One lion at Port Dalhousie’s Lakeside Park Carousel is old in a different way from the other. The surviving Looff carving belongs to the historic menagerie. Its companion was made by local volunteers in 2004, after another original lion disappeared in the 1970s. The St. Catharines Museum’s history makes the distinction explicit. [1]
The newer lion is not an embarrassment concealed beneath the paint. It is evidence that the carousel’s makers did not all live a century ago.
Where is this place?
Port Dalhousie, St. Catharines — community orientation, not the historic volunteer workshop. This map locates the town or region, not a verified exact historic event site.
A workshop that included a driveway
The Friends of the Carousel formed in 1999 after a city newspaper notice invited people to help. Their own history describes an early group of roughly nineteen members, learning under master woodcarver Bob Banbury. Some work took place on the carousel; some happened in Banbury’s driveway. [2]
That is a useful setting to keep in mind when looking at the finished ride. The volunteer account does not begin with a purpose-built conservation laboratory. It begins with people bringing skills, finding space and raising the money needed for the characters’ restoration. The city supplied workspace and paid for mechanical maintenance and operation. Those were related responsibilities, not the same job. [2]
The replacement lion gave the effort a particularly visible result. An independent inventory by the National Carousel Association also identifies one of the carousel’s lions as a reproduction. It records a wooden menagerie with four rows, including animals that jump and others that remain standing. The ride is a collection of different forms, not a ring of identical horses. [3]
Which past should the paint recover?
Repairing damage did not settle how the carousel should look. A heritage study prepared for the city in December 2021 explains that restoration in the 1980s and 1990s had aimed at its 1960s appearance. In 2004, the city hired carousel restoration consultant Lisa Parr to guide a return toward the early twentieth-century appearance. [4]
That was a choice between historical layers, not simply between old and new. Even a lovingly remembered colour scheme could belong to a later chapter of the ride’s life.
The same study records another kind of reconstruction: the decorative canopy was rebuilt in 2004 using a surviving fragment held by the St. Catharines Museum. For that work, a small piece preserved away from the ride became evidence for something much larger above it. The study also identifies a newly carved outside horse, placed behind the original lion. [4]
Finished restoration, continuing work
The city’s account dates the completion of the major restoration to 2009. Its volunteer programme describes an October-to-April working season for carving and painting. Finishing a project did not remove the need to return to the animals. [5]
The museum’s history adds a small material detail: the wooden horses have real horsehair tails. The carousel combines carving, paint and other components that need different kinds of care. [1]
A rider does not have to date every animal to enjoy a circuit. But knowing about the replacement lion changes what that circuit contains. Alongside the work of the original carvers is a more recent local contribution—something made by neighbours so that an absence would not remain the only story.