turned [before heading back downtown]. The skaters stepped from the streetcar right onto the ice.” In time the street railway added a refreshment booth and a large cloakroom and “colored globes” to light everything up; the effect, a newspaper writer pointed out, was to “make a pleasant picture as one approaches on the car.”

The popular amusement industry: big additions to this “place of life and gaiety”

*Review*, May 16, 1906, p.4. Making plans for the new summer — with “Many New Features . . . added for the Enjoyment of the Public.”

The silent motion picture shows in the park would continue through the following three summers, with new attractions added in 1906: a box-ball alley located at the rear of the oval (a game with rules similar to lawn bowling and said to be “most popular at the island in Toronto”), an electric merry-go-round, and an ice cream parlor operated by Thomas Hooper, who had a popular bakery and confectionary store downtown.

The parlor consisted of “a balcony” placed over the platform of the wintertime skating rink waiting room, fitted up with small tables and chairs and a large awning drawn over the space. The space included “a marble top counter, soda fountain, and other up-to-date fixtures.” In addition to ice cream, the “restaurant” sold soft drinks, biscuits, candy, cigars, and cigarettes. A new sidewalk was built across the loop, going from the refreshment booth to the park entrance, and the company also added a “pretty illuminated ice cream sign,” using electric light bulbs; it could “be seen to advantage from almost any point in the park.”

The railway company had announced early on in the summer of 1906 that it would be purchasing one thousand chairs to place in front of the screen to make viewing more comfortable for at least part of the crowd congregating beneath the pines. Manager Larmouth also promised vaudeville acts for later in the season (which, it seems, did not happen). In May he had undertaken a lengthy trip to Chicago, Indianapolis, and Buffalo to get ideas for park programs. The new features were reportedly a huge success – the merry-go-round proved “exceedingly popular” – although at first the crowds drawn were not as huge as the previous year (2,000 on one night in June was the highest estimate).

On Tuesday, June 5, under “threatening weather . . . several hundred” people still went to see the pictures, with “the views being new and very amusing.” The following evening, said to be the “first real opening of the park,” the grass was damp, and without enough seats to go around people had to stand “to avoid rheumatism or other ailments.”

One of those who turned out on June 5, 1906, was Cathleen McCarthy, at age sixteen going on seventeen, who recorded the visit in her diary. Like many others, it seems, she went to the “pictures” in the park over and over again that summer – ten times in all. Just over twenty years later she also described the scene, based on her first-hand experience: “After a nickel ride on the cars, one might disembark at Jackson Park, and there, on a fine summer evening, sit on the grass and watch various reels unfold themselves on a large, white-covered board raised above the level of the ground, on stilts. There was usually a band somewhere about. The nickel covered a good deal in those days.”

*Review*, June 29, 1906, p.7. The band concert draws more news attention than the motion pictures, which were shown during intermission between the band numbers.

In June 1906, the newspaper reported, the crowds increased nightly, until reaching “record-breaking proportions” late in the month. On Tuesday, June 26, the merry-go-round, box-ball alley, and restaurant were all extremely busy. As usual the films were changed regularly to keep the people coming. A featured attraction in mid-June, amidst “delightful weather” that attracted a crowd of at least two thousand, was the unlikely title Socialism to Nihilism (Pathé Frères, France, 1906; original title, Le Nihilist), along with The First Night Out, A Frightful Night, Trout Fishing (which may have had a special appeal for Peterborough), Funny Faces, Country Men in Paris, Improvised Suit, and Commissioning Spots.

*Examiner*, July 26, 1906, p.2. An early critic of the motion picture.

Cathleen McCarthy was there one evening in mid-July for a variety of short films, beginning with “Invisible Men,” which according to the newspaper’s account was “of a somewhat supernatural type” and was the “best received.” Others screened were Robbers Robbed, Hell, Hallo, Grinder, and The Heart Rules the Head.

Yet another title, Peck’s Bad Boy (U.S., 1905), was said to be highly anticipated “amongst the juvenile audience.” (I am not sure if that category applied to teenager McCarthy, who worked in an office downtown.) Peck’s Bad Boy was “greeted with loud applause as soon as it was announced,” said an Examiner report, adding: “The famous grocery store and the grocery man, as well as the bad boy himself, were depicted in a realistic manner.”

The White Caps (Wallace McCutcheon & Edwin S. Porter, 1905), 11:58.

A week or so later another film “called forth many comments of more than passing interest.” The Examiner also cited The White Caps (Edison Manufacturing Co., released September 1905) for its “realism,” and, indeed, if you watch it today – it is one of the very few that has survived – it remains both captivating and unsettling.

A vigilante film, it features a large group of white-hooded characters who disturbingly bring to mind the Ku Klux Klan; in this case the “White Caps” – the name of an actual U.S. Midwest organization of the same time – are dispending their brand of frontier justice on a man who has brutally assaulted his wife. After the woman has fled to safety with her baby, the White Caps go to the offender’s home and confront him. He runs off, and after a short chase scene (standard in films of that era) they catch him, tie him up, and proceed to tar and feather him.

According to the Examiner’s brief report, that last scene led one woman in the audience to exclaim, “Oh! What an awful waste of feathers!” She was “evidently” (the paper said) thinking not so much about the heavy action as she was about “all the parlour cushions that might be filled with the downy material.” It is a bit of a joke, and obviously a way of avoiding the difficult subject matter of villain and vigilantes. A small matter of domestic economy, however tongue in cheek, takes precedence over serious content.

The White Caps was the work of the pioneering Edwin S. Porter, already known for milestone films The Life of an American Fireman and The Great Train Robbery (both 1903). Significantly, it was Porter who gave D.W. Griffith his first film job, in 1907 – and Griffith would go on to make The Birth of a Nation (1915), the racist film that presented the Ku Klux Klan as a heroic vigilante group responding to “villainous blacks.” Porter’s 1905 film, cinema historian Charles Musser states, glorifies the same kind of “alternative justice.”

A week or so later equally big crowds saw the new pictures, including The Black Hand (“keenly watched throughout,” with a “captivating” finale) and The Misguided Bobby.

The Examiner played on that word “Misguided” by delivering a rather odd (and perhaps overly imaginative) piece on a “Misguided Lady” — a mother who apparently (according to the story) became a little too captivated by the pictures that same evening and as a result experienced a dramatic misadventure of her own. The article provides another rare glimpse of an individual member of the Jackson Park movie audience. The writing, though, reveals as much about class and gender bias as it does of the incident: here was a mother — “a stout lady” — who had got caught up in the world of the motion picture; she suddenly realizes that it’s past time for her to get home, and makes a bold dash for the trolley car, with the baby in her arms — and runs smack into the wire fence separating the park from the railway tracks.

In what amounts to a brief, less than sympathetic, and, indeed, insulting account, the writer roughly indicates that the woman broke through four of the six cross wires that constituted the fence. She then let out a torrent of abuse:

“A volume of audible indignation was poured out against the moving picture man, the man that built the fence and didn’t erect light houses on the posts and almost all others of the masculine sex since Adam’s appearance on the globe.”

*Examiner*, June 28, 1906, p.6. The band’s program for that evening — the same music that would be played a few days later in Brantford. Unfortunately, the program had to be cut a little short when rain began to fall.

The report provided no indication as to what happened to the mother after that – other than to suggest that she did not make the trolley in time – much less what happened to the baby in her arms.

In general, though, people had good experiences at the moving picture shows – as the great numbers of people turning out night after night indicate. The Evening Examiner noted that “it would be greatly missed if the amusements were done away with. . . . [The] problem of how to spend the summer evenings in the city has been solved, and Jackson Park is the answer.”

The park became known as a place to “escape the stifling heat.” The pictures were often funny, and a reporter could hear “hearty outbursts of laughter from the crowd.” The evening’s entertainment on that second year ran for six nights a week for three months.

In late June that year the last picture of the two-hour program was not named, but a description said it depicted “the operations of a band of robbers, their thrilling flight, pursued by police officers, and finally their capture.” That was more or less the plot of Porter’s The Great Train Robbery (1903), which Peterborough audiences may already have seen, perhaps more than once – the film that solidified a number of American filmic conventions: the Western genre; clear-cut good guys and bad guys; a country dance interlude (“in a typical Western dance hall . . . a number of men and women in a lively quadrille”), complete with a “Tenderfoot” being forced to dance when bullets are bouncing off the floor near his feet; a furious chase; and wanton violence.

The final frame of *The Great Train Robbery* (1903) — or, if an exhibitor desired, the first frame. Thanks to MoMALearning, www.moma.org/learn.

At least six men are taken down by gunshot; and in a scene on the train’s tender, one of the robbers, using a piece of coal, brutally clubs the train’s fireman over and over again on the head and then tosses the body (replaced by a dummy) off the moving train. The twelve-minute film ends with a tagged-on short medium shot, front-on, of the outlaw gang’s leader firing his six-gun at the camera (or at us, the viewers). The Edison company suggested that this clip could be used either to end or start the film. As film historian David Thomson puts it, “Guns were glorified by movies from the very start.”

In August the railway company added yet another new amusement, a further contribution to the carnival atmosphere: “The Ocean Wave,” a circular contraption that took riders up and down and around and gave them the “sensation . . . of riding on an ocean liner or a street car on a rough road.” The machine was for temporary use; it was on its way to the Ottawa Exhibition. It “has the merry-go-round eclipsed.” That second year the large crowds reportedly continued until the end of summer and well into September.

People often went along to the park for a picnic before watching the pictures. On August 31 the Examiner reported:

“Although one would think the picnic season about over, it did not look at all like it at Jackson Park yesterday afternoon. Two Sunday school classes gathered there and there were several private picnic parties on the ground as well. The people who don’t go away to the summer resorts have found the park a delightful place to spend the afternoon and evening.”

Even without a band playing that evening, “the crowd was large” and “the pictures greatly enjoyed.”

In September a “big crowd” reportedly came out on Tuesday the 12th, even without a band present. The street cars going out to the park were packed until after 9:00 p.m. “People clung to the straps and platforms and even the steps were jammed.” It was the same story on the return trip, and it was “nearly eleven before the last of the crowd was back from the park.” With very hot temperatures in September the park seemed to be “the only cool place in the city” – with the weather being held “responsible for an alarming raid on ice cream and soft drinks.” The Ocean Wave machine was particularly well patronized. The showings continued that year until the week of September 24th.

In November the street railway announced further improvements to come: enlarging the toboggan slide (with three more chutes) and adding a “new gentlemen’s waiting room” to the skating rink. Those seeking intense thrills might have been disappointed by the attention to safety: “The sides will be built up all along the slide, so that there will be no more danger of collisions towards the end of the slide, as was the case last season.”

Motion pictures (of a sort) at the rink that winter

When skating started up again that winter, in December, with the rink in “splendid” condition, the band was present, the toboggan slide had five chutes, and the park added yet another enticement.

Inside the rink’s “building” – the waiting room, perhaps – the Peterborough Amusement Company, which (under Toronto’s George Scott) operated the downtown penny arcade, installed a number of its one-cent vaudeville machines, including fortune-telling and athletic machines and coin-operated picture machines – so that motion-picture-viewing at the park, to that small extent at least, was extended into the winter months. (The same concern would follow up with motion pictures presented indoors at the park in the summer months.)

Hundreds of people showed up on a Tuesday evening for the formal opening of the rink and toboggan slide, creating a “scene that was typically Canadian and wholly enjoyable” – with the gaily coloured lights strung over and around the rink creating a “fairy-like appearance” shining over the “bright costumes” of the skaters, and the rich variety of coloured sweaters and toques of the enthusiasts taking to the slides. “The people of Peterborough,” noted the newspaper, “are singularly fortunate in having [this winter resort] situated in their city.” The street-railway fare of five cents entitled the rider to skate on the rink.

Band concerts and a new choice in moving pictures, 1907

*Review*, June 4, 1907, p.6. But, due to “disagreeable weather,” the opening was delayed for several days, until June 10.

In 1907 the park opened on Monday, June 10 (“the outgoing cars being crowded all evening”), with the 57th Band providing its popular music (a band was scheduled to play every night that summer, rather than two or three nights a week). Other added attractions made the grounds even more like a midway than ever: the Yeotes’s Brothers shooting gallery, the Ocean Wave ride, a photographing machine, miniature railway, automatic vaudeville stand – and, most notably, a “five cent theatre” — the Colloseum (or Coliseum), relocated from downtown to the park. Thomas Hooper once again set up his ice cream and refreshment booth. On opening night his “staff was kept busy in serving frozen delicacies.”

The five-cent theatre was a new twist. Scott’s Colosseum, established on George Street the previous January, had relocated to the park, taking up new premises in the main building (previously used for the box-ball alley). The moving pictures outside would continue, as usual, but now films could be seen inside both afternoons and evenings. With an elevated floor and “good seats,” the venue might have been a little more comfortable than the outdoor seating experienced in past years. “All our friends and children heartily welcomed.” A week later the theatre screened The Life of a Cowboy, which Scott’s downtown theatre had featured a month or two earlier.

Back on the slope in the outdoors, the free motion pictures began a week and a half later. The pictures – all new – “were thrown on the canvas clearly and steadily” and the large crowd – the biggest of the young season – appreciated them. At the same time, those who had a nickel to spare could see “The New Hired Man” at Scott’s: “The farmer has his troubles with the lovers; the hired man is the cause of all the trouble – very comical.”

Having the two motion picture venues, one inside and one outside, did not seem to be a problem. A report in early July indicated that a big crowd enjoyed the pictures outdoors — which proved the usual “big hits with those who were watching them” — while “The Coliseum also did a good business. . . . Five cents can be spent there very profitably.”

In 1907 and again in 1908 at Jackson Park large crowds continued to turn out, though perhaps never to the height of the first two years. “One of the biggest crowds of the season,” said a piece on July 18, 1907, without giving an estimate: “The band concert and the moving pictures were much enjoyed. The park is a delightful place in which to spend the warm nights.”

Through these years of outdoor motion pictures and other amusements, “picnic parties” were popular. On Tuesday, August 7, 1907, a “pleasant night was accountable for the large crowds” that came to the park both to picnic and to watch the flickers, with an attendance that was one of the largest of the summer. The films that evening included a story of an “inexperienced chauffeur” and “The Bad Man,” among others that proved “interesting and “exciting.” The paper suggested: “The people are apparently glad to get out to the park after their hard day’s work, and parents with their families go out every evening to the park.”

Later in August, even with weather “a trifle chilly,” “unusually large crowds” were turning out. A front-page piece in the Daily Review concluded in somewhat limp fashion: “The views are good, some of them being amusing.”

Despite the fun, the papers report unpleasant episodes

*Review*, June 18, 1906, p.4. The park and its amusements, both day and night, as a possible “curse” rather than a benefit. As it turned out, thousands of locals did not agree with that assessment.

Although fun and games and pleasantries at the park were plentiful, the park did have its critics. According to Rev. W.J. McColl of St. Peter’s Cathedral, for instance, the park and its array of amusements, both day and night, just possibly might be “a curse in the city.”

The thousands of people who turned out again and again over four years would surely have disagreed with that sentiment — or taken no notice of it — but the park did have something of a reputation as a dangerous place, a site of many temptations; and police constables were on constant lookout to maintain public order or, as a newspaper put it, to prevent “exhibitions of unseemly conduct.” An August 8, 1905, Examiner news item about hoodlumism in the park area warned: “Young girls should not go about after dark without adult company.”

*Evening Examiner*, Aug. 18, 1906, p.4. This image seems pleasant enough, but at the time it was presented as a warning in a wire-service news article about the need to police parks: “In summer the parks necessitate considerable extra watchfulness, loitering is not permitted in the late hours of the night.” Fears of the time abounded that young girls could be simply “ruined” through acquaintances formed at the parks. It was, though, a cultural concern that was fading away. Over time Jackson Park became seen as a more acceptable place for courting.

This post-Victorian, Edwardian decade was a period of shifting cultural values and roles, and the combination of parks and movies and other amusements did lead to complaints beyond the pulpit. Seats downtown in the Grand Opera house were allotted by ticket price, and the spectrum from low to higher cost led to the segregation of classes. In the park there was no such separation. As historian Lauren Rabinovitz relates, culture critics of that time damned the parks “as sites for encouraging reckless behaviour, intermingling of classes and ethnic groups, and loosening of sexual propriety (especially among women).” The famous U.S. social reformer Jane Addams expressed her concern about this aspect of life: “The whole apparatus for supplying pleasure is wretchedly inadequate and full of danger to whomsoever may approach it.”

In general, writes Rabinovitz, “Amusement parks and motion picture theatres relaxed codes of proper conduct among heterogeneous groups, encouraged an independent female sexuality, and thus represented radical affronts to Victorian society.”

Although, as her diary shows, Cathleen McCarthy frequented the park regularly with her sister, friends, and mother — and she was just one of countless others — going there tended to be considered somewhat dangerous for young girls and women. Myrtle Heslip, born around 1896, told an interviewer in 1970 that as a young girl (living in Ashburnham, or East City) she used to take the long walk to Jackson Park with her sister and friends — for the “swings and the band and dancing” — “but my father wasn’t too sure about that.”

*Examiner*, July 26, 1906, p.1. A man taking in the moving pictures with his wife decided to take a little walk and came across a woman calling for help. The incident took place in a “lonely spot within a couple of hundred yards from more than a thousand people.” The occasional headlines and stories of misconduct and assault against women represented a serious concern, but did not seem to diminish the local population’s appetite for finding amusement at the park.

In the summer of 1904, for instance, citizens had expressed concern about “hoodlumism” amongst the trees. Among other things, young men were apparently firing revolvers in the park and letting loose with profanities and foul language — all of which made “a visit to the park a punishment instead of a pleasure.” That November a nine-year-old boy had been struck in the face by a stray bullet (“He will recover,” the report said). The following year complaints arose about “boys and young men” who were wandering around and carrying off “everything that is not strictly guarded.”

When such “immense” crowds gather, there are bound to be a few disturbances — and the newspapers of the time tended to pick up on these events almost as much as they did the many pleasurable moments to be found.

In June 1905 a mother related how a boy had snuck up when she and her family were enjoying their tea. He “ransacked a basket which had been left near the table.” Around the same time the actions of a number of young men reportedly frightened “a couple of ladies.”

More than once picnic baskets were reported stolen. In one case, on a fine summer’s day in July 1906, “three hulking fellows” grabbed the lunch basket of a mother sitting on the grass with her children. They “simply laughed at her and walked away.” Men who had a little too much to drink might show up, using “profane language” and disrupting an evening’s “serenity.”

*Examiner*, July 19, 1906, p.4. The newspapers occasionally printed letters from people who were not completely happy with their evening at the park — and with the police officer nowhere in sight.

Youngsters – said in one case to be somewhere between the ages of ten and eighteen – reportedly amused themselves by tossing sticks, dirt, or clumps of grass into the crowd of spectators. Some of them made “insulting remarks of an unsavoury character.” One evening some young men, trying to steal a ride home, stormed a streetcar on the way back from the park. After the conductor managed to get some of them off, they started throwing stones at the passengers onboard. Boys jumping on and off the fenders and steps of the streetcars — as boys will tend to do — also drew the attention of the press. Onlookers feared that an accident was bound to happen if that kind of behaviour was allowed to continue.

Another time youths bothered a young couple who felt certain that they were going to be “mobbed” – “to use a slang phrase that is expressive,” added the reporter. The paper made a point in its headline that the city would “not tolerate rough conduct at Jackson Park.”

*Examiner*, July 9, 1907, p.2. A U.S. visitor spots a foreigner being treated unkindly, to say the least.

Significantly, such occurrences — or the newspapers’ regular reporting of them — coincided with the subject-matter of an early stream of films known as the “bad-boy genre.” These pictures, Musser writes, were “directed at adult, middle-class males who were expected to recall the carefree days of childhood. Yet, when shown to children and working-class immigrants, they [the films] became potentially subversive.” (Musser points out that the genre was later supplanted by Westerns.) Did the motion pictures influence the behaviour — or the newspaper reporting? Or did these media simply reflect what was going on?

In the summer of 1906 a couple of “young ladies” who appeared to be “strangers in the city” were strolling down through the park on the driveway near “the spring.” They had a “bad scare” when two men came suddenly out of the trees and approached them. The women moved quickly into the safety of the crowd, and the men “made no attempt to follow them.”

On a Sunday evening in August some gang apparently wrecked the moving picture arc lamp by turning it on and burning it out. While the culprits were never found, warnings went out that any future offenders would be “prosecuted to the full extent of the law.” The incident had a silver lining: the lamp was quickly replaced, and the new one proved to be superior. “The light is much stronger and steadier, and the illumination is perfect.”

The prominence of horses, buggies, and riders amidst the immense crowds could also cause problems. In July 1906 came a report of “Reckless Driving at Jackson Park.” One evening after the films, as people were making their way out of the park, “a young man with his lady friend came dangerously near driving over several persons.” The newspaper report suggested that the young man needed to improve upon his “horsemanship.” A call for horses to be banned from the park had been made at least a year earlier, when a small girl getting off a trolley had been knocked down by a horse that had just swung around a corner and been disturbed by the car lights. By 1907, perhaps earlier, the entrances to the park were closed to horses and vehicles with wire stretched across between the posts.

1908 — a final year for pictures in Jackson Park — opens with Prof. Cullerton and his famous colored pictures

*Review*, May 27, 1908, p.1. Other new amusements failed to appear.

The street-railway company appeared to do quite well with its combination of transportation and amusement. It had doubled its capacity in 1907, with six miles of track and fourteen cars; it was employing thirty-five men. The newspapers accounts gave lavish accounts of passenger numbers.

In June 1908 the park opened the film showings on Wednesday, June 3 — now with a new moving picture machine, the “best [films] that can be secured,” and Professor Edwin A. Cullerton of Toronto in attendance to present — and lecture on — an array of pictures. Unfortunately, with conditions “a trifle cool,” the crowd was not as large as expected.

*Examiner*, June 30, 1908, p.5. A lineup of films offered early in the final season of motion pictures at the park. The band music and the pictures appear to have been equal draws. The film program is now in the hands of an established downtown exhibitor, a sign of things to come.

After trying out the downtown Colloseum the previous year, this time the railway company gave the contract for providing motion pictures to Wesley Edwards, who operated the city’s year-old Crystal theatre and would bring his “excellent programme” to the park. With the 57th Regiment band also in regular attendance, declared the Review: “The Radial Railway Company are leaving nothing undone to provide entertainment for their patrons.”

On the second evening that summer Stanley Coon of the Crystal Theatre came out to operate the “picture machine” – and “succeeded in getting reproductions on the canvas that were steady and restful.”

Notable that summer was a decision by the Nicholls Park Commission to appoint a permanent park caretaker, who would reside at the park. To accommodate him, a “handsome” red brick cottage, in the Rustic style (with rubble stone foundation and embellishments), would be built just inside the main entrance, on a higher level off to the left of the drive. In 1909 it would be occupied by caretaker Jas. Rose.

*Review*, Aug. 27, 1908, p.6. Moving pictures — good for mind and spirit, no doubt — and local beer — “bottled health.”

Well over thirty short films were shown that summer – one of them was Night Riders (released May 8 that year), touted as “The Greatest Moving Picture of the Day” – and by September, with the crowds still coming out, the railway company was putting on a “fast car service.” As the Evening Examiner remarked, “The moonlight sights are bringing large numbers to the Park.”

With autumn weather closing in, the company advertised the pictures for the last time on Tuesday, Sept. 22. That week’s run appears to have been the last time for the regular screening of motion pictures in the park.

As the Examiner writer reminisced four decades later in outlining the story of the street railway company and the motion pictures, skating, and toboggan slides, “As amusement entrep[r]eneurs the Quaker Oats Company did an excellent job, never got any credit for it, and never sought it.” In the following years, with motion picture theatres downtown now firmly in place, never to disappear, the screenings in the park were abandoned, although the wintertime skating and toboggan run lasted for quite a few years more — with the “military band” still advertised as an attraction in the park as late as 1910.

Some forty years later only slight traces of the two rinks and the toboggan slide remained.

The end of the line for a special exhibition site

*Review*, Sept. 22, 1908, p.6. Although the pictures would “change every other night,” no further announcements appeared.

Like much else, the Radial Railway Company’s “pleasure business” played an important role, but only for a time. For a few years much fun and amusement were to be had (amidst a shifting of culture). As the Examiner put it: “The street car was the omnibus of equality before the automobile rolled on to the scene to change the way of life and push the horizons of accustomed boundaries all the way back from sea to sea.” For the thousands of people who went to the park to watch motion pictures over these years, the trolley company’s entertainment proved a kind of appetizer; until then only a relative few had seen films on scattered times and occasions.

It is simply too bad for us now that someone was not making a motion picture in Jackson Park on those evenings, capturing the threatening clouds one night, the pouring rain on another, but more often the pure clean air and casual enjoyment of what was then an absolutely new phenomenon. It is too bad a photograph does not capture a glimpse of the crowds casually going on and off street cars or sitting on the grass; the mischievous boys up to their tricks; the array of tea parties; the ice-cream or peanut vendors; the faces of the crowd, in close-up — or a long shot of the slope that made such a good viewing area; the peanut shells scattered carelessly on the ground.

What would it have been like to sit in the near-dark on the grass — or even on a hard chair — and watch the countless short flickering moving pictures — witnessing, for instance, Gaston’s Visit to the Museum (Italy, released in the U.S. March 1908) or, even more, The Angels, dubiously advertised as being “presented for the first time in Canada” — motion pictures that were then so new to the world at large?

Although in general in that decade motion picture shows were becoming less of a novelty, even somewhat humdrum, and the city’s three newspapers would pay less attention to them, for a time at least the city had its trolley rides, picnics and teas, daily amusements in the park – and the latest in outdoor moving pictures. While the park screenings and the streetcars would disappear, the motion pictures, indoors and out, were in town to stay.