William Leonard Hunt (June 10, 1838 – January 17, 1929), also known by the stage name The Great Farini, was a well-known nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Canadian funambulist, entertainment promoter and inventor, as well as the first known white man to cross the Kalahari Desert on foot and survive.
It was quite successful, complete with music and various circus entertainment, and he found himself with $6 in his hat, but it ended in catastrophe.
He claimed that young William had disgraced the whole family and started whipping him, but this just increased Willie's determination.
He joined Dan Rice's Floating Circus and performed at various places on the Mississippi River as a tightrope walker and strongman.
Farini's feats included crossing a high wire with a man on his back or with a sack over his entire body, turning somersaults while on the rope, hanging from it by his feet, and other seemingly impossible manoeuvres.
Farini toured the United States in the winter of 1860 and returned to Niagara Falls the next year, but the American Civil War had put an end to the crowds he had once drawn.
[5] On December 6, 1862, Farini was performing at the Plaza Torres Bullring in Havana, Cuba with his wife.
By 1877 his adopted son, Samuel Wasgate, was replaced by a female acrobat with the stage name "Lulu".
Lulu Farini also achieved great fame as an acrobat even after his gender was publicly revealed by 1876.
Circus historians credit him with the invention of the first apparatus in 1876 for what became known as the now famous "human cannonball" act.
[13] In March 1881, Farini returned to the United States from London with costumes from all over the world and planned to form a massive circus with William C.
[16] In the early 1880s, he adopted the Laotian girl Krao Farini and exhibited her as the Missing Link.
Farini purportedly overcame many obstacles when he traversed the Kalahari Desert on foot during his stay in Africa, allegedly becoming among the first white men to survive the crossing.
[19] For the next few years, Farini became focused on promoting various acts including Thomas Scott Baldwin parachute jump from a balloon in 1888 at Alexandra Palace, Lily Langtry, Eugen Sandow, Fred Karno, and Vesta Tilley.
His wife died in 1931[22] After his death, his papers, artifacts, and photographs became part of the collection of the Archives of Ontario.
The Great Farini Project - (September 2010 - Harbourfront Centre Theatre - Toronto) Nominated for 2 Dora Awards[23] and receiving the Globe And Mail's "Best Invention" Award,[24] The Great Farini Project was a critically acclaimed[25][26] stage work by director, playwright, and choreographer Sharon B. Moore and director, producer Derek Aasland exploring the real life, decades long rivalry between high-wire walkers The Great Farini (William Leonard Hunt) and The Great Blondin (Charles Blondin - The Daredevil of Niagara Falls) as a harrowing duet of one-upmanship featuring theatre, dance, circus, and an innovative flying machine called the ES Dance Instrument invented by Swedish explorer and inventor Sven Johannson.
Magical and often magnificent in pacing and flow.” The show is a tribute to Farini's physical prowess and his innovative contributions to the theatre and the world.