For Peter Jung, kites are anything but child’s play. He is one of hundreds of adult members of the Toronto Kite Fliers, Canada’s oldest kite club.
The small, red diamond-shaped kite sat enticingly on a picnic table at High Park. But the eight-year-old relative it was intended for wasn’t interested. So, Jung decided to give it a try.“Often, it would tease me by flying a few metres up, only to flutter back down to the ground,” says Jung. “I’m certain I looked like Charlie Brown running on that field. After what was probably an hour, I finally got the kite to shoot up in the air, and it finally stayed up on its own.
Jung later got into the larger kites — and 11 years after that first successful flight, the 47-year-old has amassed close to 100, including professional show kites and large inflatable kites. Some of them, resembling Macy’s parade balloons, are based on characters from video games and cartoons and can cost thousands of dollars. His largest is a five-by-15-metre manta ray from New Zealand.
Kites were also a part of Steve Polansky’s childhood. On a whim, an adult Polansky bought a dual-line kite with a long tail at the Toronto National Home Show in 1990. “It was my $40 reintroduction to kites and an opening into what would become a passion,” he says. A short time later, he watched as people flew dual-line deltas at a festival at the Kortright Centre for Conservation. “They were being lifted a bit by the kite. I thought that was the most fun thing I’d seen in ages.
Kites are generally split into two categories, Brownridge says. There’s the single line, which includes framed kites; soft kites thatmulti-line manoeuvrable kites, which feature separate lines to steer and control the speed of the kite — a marionette to the flier’s puppeteer. “It’s fun to experiment and master all these types,” says Brownridge.
Jung also recommends Woodbine Beach during less busy seasons. “You can get the cleanest and steadiest winds there from off the lake,” he says. If Woodbine Beach is too far, he recommends a local park with a large open field.
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