Thanks to the TTC strike, I didn't get very far from home this weekend. With High Park being situated just across the street, Kate and I used this break from our usual weekend shopping sprees to take in a little hanami. We weren't expecting to see much as the cherry trees didn't bloom until May 6th last year. Instead, we were pleasantly surprised to find them in full bloom as you can see in this photo:

Of course under the trees were lots of people sitting on tarps having picnics. Perhaps some of them were even having Sushi Picnics!

Ceder Fair, owner of roller coaster Mecca Cedar Point, bought my town's local theme park (and my former employer) Canada's Wonderland from the notoriously stingy Paramount Parks a couple of years ago. Ever since, roller coaster fans have been waiting with bated breath to see what big new rides the company would put in. The park has always had a nice assortment of rides and roller coasters, however the penny-pinchers at Paramount never would drop the kind of dough it takes to build a really big, marque ride. Well the wait is almost over now as Wonderland has just completed construction and testing of the park's first hypercoaster, the awkwardly named "Behemoth". The press were invited to the park the other day for the big unveiling.

Videos:
Tom Brown Takes a Ride - CTVToronto.ca
A Blazing Roller Coaster - Toronto Star

Wonderland is pretty much the only place you can go in Toronto to ride roller coasters these days. The C.N.E. used to have The Flyer and Doppel Looping (or Double Looper as most people mistakenly called it) however they've been gone now for years. Since Wonderland is actually in the suburb of Maple, technically speaking Toronto no longer has any roller coasters today. As my dad likes to point out to me, there was a time when the Toronto lake shore was a lot more interesting than it is now. Before the Gardiner Expressway was built in the 50's, Sunnyside Beach Park sat just two blocks from the house I'm now living in. All that is left today is Sunnyside Pool and the Palais Royale. Thanks to the highway, roads, trains and streetcars, the spot the park once stood now has the distinction of being "The noisiest location in Ontario" according to Wikipedia.

In researching this story, I can't seem to find a definitive answer as to what the roller coaster at the Sunnyside amusement park was called, or what happened to it. Some articles indicate that it was called "The Flyer" and was moved to the C.N.E. after the park was closed down. The Toronto Star seems to think that it was called "The Rocket" and was simply torn down. They also claim that the C.N.E.'s Flyer was "built at the CNE for $200,000 in 1953 by Patty Conklin", which seems to imply it was not related to the Sunnyside Flyer in any way. This article provides the most detailed explanation of the history of Sunnyside's coaster, however it still left me confused as to how many "Flyer" coasters there were exactly. I get the impression that there may have in fact been three completely different Flyers built in the first half of the last century in Toronto. It seems like amusement park operators had just as hard a time coming up with decent names for their roller coasters back then as they do today.