PNE photographer Craig Hodge has chronicled the fair for decades
Credit to Author: John Mackie| Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2019 02:25:31 +0000
In the 1980s the PNE brought a circus to the Pacific Coliseum. To publicize the event, the fair’s marketing manager decided to get a shot of one of the circus elephants on the fairgrounds. PNE photographer Craig Hodge was tapped to take the photo.
“I said to the trainer, ‘What’s the best way to get the elephant to follow us?’ ” Hodge recounts. “And he said, ‘Oh, just walk in front with candy floss and he’ll follow you.’ So I proceeded to walk through the fairground, holding the candy floss in the air, and the elephant followed along behind me.
“All was well until we walked by the old Food Building, when the elephant became distracted by all the people that were sitting on benches eating. With his trunk he started going up and literally sucking the food off of people’s plates, like a vacuum cleaner.”
The PNE’s marketing manager was beside himself with glee.
“The marketing manager said, ‘Oh, this is great, get photos!’ ” said Hodge. “As I was shooting and the elephant was walking by (the manager) was running behind me, handing out $10 bills to everybody to replace their food.”
They finally got to a spot that had a great view of the grounds, but disaster struck for a second time.
“When we finally got to where we wanted the elephant, nature took over and the elephant relieved himself in an unfortunate spot near the main gate,” said Hodge. “It was like a fire hydrant.”
But a cleanup crew arrived, and Hodge got the photo he wanted, “a nice shot of the elephant and a dad with a girl on his shoulders holding the candy floss.”
PNE photographer Craig Hodge leading an elephant at the PNE grounds in the 1980s.
Hodge has been taking photos like this at the PNE since 1975, when he covered the fair for the old Columbian newspaper. In 1980 he landed a contract to take photos for the fair, and four decades later, he’s still at it.
Tuesday morning he hopped into a small plane to cruise above the fairgrounds taking aerial shots. Later in the day he walked around the fairgrounds looking for people to photograph.
Over the years he has taken literally thousands of photos. You might recognize his 2006 shot of the roller-coaster at sunset, riders silhouetted against the setting sun.
“That one’s been used a lot over the years,” said Hodge, 62. “Another one I took one afternoon when my three sons were at the fair with me. We were walking through the fairgrounds and I had my gear with me. My wife looked at the kids, who were eating mini-donuts, and said, ‘Why don’t you hold them up to your face?’ And we took a picture of the three kids in front of the ferris wheel, looking through mini-donuts.”
The “donut-boys” photo wound up in a PNE ad campaign, and even on the back of the Coca-Cola trucks at the PNE in 2005.
PNE photographer Craig Hodge’s photo of his three sons with mini-donuts on the midway in 2005.
The fair means a lot to Hodge — he met his wife Darla there in 1986, when her sister Donna won the Miss PNE crown.
“Darla was the chaperone for her younger sister,” he relates. “Darla was getting interested in photography, and was asking me all kinds of photography questions.”
The rest is history, as they say. Hodge also worked for The Vancouver Sun for many years, but left the newspaper business in 2011 when he was elected to council in Coquitlam.
“I’m into my third term now,” he said. “We take our break in August so that has allowed me to continue my PNE tradition.”
That’s right, he spends his vacation working at the PNE. But hey, it’s lots of fun, and always interesting. Consider the time he was assigned to do a modern reproduction of a famous 1920s PNE photo of three women in bathing suits sitting on a steer.
“We arranged to take a steer out into the fairgrounds, and get three Miss PNE contestants sitting on the steer,” he explains. “We talked to the owner of the steer and he said I’ll just give him a mild sedative, and that way he won’t be too rambunctious. The problem was the contestants were delayed at some event, and by the time they arrived and we got them on the steer, the steer was walking sideways.
“We didn’t get the shot because the steer decided to lay down and take a nap in the middle of the fairgrounds. We couldn’t move him, so we had to put up stanchions and post a security guard by him. He became an exhibit for a couple of hours.”
PNE photographer Craig Hodge’s photo of riders on the roller-coaster at sunset in 2006.
The PNE at sunset in 2017, by PNE photographer Craig Hodge.
Chelsea Cooley, 15 of White Rock, Maddy Potesta, 14, of White Rock and Tanisa McMillan, 13, of Richmond as photographed by the PNE’s Craig Hodge.
PNE photographer Craig Hodge’s photo of girls eating candy floss.
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