Bill Lynch (1903 – 1972)

Bill Lynch (1903 – 1972)

One of McNabs Island’s most famous residents was Bill Lynch, “King of the Midway.” He was the youngest son of Matthew Lynch, the keeper of the McNabs Island lighthouse, and grew up with the excitement of the fairground all around him. As a boy, he worked at Findlay’s Pleasure Grounds, assisting with the old steam-driven merry-go-round.

But times were changing. The temperance movement, the war years, and the Halifax Explosion combined to put the once vibrant Pleasure Grounds into serious decline.

In 1920, with the money he’d saved from his job in a machine shop in Halifax, Bill Lynch purchased the merry-go-round for $800 and operated it until the end of the 1924 season. The fairground never regained its popularity and with people’s growing obsession with the motor car, Bill Lynch realized that folk were going further afield for their recreation. In 1925, he packed up the equipment and started a touring carnival company. For decades, twenty-seven railway cars took his games, rides and performers from town to town all over the Maritimes. In the 1940s the Bill Lynch show was the largest travelling carnival in Canada.

Bill Lynch was a kind man who donated generously to charity and let children with handicaps ride for free. He never lost his love for the island and wintered his ponies there. The Lynch family home can still be visited on the Island.

Ref: Under the Electric Sky Christopher A. Walsh (Pottersfield Press 2010)