Great Benjamins Circus wraps three-night run at race track
July 12, 2026 at 3:30 AM
The Great Benjamins Circus packed up its big top Saturday after three days of aerialists, acrobats and high-wire motorcycle stunts in the Fort Erie Race Track parking lot.
The touring circus staged ticketed 90-minute shows Thursday through Saturday, July 9 to 11, at the track at 230 Catherine Street, its final southern Ontario stop on a North American tour.
The 90-minute performance drew audience members of all ages on Saturday afternoon. Credit: Andrew Hawlitzky | Fort Erie RadioThe company bills each performance as a showcase of acrobatics, aerial artistry and comedy.
The circus played Welland’s Seaway Mall the weekend before, after earlier Ontario stops in Belleville, Leamington, Sudbury, Sault Ste. Marie and Thunder Bay.
A circus performer suspended high on aerial silks Friday afternoon. Credit: Brent Jones | Fort Erie RadioJohn Davenport and his brother Jairo, third-generation circus performers, run the show, which features an all-human cast and no animal acts. The company says more than 15,000 families saw the production last year.
The circus takes its name from Benjamin C. Davenport, an American showman who quit his Methodist ministry studies in Delaware, Ohio, after one semester in 1914 and ran off with a circus.
Friday afternoon’s show opened with a juggling act. Credit: Brent Jones | Fort Erie RadioDavenport drove trucks, worked sideshows and performed as many as 13 acts in a single day. Back in 1935 he launched his own show with two trucks, a sidewall corral and an air calliope, and that scrappy operation grew into the Dailey Bros. Circus, a railroad show that criss-crossed the United States.
The Circus Hall of Fame inducted Davenport in 1993.
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Andrew Hawlitzky
Andrew is a Niagara community journalist who has covered everything from local politics to annual festivals and breaking news. He works to make local news a platform where community voices lead the conversation. "If you don't like the news, go out and make some!"
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