Professor Gant's Show at Dundurn Park - 1896

During a lovely summer evening, August 19, 1896, a crowd of about 1,000 Hamiltonians gathered at Dundurn park to witness, and in many cases, take part in one of Professor Jesse Gant’s wilder ideas.

          It was a money-making scheme, basically, but also was intended to be a lot of fun for all involved.

          Dundurn park was still not a public park, but an area that could be leased Admission was then charged by the lesse who choreographed events for their entertainment of the ticket buyers .

          Professor Gant’s programme looked very enticing to those thousand people who were willing to pay to see the wedding, the watermelon eating contest and the cakewalk.

          The crowd was in a boisterous mood as the professor’s programme was about to unfold.

          First on the schedule was a wedding involving Miss Annie Johnston of St. Catherines who was to be joined in matrimony to Hamilton’s Professor Campbell. There would be about 1000 witness to their nuptials.

          The wedding ceremony was to begin at 8 p.m., but it was nearly nine o’clock before the arrival of a carriage pulled by a handsome teams of gray horses came across the park carrying the bride, the groom, bridesmaid Gertie Peters and best man, the groom’s half-brother, Louis Washington,

          The ladies were dressed in the finest style, the white of their dresses contrasting beautifully with their dark complexions. Both the groom and the best man were outfitted in what a Spectator reporter described as “evening suits, with regulation white tiles and patent leather shoes. They also wore diamonds, several of them.”

          As the bridal party got on the platform, the audience applauded wildly. A newly-organized band, called the Excelsior Juvenile Band, began to play. The Spec Man described the bandsmen as “a number of colored windjammers” who “played what was intended to be a waltz. As it was their first offense, they were let off.”

          After the band’s opening selection, Ernest Jarrett, in a gorilla costume, jumped on the stage and went through a number of suggestive physical contortions which seemed to make the bridal party rather uneasy.

          After Jarret’s performance, Professor Jesse Gant stepped forward to introduce Reverend W. P. Bradley who was selected to perform the wedding ceremony.

          Before beginning the service, Rev. Bradley asked the crowd to respect the solemnity of the ceremony that was about to take place:

“He might as well have asked Niagara Falls to stop falling. There was no letup in the jubilation of the mission portion of the spectators, and during the ceremony, a running fire of observations, complimentary and otherwise, was kept up.”

Both the bride and groom were noticeably nervous. The groom even forgot on which finger the wedding band was to be placed.

After the ceremony, Professor Gant very flamboyantly kissed the bride. As the party started to leave the platform, the crowd loudly demanded that they return as the groom had yet to kiss the bride.

Under pressure, the new husband agreed to kiss his bride, but he forgot to life the veil and kissed her right through. That was good enough at that point, so the newlyweds hurriedly made their departure.

The following event required that two long tables be set up on the platform. Then John Johnstone, with a rather big knife, slashed open six watermelons.

Twelve contestants were led to the stage. One of the group was not a member of Hamilton’s African-Canadian population. As the Spec Man put it, he was “Jimmy Lotus, a well-known bootblack, with his face, instead of his boots, blacked out in compliment to the wedding party.”

Professor Gant ran around the platform, barking out orders on various matters in an attempt to get the contest organized properly. The crowd grew restless because of his delays.

One particularly restless member of the crowd, Dick Callen tried to jump on the stage himself to get things going, but Professor Gant knocked him back. Callen tried again and actually succeeded in getting on the stage and immediately started fighting with the professor.

The chaos spread rapidly. Most of the contestants, aided and abetted by others close by, swooped down on the array of divided watermelons, and, in a second there was not enough watermelon left on the tables to satisfy a hungry boy.

Professor Gant, a well-known boxer as well as barber, took care of Callen quickly and with Professor Johnstone tried to restore order but it was too late to rescue the watermelon eating contest.

Someone threw a chunk of watermelon at Professor Gant’s shiny top hat and sent it flying across the stage. That set off a rain of watermelon chunks flying in all directions.

In the face of this near-riot, the professor gave up and fled the scene quickly.

Besides the watermelon destruction, the cakes for the cake walk were stolen.

Professor Johnstone made one last attempt to restore order by roaring around the stage swinging a club wildly at all those miscreants still causing trouble. When someone from the crowd yelled an insult to the professor, he jumped from the stage and, club in hand, chased the offender around the park.

It was only too obvious that the proceedings were over.

As described by the Spectator reporter in attendance, the band was charged with playing one more number to let the crowd know that it was time to vacate Dundurn park:

“The windjammers indicated that Professor Gant had thrown up the sponge and that the evening’s entertainment was at an end by playing, or attempting to pay, ‘God Save the King.’ ’’