Short Stuff: Toronto Clown Riot

**Josh** (0:04)
Hey, and welcome to The Short Stuff. I'm Josh, there's Chuck. Jerry's here too. She's just on mute, and she's sitting in for Dave, who's not here. And this is Short Stuff.

**Chuck** (0:12)
That's right, about the Tarana Clown Riot.

**Josh** (0:18)
That was dead on Tarana Clown.

**Chuck** (0:20)
That was supposed to be a clown horn. It sounded like a sick mule.
In my head, it was going to come out better, and I thought about doing a second take, but who cares, let's leave it in there, it's fun.

**Josh** (0:30)
It was a sick mule doing the disco call.

**Chuck** (0:34)
Wow.

**Josh** (0:35)
We also culled a lot of information from the Tarana Star, Spacing Magazine, specifically Adam Bunch on Spacing Magazine, and the Circus Diaries.

**Chuck** (0:46)
That's right, the sexiest miniseries.

**Josh** (0:49)
The Red Shoe Circus Diaries.

**Chuck** (0:51)
But we are talking about one of our towns that we love a lot, Tarana. And we are coming back there to Massey Hall, by the way, as part of our Canadian tour. We always love Massey Hall in particular, and playing to our friends there. I think that, I think our very first live show ever was in Tarana, right?

**Josh** (1:08)
I think it was actually, yeah. Our bars episode. Good call, Chuck. That was our first one.

**Chuck** (1:13)
That's right. That's what gave us the taste, everybody.

**Josh** (1:17)
The taste of Tarana.

**Chuck** (1:19)
That's right.

**Josh** (1:20)
And also I've spoken to Chuck, everybody. He's promised to do like 90% less Gordon Lightfoot jokes this time.

**Chuck** (1:28)
That's right. But we need to hop in the way back machine for this one because we're going back to 1855
When Toronto was a different place, it wasn't the metropolitan kind of refined big city that it is now, it was tough. It had like 352 drinking establishments for the 40,000 people there, had a lot of brothels, and they were people that liked to mix it up, it seems like, back in the day.

**Josh** (2:02)
For sure.
Not just the people at Toronto, but the people who were in circuses, too, liked to mix it up. And specifically in July 1855, when our event takes place, the SB. Howes Star Troop in Menagerie and Circus was in town, and that circus was from New York State, and they showed up in Toronto, they set up their tents and said, hey, everybody come see. And of course, since this is a circus, even an 1855 circus, there were a bunch of clowns there, Chuck. And these clowns, they had a long day of performing, and they said, let's go to a local brothel. And they did, as a group.

**Chuck** (2:42)
That's right. They said, let's go get drunk and doing other things you can do at brothels. And they went to Marian Armstrong's brothel. It's a corner of King and John Streets. And this happened to be a brothel where, that was kind of the main hangout of the Hook and Ladder Fire Brigade.
So, we need to explain a couple of things about these two groups. The clowns at the time are not the lovable psychopaths that we have now in our circuses.
They were kind of the road crew as well as clowns. So, they had to put up these big tents, break everything down, get all the gear in place. So, they were brawny, like big dudes. And the firefighters of the day, in Toronto at least, and I bet they were like this in a lot of places, it was before the city government had, was in charge of that kind of thing. So, you had private fire departments and private companies that, you know, build for their services. Like, we'll put out your fire for this amount of money. So, you have fire, private fire companies, like racing to fires to get there first. And there were several instances of them arriving at the same time and like fighting one another to put out the fire while the fire's burning.

**Josh** (3:52)
Yeah, several instances. One, as recent as just a couple weeks before, that Hook and Ladder company who called Marianne Armstrong's House of Ill to repute their hangout, they showed up to one and there was already another company there and they got into a fight.
And a riot broke out, right? So there was a firefighter riot at a burning house. The firefighters all decided instead of putting the house out, they let it burn and looted the houses around it. It was that kind of riot. These are the firefighters in Toronto at the time, right? So by the time this Toronto Clown riot happens, the Hook and Ladder company has already been in one riot in the last few weeks. And I guess they were itching for another one or something.