Global’s Keith Baldrey recounts his 10 years working at the PNE

Like most kids growing up in the Lower Mainland, I looked forward every summer for the start of the PNE and the chance to use the free entry ticket we all got on the last day of school. My friends and I tried to go as many times as possible during the 17-day fair and easily spent the entire day there before arriving back home in south Burnaby, utterly exhausted.

But then I turned 14, and that’s when the PNE became something much different to me. For the next 10 years, I worked at every PNE. That’s 170 days of 14-hour days, all spent on the Midway.

I ran carnival games, and I’m sure you’ve played some of them over the years: ring toss, the water racer, the milk bottles, Fool the Guesser. What? You don’t remember Fool the Guesser, a classic old carnival game?

Step right up, and I’ll explain it.

My uncle Len, a veteran carny, ran the game and hired me as his assistant. It involved a person “betting” me money (usually between a dollar and five dollars) that I would not be able to a) guess their age within one year or b) guess their weight within one pound.

If I was wrong, they won a prize. The more they played for, the better the prize. If I was right, they were out of the money they had bet me.

Some “insider” tricks: the prizes, which were bought in bulk, cost us less than the money the person had paid to play, so it didn’t really matter if I was ever correct. But frequently I was correct, at least when it came to guessing ages (always look at a person’s eyes for the best indication, and look for other clues such as their companions’ ages etc.).

Guessing weights was almost pointless and virtually impossible. But most people, especially women, wanted to know old they looked.

My uncle also taught me to play different “guessing games.” He taught me to pay attention as people walked by (most people tend to walk around the midway at least several times) and try to hear someone’s name being called, or their nickname. Then, when they walked by the next time, I offered to “bet” them I could guess their name if they spotted me the first letter.

Essentially, my uncle taught me to hone my observational skills and use them to lure folks to the game to play. Improving those skills served me well later, as a news reporter!

When I turned 19, it was time to move over to the gambling games. These were the old style ones: the Crown and Anchor Wheel, the Under 7/Over 7 “dice” game (in which you threw two orange balls into a bin and they would settle into slots that would light up a dice face, and you bet on whether they would add up to “over” seven, or under, or on seven itself), and the Pea Wheel.

I’m not sure the Pea Wheel is around anymore but it was a lot of fun. People would pay $2 to play, and they would get a “pea” (a tiny wooden ball sawed in half, with a number painted on it). I’d spin the wheel with numbers one through 16 and the person’s whose number came up would win the pot.

You may wonder how I, as the dealer, made money at this. Well, for starters I would get a pea and so would have just as good a chance as winning as anyone else. And, if there were at least eight players, I took one bet out for myself.

Often times, 16 players were playing. I was a very fast dealer (we had to practice shaking the peas out of a plastic bottle and then collecting them – making sure we got ALL of them back for the next game) and could get two games in a minute.

So, in a two dollar game, that meant I was taking four dollars out for the house every minute. Plus, on average, I would win about seven times an hour (every 16 games or so). That works out to more than $400 an hour. In a five dollar game, it works out to more than $1,000 an hour.

My boss was very pleased with me. His name was Ross McLeod and he went on to found the Great Canadian Casino company. I also worked for him at the Calgary Stampede and Edmonton’s Klondike Days, and he eventually asked me to join him full-time, but I was determined to get into journalism and remember telling him “there’s not much of a future in the casino business, Ross.”

For me the PNE meant long, long days full of thousands of people, never-ending noise, congestion, and smells. It meant taking catnaps in the livestock building, riding the wooden roller coaster in the morning before the fair opened just to wake up (I’ve ridden it well more than 500 times, by the way), and making friends with key vendors in the food building so I never had to wait in line for dinner.

It was hard work, but it was a ton of fun. All 10 years of it!