{"id":10288,"date":"2011-10-04T11:00:18","date_gmt":"2011-10-04T15:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/?p=10288"},"modified":"2014-02-18T12:24:48","modified_gmt":"2014-02-18T17:24:48","slug":"the-man-behind-marineland-50-years-of-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/2011\/10\/04\/the-man-behind-marineland-50-years-of-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"The man behind Marineland: 50 years of controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>From the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thestar.com\/news\/gta\/2011\/10\/02\/the_man_behind_marineland_50_years_of_controversy.html\">Toronto Star<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>One spring day in 1963, John Holer, the owner of Marineland, found himself on a Lake Ontario beach in a struggle with a 100-pound sea lion.<\/p>\n<p>Jeff, a sea lion that had escaped from Holer\u2019s animal park in Niagara Falls three days earlier, sunk its teeth into Holer\u2019s bicep as it fought for its freedom.<\/p>\n<p>But Holer and a friend eventually overpowered it, threw it in the back seat of a car and returned to what was then a humble, one-acre marine park.<\/p>\n<p>This adventure \u2014 Jeff\u2019s escape under the fence, his disappearance over Niagara Falls (presumably to his death), then his resurrection in the following days, frolicking, fishing and generally revelling in his freedom before a 12-year-old boy spotted him basking on a beach in Niagara-on-the-Lake \u2014 transformed the two-year-old sea lion into Holer\u2019s first star attraction.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From the Toronto Star: One spring day in 1963, John Holer, the owner of Marineland, found himself on a Lake Ontario beach in a struggle with a 100-pound sea lion. Jeff, a sea lion that had escaped from Holer\u2019s animal park in Niagara Falls three days earlier, sunk its teeth into Holer\u2019s bicep as it&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6111,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[6249,106,1899,3647,67,41,242,5751,5257,6248,960],"class_list":["post-10288","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-niagara-falls-news","tag-jeff","tag-john-holer","tag-lake-ontario","tag-marine-park","tag-marineland","tag-niagara-falls","tag-niagara-on-the-lake","tag-sea-lion","tag-spring-day","tag-star-attraction","tag-toronto-star"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10288","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6111"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10288"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10288\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10288"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10288"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/accessniagara.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10288"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}