African Lion Safari, Wildlife drive-through park in Cambridge region, Canada
African Lion Safari is a family-owned safari park in Hamilton, Ontario, about 100 kilometres west of Toronto. Seven drive-through game reserves cover roughly 740 acres (300 hectares), with enclosures of 2 to 20 hectares where animals roam freely while visitors stay in their vehicles or tour buses. A separate walking section holds exotic birds, primates and the park's Asian elephant herd.
Retired Canadian Army colonel Gordon Debenham "Don" Dailley founded the park with the English Chipperfield family, buying four farms near Rockton, Ontario, totalling 250 hectares. It opened on 21 August 1969 as a drive-through reserve, and Dailley bought out the Chipperfields in the early 1970s; it remains privately owned. Elephant work began in 1971 and concentrated breeding in 1985.
The park's name comes from Simba Lion Country, where African lions rest on a two-storey structure of tan concrete slabs and angled pillars; a second rock structure serves the white Timbavati lions. Visitors drive through in their own cars, caged while the animals roam enclosures of 2 to 20 hectares. The walking section holds the Asian elephant herd, plus boat and train rides past primates and birds.
Visitors tour the seven reserves either in their own vehicle or on the park's tour buses; the animals roam in enclosures of 2 to 20 hectares, so keep windows closed and stay in the car. The park lies in the Rockton area of Hamilton, about 100 km west of Toronto and roughly 11 km from Cambridge. Allow time for the separate walking section with the boat cruise and scenic railway.
In 2008 the park became home to the first third-generation Asian elephant born in North America, and in 2010 a calf named Jake was its first Asian elephant born through artificial insemination, the first such birth in Canada. The park also supplied captive-bred barn owls, burrowing owls, trumpeter swans, ferruginous hawks and a bald eagle to reintroduction programs.
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