A Friendly Entertainment & Promotion Co, Toronto, ON

Friendly Entertainment & Promotion Company had its beginning in 1979, when engineer John Quarterly first arrived in Canada and started doing volunteer work for the Canadian Opera Company, as a clown at Toronto's Harbourfront, while adding magic and juggling to routines that developed into The Amazing Dickens, an original and successful magic, mindreading, and clown act, later followed by Friendly the Clown, who specializes in performing for children's parties, parties for grownups, and walkabouts for corporate and retail events. In England, John ran an activities club and organized all sorts of social and entertainment events. In Toronto, he worked as an entertainer at sidewalk sales in the Beaches, and people began to ask him to do children's parties. When the recession hit, engineering jobs were scarce, but more and more people were hiring John as an entertainer. He began booking other entertainers and collecting equipment like jumping castles, batting cages, carnival games, and tents. When he couldn't get the kinds of tents he wanted, he began designing and making them, and Friendly Tent Company was born. As John gradually invested in equipment and props, he formed Friendly Entertainment & Promotion Company, which is now Toronto's full-service entertainment company with its own personnel, a warehouse full of equipment and décor, its own tent company, and its own entertainment agency - a direct booking agency. The agency has a current roster of several hundred professional entertainers and performers; it's not just an agency that pays more agents to book entertainment. Not only is a coordinated event assured by direct booking, it saves you money.