Fireworks In Celebration Of Queen Victoria In Jubilee Park

THE FIREWORKS THAT WENT OFF SIDE-WAYS, AND WHAT A WILD SCRAMBLE FOR SAFETY - OH, THE HUMANITY

WHEN THE FIREWORKS EVENT, IN CELEBRATION OF QUEEN VICTORIA'S BIRTHDAY, WAS HELD AT JUBILEE PARK

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     It was a neighborhood tradition, I recall, that the folks up on Aubrey Street, the corridor of no frills, war-time houses, in Bracebridge, had their own little, but successful, fireworks display, on open lots along the west side of the road; a short distance from the intersection with Anne Street. I think it was drawing larger crowds every year, in the mid to late 1960's, and many were coming from other areas of town to participate; but obviously, being near South Muskoka Memorial Hospital, and really close-by to neighborhood houses, the potential of an accidental house fire, or related fireworks injury, probably forced organizers to work with the town to relocate the May 24th festivities. I don't know this for fact, and that sucks for a town historian to admit, but regardless, the major fireworks event, marking Queen Victoria's birthday, was moved to Jubilee Park, in The Hollow, below Bracebridge High School; the park bordering Victoria Street, on the east side, and Wellington on the west. The park had been allocated to the public trust, by a local landowner in the late 1800's, for the use of the Bracebridge Agricultural Fair, and of course, as a lasting recognition of our British heritage, and the good Queen's Victoria's Jubilee.
     I can remember us local lads, one of the first years of the re-location, being quite excited to head down to the park, where normally we played baseball, or ran around the outside horse-track. So we loaded up on our packages of mini firecrackers, from either Bamford's Store, or Lil & Cec's variety shop, both on Toronto Street, which we hoped to set-off during the after-dark display, down in The Hollow. We didn't have the convenience of butane lighters back then, meaning we had to load-up on match-books, which most often got damp from our sweat, jammed into our tight trouser pockets. On this particular night, we were loaded for bear, as they say, and short of sparklers jammed down our pants, we were packing enough explosive powder, to blow up an average sized human being. We all knew this, because there wasn't one of us back then, who hadn't experienced these same firecrackers going off accidentally in our hands or pockets. I learned a lot about "duds" as relates to firecrackers, and that not all "duds" are incapable of blasting-off when the possessor least expected. You haven't lived on the wild side, until you've had a connected string of firecrackers blow-up in your back pocket. As God was my witness, on that day, looking over my shoulder, I thought when the wick reached its end, with no resulting explosion, as a result of being burned to the tip of the black powder, this identified it clearly as "a dud". We had been ripped-off by the store and the manufacturer. We grumbled about cheap fireworks, and wanting our money back. But stranger than fiction, there were exceptional circumstances to come out of these blow-em-up sessions in the old sand pit.
       I was mad this bunch didn't ignite, and subsequently explode like war zone machine-gun fire, and I angrily stuffed them all back in my pocket, only to find out by happenstance, that a wick could still be ignited, even if one couldn't see the sparks. I have never run so fast, or slid on my arse as far, as on that day with fireworks going off in my pants. The several minute burn, blew the arse right out of my new trousers, and my burned skin would require layers of Ozinol for weeks, the only medicinal compound my dad would allow in the house for treatment of scrapes, cuts and burns.
     By this point in our lives, the Hunt's Hill gang was pretty experienced, and battle-worn, about such potentials of firecrackers and sudden random explosions, and the scars on our bodies and limbs, exhibited pretty clearly what can happen when, in these cases, we didn't listen to our mother's sage warnings. "Don't put your eye out with that stuff," my mother would say. She just never saw the burn marks on my ass which was a good thing, considering I loved setting off fireworks, and couldn't have lived through the lead-up to Victoria Day without them and a book of matches. On this festive occasion, the fireworks gathering at Jubilee Park, was scheduled for about eight o'clock, but it was going to be closer to nine before there was enough darkness to facilitate the royal fire-show. We had our little pre-show up in the sandpit of the Weber Apartments, on Alice Street, which included of course, old standbys, like the burning school house, and a lot of other boxed and pyramid shaped explosives, that were pretty mild, compared to what volunteers were going to let off down at the park. My parents hated burning up money, so I had to use my savings, stashed in an old Mason jar, to make the annual purchase of a "home and backyard" fireworks kit, that you could buy bagged and boxed, in many of the local shops around town. The collections, depending on how much you wanted to spend, would give the voyeurs a ten to fifteen minute fireworks display, and not a second more. Of course it was a waste of money, which is why we opted for the cheaper, more adaptable firecrackers instead. Even the minis, which you could buy in the thousands, for only a few bucks. I confess, that we also used them to blow-up our model cars, planes, ships and army tanks, and yes, some of our battlefield set-ups in the sandpit, with hundreds of plastic toy soldiers positioned in bunkers all over the place. These red firecrackers made outstanding hand-grenades, blowing-up army installations, and knocking out machine gun nests, looking out over the battlefield, soon to be full of small craters, gouged out by the force of these small, but vigorous explosions.
     On this night, we were ready for a pyro-technics extravaganza, and if it didn't meet our specifications for fire-power, we had pockets-full of gunpowder and matches, to make for an interesting background barrage, on the neighborhood peace of The Hollow. By time we got there, a large crowd had gathered in an around the horse corral, on the north side of the park, and we housed ourselves in the two story structure, that was used by fall fair officials, to house judges, viewing the equestrian events at the September Agricultural Fair. It was an open affair, on four sides of the structure, on both levels, with a peaked roof. It was like something you'd see at a military fort from the War of 1812, and we loved playing in it, on days when there was nothing much going on, in the park, neighborhood, or town, of interest, for hard to please kids like us. We used to play war-games from the top level, and we could fashion guns from found sticks, picked up in the vicinity, left over from the Hollow kids, who really owned the rights to the park; but never seemed all that interested in forcing the issue with other groups from town. They would eagerly greet us, if they were occupying the park at the time, to see if we would like to play a pick-up game of baseball. Which they would always win of course. They had the likes of "Barefoot Billy Nudd," who was the strike-out king of recreational baseball in our day.
     The local lads met up with our mate from across town, Randy Carswell, and we were all huddled on the bottom level of the old tower structure. There were many people on the second level as well, and I suppose, the weight could have buckled the whole tower, except for that old time construction practice, of making things strong, to last the rigors of the ages. We had a good front view, but it was pretty crowded on the bottom, and if memory serves, this had something to do with inclement weather at that moment. They wouldn't run the event in the pouring rain, obviously, but it was likely just a few sprinkles; as we liked the idea of keeping our own fireworks dry in the pockets of our trousers, we opted to be amidst fifty other souls, jammed into the small bottom room. Nary a rain drop connected with us, but we were sweating like pigs.
     When the fireworks got underway, we discovered that being in the tower was about the dumbest and most awkwardly positioned place to observe the night sky. Which was a reasonably important part of the fireworks display. All we could see, were the sparks and vapour trail when the honking big rockets took off, hear the boom when they exploded in the heavens, and then see the rain of spark showers afterwards, falling back down to earth. This went on for the first part of the exhibition, but by this point, at least half the crowd who started with us, packed like sardines on the lower level, had opted instead, to brave the misty rain, and watch from an area around the barrier of the corral. I would say, there were easily five hundred spectators, in and around the equestrian area, and the tower. The volunteers in charge of setting up, and igniting the missile fuses, were set up inside the corral, with a pretty good buffer zone between them, the explosives, and the nearest spectator. Of course, when you guage the speed of one of these fireworks rockets, that buffer zone could have been dangerously compromised in a couple of seconds, if even that long.
     It happened fairly early in the forty minute, to an hour, fireworks display. For reasons unknown, one of the rockets, set to fire into the sky, suddenly fell off its mount, and was aimed right at all of us in the green tower. It was one of those frozen in time events, because we knew what was going to happen next, when we saw it tip over, but we seemed frozen, when it came to taking additional cover; which under the circumstances, would have meant basically hitting the floor of the room, in which we were standing. I can still see it unfolding in slow motion, and honest to God, I thought there would be lives lost. There was so much force in this rocket, to rise off the earth, like a bullet, that sliding along the ground, every bump or depression in the earth, sent it in another direction, sparking through the crowd of stunned onlookers. It would do a loop, and then come straight at us, then spin the other way suddenly, before whipping off in the opposite direction, only to hit some other obstruction, and make a bee line right for the tower once again. This all happened in mere seconds, and every time it change direction, the crowd would have to part, scream, and run the opposite direction, to let it pass by with a plume of sparks coming out the rear end. The problem we anticipated, was that it was going to explode at some time soon, with a big boom that might injure the ears of anyone in close proximity. This was okay in the heavens, but not on the ground amongst a large crowd, that couldn't outrun a fireworks rocket.
     It was like a Marx brothers comedy routine, mixed with antics of the Keystone Cops. The crowd was moving in swarms, and there were people falling and toppling over one another, trying to clear the path. If that rocket had hit someone, it could have well resulted in death. Here then were senior citizens with canes, and toddlers strapped into strollers, directly in its path. Then it changed direction once again, and was heading right at us in the tower. Keeping in mind, this was a dry, heritage structure, that would have caught fire easily, it would have a been a big problem for those on the upper level. Randy Carswell had been sitting on the window ledge, looking out over the corral, and when he decided it was time to vacate the building, he swung his legs back inside, and in the process, kicked an elderly lady right in the face. In such a dire circumstance, you might have thought retribution would have come following the emergency exit. A sort of priority to escape first, seek retribution second. Instead, this lady, the injured party, began hitting Randy with her purse in the middle of the crowd, and this compromised a quick exit, because she was also hitting a lot of other innocent bystanders on her back swing. Poor Randy didn't know what to do, because he was balanced on the window ledge, close to toppling over the edge either way, as he was fending off blows from the purse and a very husky arm. She was also screaming at him, and this kind of blocked-out the loud advisories, coming from those who were watching the rocket, at that moment, within inches of connecting with the tower.
     There was so much going on in that tiny space, with all the yelling, that most didn't know what had happened to the rocket after its impact, and there had been no actual boom, connected to the wild sparking happening just outside the window opening. We were all able to exit the structure, but the lady didn't let up on Randy, until he was able to run into the other spectators, now closer to the tower than the corral, in their run from the flaming rocket. The volunteers that night, were able to finally get the rocket extinguished before it could burn the tower down. There were injuries sustained that night, but mostly scrapes and bruises, from tumbles running into physical obstacles in the park, and tumbling over other spectators, moving like waves from one side to the other, depending on which way the rocket was sliding in the dirt. I think it was a very fortunate outcome, considering what might have happened, if it had hit someone in attendance, and ignited their clothing on fire. I had been to a lot of fireworks displays to that point, but it was the first time I had ever seen a grounded rocket, aimed right at the home crowd. Randy may have sustained more injuries that night, but not because of being hit by pieces of the fireworks rocket. He had purse-welts on his forehead, and he had a hard time explaining it to his mother that night, who thought he had been beaten-up by thugs. I think this is probably what Randy told his parents when he got home, not wishing to confess he had been beaten-up by an elderly woman, with a very substantial purse.
    I believe this misadventure kind of shut the fireworks event down, with its cast of general volunteers at the helm, as it raised fear that the same think might happen to their other rockets, and it seemed risky business to keep on going. We made up for this, by igniting our pockets-full of firecrackers all the way home. Until one of the town constables caught us by the arms, downtown, and explained that local neighborhoods were not the place to be throwing explosives. Geez, we nearly got driven home in the squad car, all because of a sideways rocket, and the fact, we couldn't stay at Jubilee Park, because the old gal was still on the hunt for Randy. The constable sent us on our way home, as it was getting late, but not before asking Randy what happened to his forehead. "I fell down, officer, when the fireworks went into the audience," he replied, pulling his ball cap down over his obvious welts, bright red on his whiter than white skin. Well, we survived the fireworks mishap, and got over the burns we suffered, when our "dud" firecrackers went off in our hands or pockets; but Randy talked about that night, well, until shortly before his death, the result of complications from diabetes. "Hey Ted, do remember the night at the fairgrounds, when I accidentally kicked that old lady in the face," he would ask, as a comedic introduction, when we'd meet-up some place in town for a coffee. "Randy, how could I ever forget it. I never saw you run faster, than on that night, and it wasn't because you had a rocket up your behind either," I'd answer, after my fist sip of java. "Good times, eh Ted," he'd retort with a laugh and a tell tale blush he was famous for. "They sure were, Randy, good times! I'm still shocked we survived those good times, that always seemed to me, were awfully dangerous. We could have been blown to smitherines, and you might have been killed the result of a purse attack." Randy would nod, sip, and his rosey cheeks always told me, he was at peace with whatever had happened, all those years ago, when we were always in some sort of trouble or other, no more than five steps outdoors at any time of the day. Trouble followed us around like that rocket, and the lady with the purse.