Carnival atmosphere

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/08/2016 (3521 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

More often than not, whenever Randy Saluk is stopped at a red light somewhere in Winnipeg, the driver in the adjacent lane will motion to the image of a clown painted on the side of Saluk’s vehicle, roll down the window and break into song, “Come to the town where the train goes around.”

“Or if I’m meeting somebody for the first time and they ask what I do for a living, as soon as I tell them they start singing,” Saluk says with a chuckle. 

In case you haven’t figured it out, Saluk’s family owns Tinkertown Family Fun Park, located five minutes east of the Royal Canadian Mint on Murdoch Road.

‘I still go on the ferris wheel from time to time. It’s nice when it stops at the top, and I get to have a look around the whole park and see all the people enjoying themselves. That’s always a good thing’– Tinktertown owner Randy Saluk 

The earworm he’s referring to isn’t used in radio or TV spots any longer, he says. But it’s still the first thing played over Tinkertown’s public address system when the outdoor amusement park, which features more than 20 children’s rides and attractions, opens for the day.

(In a 2010 Free Press poll, the Tinkertown ditty was voted one of Winnipeg’s top 10 advertising jingles of all time, along with odes to Pizza Place, Poulin’s Pest Control Services and Abalon Foundation Specialists. (“A-B-A-L-O-N… Abalon… ”)  

Tinkertown began life as Kiddie Land in, of all places, Regina. It was situated on public land, however, and after Regina’s city council expropriated the site in the late 1970s, owner Bill Macovichuk packed up his Tilt-A-Whirl, Tin Lizzy automobiles and crazy mirrors and headed east in search of a new home.

The way the story was told to Saluk, Macovichuk intended to relocate in southern Ontario. But as he was driving past a KOA campground situated on the outskirts of Winnipeg, he spotted a sign indicating the facility was in receivership. He turned his truck around, got in touch with the people handling the sale and, in May 1979, opened Tinkertown on the 20-acre location.

Around the same time, Saluk was working for his father, Henry Saluk, who founded Wonder Shows in 1963.

“I literally grew up in the travelling carnival business,” says Saluk, 50, who met his future wife, Leona, at the Selkirk Fair 35 years ago, when he let her ride the Zipper for free.

“When I was a kid, my parents used to pull me out of school in May because we’d be on the road travelling throughout Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Ontario.”

Saluk’s father was killed in a private plane crash when Saluk was 25. After his father’s death, Saluk continued running Wonder Shows with Lawrence and Marie Kiernicki, his aunt and uncle. In 1995, his uncle announced he’d had enough of “the road.” Because of their similar businesses, Saluk and the Kiernickis and had got to know Jim Macovichuk, who took over at Tinkertown after his uncle Bill retired. Lawrence Kiernicki told Macovichuk if he ever wanted to sell the park, his family would be eager to purchase it.

“I guess Jim figured an offer like that wasn’t going to come along every day, so he sold Tinkertown to us, and we’ve been running it since 1996,” says Saluk, noting he continued handling the affairs for Wonder Shows until 2006, at which time he sold that entity to a different uncle so he could devote his full attention to Tinkertown.

Saluk owns a house near Lockport, but in July and August, a fully furnished apartment on the second level of his administration building, steps away from the merry-go-round, serves as his and his wife’s primary residence.

“It’s just easier that way,” says the father of one, seated at a picnic table close enough to the park’s Water Wars attraction he has to raise his voice to be heard above the din of 10-year-olds soaking one another.

“We close at 7 (p.m.), but by the time I throw out the garbage and pick up around the parking lot, it’s 9 or 9:30. Plus I’m usually up and about by 7:30 in the morning tinkering with one ride or another, so we made the decision to live here during the summer instead.” 

When the park is open — from Canada Day to Labour Day, operating hours are noon to 7 p.m. seven days a week, weather permitting — Saluk spends time walking the grounds, checking up on his 44-person staff and chatting with customers. It’s during those interactions, he says, when he’s privy to umpteen stories about people who came to Tinkertown when they were young and years later, show up with their own children or grandchildren in tow.

Nick Brown grew up in Portage la Prairie and now lives in Yorkton, Sask. He has fond memories of going to Tinkertown as a kid, he says, but when he visited the park with his own three-year-old son last summer during a trip to Winnipeg, he wasn’t sure what to expect.

“I was really worried having moved away and not having been there for nearly 30 years that it might not have been kept up,” Brown says when reached at home.

“It seemed smaller for sure — I’ve grown a few feet since the last time I was there — but I was very pleased that it was much like what I pictured in my head. The helicopters weren’t as wild a ride as I remember, but my son loved them. The park was tidy and neat, and it looked like the machinery is well-looked after. I’m an industrial mechanic by trade, so I can’t help but look at things like that. And of course, the train stood out, for sure. It had always been my favourite ride, and now it’s my son’s (favourite) as well.”

About that Lilliputian locomotive: Saluk attends a carnival-industry convention in Orlando every winter, where fair-minded folk are able to check out the latest chills and thrills. But if he ever decided to replace his small-scale 70-passenger train with something more modern, he’d get “crucified.”

“We actually have two trains in case one ever conks out,” he says of the twin G-16 Streamliner miniature trains, which were built in Indiana by the Miniature Train Co. in the 1950s.

“As a matter of fact, we get tons of requests from wedding parties who want to get pictures taken on the train. Usually we’ll tell them to come before we open to the general public so that there aren’t a bunch of five-year-olds screaming for the train to get going while the photographer is snapping away.”

One more thing, after being around carnival rides for his entire life, does Saluk still get a charge out of flying around on a roller-coaster or taking on all comers in a bumper car?

“Not so much. You get to a certain age where you’ve had enough,” he said.

“Mind you, I still go on the ferris wheel from time to time. It’s nice when it stops at the top, and I get to have a look around the whole park and see all the people enjoying themselves. That’s always a good thing.”

david.sanderson@freepress.mb.ca