long live the carny cowboy

The cowboy who's a true PNE legend

Jack Hunter has entertained people at the Vancouver exhibition since the 1940s. Now 76, he still loves it

The Vancouver Sun

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

By Marke Andrews

With 65 years on the midway, Jack Hunter has seen a lot of fairs and sold a lot of hotdogs. Since leading ponies at the age of 11, he has hustled games players into spending their quarters and dollars, sent kids on their first thrill rides, perfected his sales pitch for slicers, dicers and other handy-dandy kitchen products, and, since the 1960s, satisfied cravings for foot-long hotdogs, corn dogs, cotton candy, candy apples and barbecued beef.

He is one of the Pacific National Exhibition oldtimers. But Hunter, 76, hasn't lost any of the passion he had back in the 1940s, when he first started spending his summers at the PNE.

"This is awesome fun," says Hunter, sporting his trademark cowboy hat, cowboy boots, and shoulder-length hair, only part of which is grey. "The day it doesn't become fun is the day I give it up."

Born in Toronto, Hunter's family moved to the Fraser Valley when he was a toddler. He came to the fair as a child, walking ponies around when it was largely an agricultural fair. He graduated to operating the rides, running games booths and becoming a product pitchman ("the old glass-cutter and knife-sharpener was the big seller"). When he married his first wife Betty Sivewright, who passed away 11 years ago, she made him stop pitching and start cooking, and he opened a concession stand. Then another. And another.

Today, he and his second wife Fatima Hunter run seven concession stands that employ between 50 and 70 workers.

Hunter doesn't just sling food at the PNE. From May to September he hits the road, taking his wares to the Calgary Stampede, Cloverdale Rodeo, Red Deer Exhibition, Medicine Hat Rodeo and Merritt Mountain Music Festival.

While some young employees come and go, others stay with him a long time. Blake Hanna, who does the ordering and servicing and dips the candy apples, has been with him for 13 years.

"He dipped 750 apples yesterday, and that won't be his record either," says Hunter.

One woman has worked for him for 33 years.

"We've watched kids grow up," says Hunter. "They bring their brothers and sisters and nephews and nieces, and we hire them to work here.

Hunter pauses to point out one of his employees.

"He's a friend of my [first] wife's family, and I changed his diapers years ago," he says proudly. "Now he's 21 years old and he's working for me.

"You make a lot of friends in this business, and they go through the good times and the hard times. You take what the good Lord gives you."

The hard times usually come with bad weather. Hunter remembers a year when it rained for 13 of the fair's 17 days, "and I never came out of here with a profit."

Hunter says the best part of the business is the people he sees -- and he always remembers an old friend.

"Some of the adults come up to me and say, 'You sold me my first cotton candy.' Then they introduce me to their son. We have generations of families who come back to see us. I love watching them grow up.

"I recognize the faces, because I'm a people person. I love people. If I didn't, I wouldn't be in this business."

Hunter has seen a lot of changes over the years. There are fewer characters in the business today than there once was. A lot of the oldtimers have retired or passed on.

As for people's tastes, Hunter says that, while there is more demand for ethnic food, people still have a yen for deep-fried midway cuisine.

"Things haven't changed that much," says Hunter. "They're still here for the greasy onions and the popcorn smell, and they still eat hotdogs. This is their 17 days of over-indulgence. They can go on a diet after Labour Day."

Neither of Hunter's two grown children from his first marriage took to the business, and neither did his current wife's son. He and Fatima have a seven-year-old daughter who spends all day and night at the fair, so the carny life may live on through her.

"Right now she's with her stepbrother and his girlfriend and they're riding the rides," he says, beaming at the image. "She'll be here until 11 at night."

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How does sugar turn into cotton candy? Popular PNE treat is scientific feat

The Province

Tuesday, August 29, 2006

By Matt Carter

There are 17 cotton-candy stands at the PNE but the one run by Jessica Remedios is the busiest. Considering the fair sells about 36,000 bags of the stuff each year, that's pretty busy.

"It's hectic," says the 19-year-old. We need to be stocked constantly. You need to always be on your toes. You'll have people yelling at you sometimes, but you just do the best you can."

Remedios has been making cotton candy at the PNE for the past five years. The popularity of the product is easy for her to account for.

"The sugar. It's almost pure sugar," she says.

Which raises the question: How is plain old sugar converted into the sticky sweet fluff that's looks like the insulation in your attic?

"It's actually a simple process," says Ryan Norheim, of the Saskatchewan Science Centre, which has run a cotton-candy exhibit for the past seven years. It's one of the most popular exhibits at the centre.

As the expert explains, a cotton candy machine is a circular tub, in the middle of which sits a spinning head. The sugar granules are poured into the head and heated above 186 C, which is sugar's melting point.

The centrifugal force in the spinning head pushes the liquid sugar through a screen and out slots in the side of the head.

"As soon as it hits our air temperature, it solidifies again," Norheim says. "Because it's shooting out, it takes on that stringy form."

Most credit two Tennessee candy makers, William Morrison and John Wharton, with inventing cotton candy in 1897. They patented a machine similar to a modern-day cotton-candy maker two years later.

Morrison and Wharton launched their "Fairy Floss" at the 1904 World's Fair in St. Louis and sold it for 25 cents a box. "That was a pretty heavy price back then but they sold 68,000 boxes," Norheim says.

Eleven-year-old Amanda Russell, of Newton, doesn't know about all that, but she knows what she likes. She's been to the PNE twice and had cotton candy both times.

"I like cotton candy because it's sweet," she says. "It melts in your mouth."

blind before the storm

Zhao Yan, imprisoned news researcher (NYT photo)

Times Researcher Receives 3-Year Prison Term in China

The New York Times

August 25, 2006

By JIM YARDLEY and JOSEPH KAHN

BEIJING, Friday, Aug. 25 — A Beijing court Friday morning unexpectedly dismissed a state secrets charge against a researcher for The New York Times but sentenced him to three years in prison on a lesser, unrelated charge of fraud.

The verdict against the researcher, Zhao Yan, 44, spared him a prison sentence of 10 years or longer and also served as a blunt rebuke to the investigation by state security agents. Agents detained Mr. Zhao almost two years ago and accused him of leaking state secrets to The Times. He has consistently stated that he is innocent of both charges.

In another closely watched case, a Chinese court in Shandong Province on Thursday convicted an advocate for peasants rights and sentenced him to more than four years in prison. The advocate, Chen Guangcheng, is a blind man who tried to file a class-action lawsuit on behalf of women who were subjected to forced abortions. His case, like that of Mr. Zhao, was considered a test of China’s legal system, and his defense team described the conviction as a sham.

The case against Mr. Zhao has been filled with unexpected legal developments. Earlier this year, the court withdrew both charges against him, prompting his lawyer to predict that he would soon be released. Instead, the court continued to hold Mr. Zhao despite the lack of charges, and prosecutors later reinstated the same charges. Mo Shaoping, the defense lawyer, vehemently complained that the tactic was illegal, but to no avail.

Jerome A. Cohen, an expert in Chinese law who has advised the Times on Mr. Zhao’s case, characterized the dismissal of the state secrets charge as “a welcome surprise.” He said that typically in state secrets cases, a defendant would face a near automatic conviction when investigators had made such a lengthy effort to pursue the case.

“As we have maintained consistently, there simply wasn’t the evidence to convict him on the state secrets charge,” Mr. Cohen said.

Mr. Cohen, in an email, described the verdict “an unusual and welcome precedent” but added that it was “marred by conviction on the fraud charge, which was originally introduced as a fig leaf to justify the continuing detention of Zhao.”

He said “conviction on the fraud charge helps to ‘save face’ for the law enforcement agencies.”

In Mr. Zhao’s case, the court rejected the state secrets charge in strong language in a 10-page verdict released Friday morning.

“On the charge against the defendant Zhao Yan that he provided state secrets abroad, the evidence is insufficient,” the court ruling read. “The charge for this crime cannot stand, and this court does not accept it.”

Mr. Zhao’s case has attracted international attention, including lobbying from President Bush, and it has been marked by legal irregularities.

The verdict had been postponed, and many legal experts have suggested that the final result would be as much a political decision by high-level government officials as a legal one.

The lead defense lawyer, Mr. Mo, said this morning that he doubted prosecutors would pursue new charges but that doing so was not impossible. Mr. Mo said prosecutors could choose to contest the verdict. Mr. Mo also said that Mr. Zhao runs the risk of another judge revivifying the state secrets case if he chooses to appeal his fraud conviction. Mr. Zhao must decide within 10 days whether to appeal.

Mr. Zhao has been imprisoned since September 2004, which under Chinese law will count as time served against his three-year sentence. Mr. Mo said the court ruling stated that his release is scheduled for Sept. 15, 2007.

Outside the Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court after the verdict this morning, Mr. Zhao’s older sister, Zhao Kun, expressed relief about the dismissal of the state secrets charge but maintained that any conviction was unjust.

“I am not satisfied,” she said. “The fraud charge also has no basis in fact. He should have been found completely innocent. According to my own feeling, the first charge also should never have been introduced. On this charge, the court respected the law.”

Mr. Zhao, formerly a muckraking journalist for different Chinese publications, joined The Times’ Beijing bureau as a researcher in April 2004. The Times has consistently denied that he leaked any state secrets to the newspaper.

“If the verdict is what it appears to be, we consider it a vindication,” said Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times. “We have always said that to best of our knowledge the only thing that Zhao Yan committed is journalism.”

The rights advocate, Mr. Chen, was convicted of destroying property and organizing a mob to block traffic. He earned the enmity of local Communist Party leaders in Shandong Province, in eastern China, when he sought to organize a class-action lawsuit against forced abortions and sterilizations there.

The New China News Agency announced the sentence, four years and three months, in a terse dispatch on its English-language news wire. The information did not appear in Chinese, and other state-run media have been banned from reporting on the matter.

Mr. Chen’s two-hour trial last week and the long sentence announced Thursday appear to reflect a concerted effort by Chinese authorities to punish lawyers and rights advocates, who increasingly in recent years have helped defend people aggrieved about land seizures, environmental abuses, religious persecution and population controls.

The Beijing police last week detained Gao Zhisheng, a lawyer and one of China’s most outspoken dissidents, on suspicion of criminal activity. Mr. Gao’s family has also been put under police guard. His whereabouts and the exact charges against him are unknown.

Chinese lawyers and human rights advocates say they believe that President Hu Jintao has ordered a broad crackdown on people who call themselves “rights defenders” because he worries that they have tried to use legal pressure to undermine the Communist Party.

The police and judicial officials also appear to be moving assertively to resolve a slew of the most important human rights cases, possibly calculating that the Western governments and the international news media will pay less attention to such matters at the height of the summer vacation season.

The case of Mr. Chen, a 34-year-old peasant, came as a particular shock to the legal and human rights community.

Mr. Chen, blind as a result of a childhood illness, taught himself the law. He became a minor celebrity in China after he helped disabled people win cases against government agencies that did not grant them the full protections and benefits they are entitled to under Chinese law.

But Shandong government officials turned bitterly against him in early 2005 when he sought to defend thousands of local residents forced to have abortions or sterilization operations so that Linyi City could meet its population-control quotas.

Though central government investigators later found that abuses had occurred in enforcing population policies there, local authorities put Mr. Chen under house arrest for months and then charged him with destroying property and blocking traffic.

A team of the top rights lawyers in the country came to Mr. Chen’s aid. They argued that the charges against him were fabrications. The crimes would have been difficult for Mr. Chen to commit, they said, given that he cannot see and was under constant police guard at the time.

But the Beijing lawyers were harassed, beaten and prevented from gathering evidence to support Mr. Chen in court, numerous people involved in his defense said.

On the eve of Mr. Chen’s trial last week, three of his lawyers were accused by local thugs of stealing property. The lawyers were then detained by the local police and one of them was held until after Mr. Chen’s trial had ended.

When his other lawyers complained to the court that the harassment made a mockery of the legal proceedings and called for a delay, the court appointed new lawyers.

The appointed defense lawyers did not contest any of the charges against Mr. Chen and did not call any witnesses on his behalf.

“I believe the court officials there have lost their minds,” said Xu Zhiyong,sort one of Mr. Chen’s chosen lawyers, who was prevented from attending his trial by the local police. “The entire process was illegal.”