Wayne Malley still remembers the bright flashing lights that caught his eye before he wandered away from his family.

It was Aug. 22, 1966, and Malley, then just 5 years old, had come to the Canadian National Exhibition with his parents and five other brothers, a family tradition. But his day took a dramatic turn when he noticed a game he loved to play and got separated from the pack.

“I just had a habit of running around, just going my own way,” recalled Malley, now 58 and living in Barrie. “I was just out there crying because I couldn’t find my parents. I was a big crier back then.”

It may seem shocking now, but Malley was just one of 356 kids who got lost at the CNE on that day alone, at a time when up to 400 used to go missing at the fair every single day. Archives going as far back as the 1920s show a big bustling tent for lost children, and a 1958 Star headline blaring “1,624 lost children” in just one day.

Today, that number stands at roughly five to 12 a day, depending on how busy it is. Part of the explanation could be the way parenting has changed over the years, from giving kids more freedom to being more protective, says Dr. Natasha Sharma, a parenting expert with a therapy practice in Etobicoke.

“Kids haven’t changed all that much at all. They’re always curious, they’ll always wander off, given the choice,” Sharma said. “But we have become less trusting, more vigilant, more fearful, more worrisome.”

The day Malley got lost was a cool one for August, with a high of just 17.8 C, and the CNE was packed as usual.

Close to three million people visited that year, compared to about 1.4 million per season today. Back then there were tents for freak shows, including the “fat lady” Dainty Dora; children running around and doing a whole bunch of sit-ups in physical competitions; and the Alpine Way chair lift ride reached 31 metres, compared to today’s 13-metre-high Sky Ride.

Malley and his family had just got into the fair, and were walking between the Food Building and the midway when he noticed a light-bulb game he loved to play and went running toward it in the hopes of winning some cookies.

A woman noticed him and took him to the fair’s lost-and-found, where a Star photographer snapped pictures of his tearful face and eventual reunion with his mother.

“I just ran to her and held on to her hand. According to the picture, I was all happy and smiles,” Malley said.

It was an adventure he’ll never forget, and a story he still tells all his family and friends.

In earlier generations, Sharma says, parents gave their children a lot more freedom — and a lot more responsibility.

“Parents were far less anxious,” she said. “They were more trusting of their environment, which probably led to allowing kids to go off on their own.”

Sharma thinks they also had higher expectations for what their kids were capable of, and that they’d know how to keep themselves safe.

“We are more scared today as parents,” she said. “The upside is less lost kids; the downside is, I think kids then start to absorb that fear and that anxiety, and also don’t know how to cope with a situation where they find themselves on their own with a problem in front of them.”

Small children should never be left on their own, Sharma says, but parents should consider allowing “small freedoms” in a safe or contained space after about the age of 9.

“We have to teach our kids to keep themselves safe and to not be afraid of a crowded place like the CNE. The potential for people to be harmful or dangerous is extremely small,” she said. “In certain contained situations, we need to allow children the opportunity to experience discomfort.”

A little freedom and responsibility could be a good lesson in knowing how to protect themselves in a large public place, Sharma says. Kids older than 6 should know their parents’ phone numbers and what to do if they ever get lost. (On Twitter, a Toronto police officer offered the tip of writing phone numbers on the arms of small children).

“Lost kids is never a good thing, no matter what decade we’re living in,” she said. But rather than underestimating our kids, it’s better to understand what they’re capable of handling.

“They’re really good at dealing with uncomfortable situations and fear and bouncing back from it,” Sharma said. “We’re not that great at it.”

But for kids as young as Malley was when he got lost, the best advice is just to try to keep an eye on them.

Malley had been missing for about 10 minutes when his family realized he wasn’t there.

“They had six kids to hold on to, my dad and my mom,” Malley said. “You could get lost in a second.”

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

As the family went about trying to figure out where to find him, Malley was being cared for by a matronly woman at the lost kids centre, playing with a rocking horse toy in a fenced-off area filled with more toys.

“She made me feel very comfortable. I was still crying, though,” he said, adding that he went back to say hello for several years.

The woman may have been Dorothy Mitchell, who ran the lost kids centre at that time.

“I guess you really have to enjoy children in order to do this,” Mitchell, who didn’t have children of her own, told the Star in 1986.

“I’ve had some real screamers over the years. But you just have to sit with them and calm them down, tell them their mothers will be by soon to get them.”

When she first took over in the 1960s, the CNE had just taken down a huge tent where about 5,000 lost kids ended up every summer. Some even ended up staying the night.

“I don’t think we’ve ever had any cases where the parents didn’t eventually show up,” Mitchell said.

There were still a lot of kids in the pen when Malley was there in 1966, he said, and “we all had those short haircuts where you put a bowl over your head.”

He was there for probably less than half an hour, “most of the time in tears, but having fun with the kids,” before his worried mother came to get him. He got to leave with a lollipop.

Lost kids at the Ex don’t get lollipops anymore and there’s no rocking horse, but the system remains pretty much the same, according to CNE’s Guest Services.

Children are still brought to one of two lost-and-found locations — one in the Better Living Centre and one in the Enercare Centre — by staff, who try to entertain them as much as they can. On average, they usually stay only about 20 minutes before their parents come looking.

Malley and his wife still go to the Ex a number of times every summer. He used to also take his mother, who died a few years ago at age 95, and he never misses the annual Warriors’ Day parade in honour of his dad, a Second World War veteran who also died at 95.

The Ex isn’t as fun as it used to be, Malley says, but it’s still got its charms, such as cheap spaghetti in the Food Building, the old-fashioned vibe of the midway and the roaring air show.

Share your thoughts:

That’s where Malley had his second moment of trouble at the CNE just a few years after getting lost.

Back then, there were no railings along the lakefront and people could go right up to the water’s edge to watch the military planes overhead.

As one soared by, the wind knocked Malley off his feet and nearly sent him plunging into the water before a stranger grabbed the back of his shirt.

It was another example of a time when people seemed to play a bit more fast and loose with children’s safety.

“There was not as much protection back then. Things were more open,” Malley said. “Kids just ran everywhere.”