Canada's Wonderland Amusement Park Polish Day Television Commercial 1997

Canada's Wonderland Amusement Park Polish Day TV Television Commercial from 1997.

Canada's Wonderland is a 330-acre (130 ha) theme park located in Vaughan, Ontario, a suburb approximately 40 kilometres (25 mi) north of Downtown Toronto. Opened in 1981 by the Taft Broadcasting Company and The Great-West Life Assurance Company as the first major theme park in Canada, it remains the country's largest.[3][4] The park, currently owned by Cedar Fair, has been the most visited seasonal amusement park in North America for several consecutive years.[5] As a seasonal park, Canada's Wonderland is open daily from May to September, with weekend openings in late April, October and early November. With sixteen roller coasters, Canada's Wonderland is ranked second in the world by number of roller coasters, after Six Flags Magic Mountain (19 coasters) and tied with Cedar Point (also with 16 coasters). The 330-acre (130 ha) park includes a 20-acre (8.1 ha) water park named Splash Works. The park holds Halloween Haunt, a Halloween-themed event, each fall, as well as special events throughout the season.

The park was owned by Paramount Parks from 1993 to 2006 and operated as Paramount Canada's Wonderland. When Cedar Fair purchased the park in 2006, "Paramount" was dropped from the title. In 2016, it was the second most visited park in the Cedar Fair chain, behind Knott's Berry Farm, with about 3.72 million visitors.[2]

When Canada's Wonderland was planned the region lacked a seasonal amusement park. Toronto had previously hosted two amusement parks which had roller-coasters, Sunnyside Amusement Park in the west end and Scarboro Beach Amusement Park in the east, but both were closed in the 1950s to build the Gardiner Expressway and housing developments, respectively.[6]
Planning

In 1972, the Taft Broadcasting Company, headed by Kelly Robinson, first proposed building a 330-acre (130 ha)[7] theme park in the then small village of Maple, part of Vaughan, Ontario. Several other possible locations in Ontario were considered, including Niagara Falls, Cambridge, and Milton, but Maple was finally selected because of its proximity to the City of Toronto and the 400-series of highways.[8]
Wonder Mountain and the Victoria Falls

Others had seriously considered the Greater Toronto Area as a spot to build a theme park, among them the Conklin family (whose Conklin Shows ran various midways around North America, including Toronto's Canadian National Exhibition midway). Walt Disney also considered the idea before choosing Florida, rejecting Toronto mainly because the climate was too cold, making the operating season too short to be profitable.[9]

Construction of the park was opposed on multiple fronts. Many cultural institutions in Toronto such as Ontario Place, the Royal Ontario Museum, and the operators of the Canadian National Exhibition felt that the Toronto market was not large enough to support more competition. Other groups that fought the building of Wonderland included a Vaughan residential association called SAVE, which thought the increased traffic would reduce property values. People in the region were concerned that the new park would be similar in aesthetics to a carnival or midway.[10][dubious – discuss] Some of the concessions the company made included a landscaped berm around the park to reduce noise and modifying the appearance of the large parking lot. Taft was concerned about opposition and flew a group of opponents and regional councilors to Mason, Ohio (near Cincinnati) to show them the positive impact of one of its theme parks on the local community.