P.E.I. family of 3 working at Old Home Week aren't your old-style carnies

"It's easy," Jace Collins tells the two wide-eyed boys walking past his carnival booth at Old Home Week in Charlottetown, waving them over while clutching a handful of darts. "All you have to do is hit one of the pictures and you win a prize."

The boys stop in their tracks and approach the booth. Their father hands over some coins in exchange for the darts, and it takes only a couple of tries and a free do-over before the boys hit the target.

He's right. It is easy. High fives all around.

"Just getting to see little kids' ... faces get happy after you give them a teddy bear is an awesome feeling," Jace said.

But making money is also an awesome feeling and Jace, like the others working the games of chance, is paid a percentage of the cash he brings in. 

So like any good salesperson, he's going to upsell. Surely the boys would prefer a larger stuffed animal? It must be their lucky day — they can keep playing, and paying, for the chance to win bigger, though it gets progressively more difficult.

This time they lose, and Jace, reading the room — i.e. the father's face as he pats down his pockets — backs off. Everyone leaves happy. 

Jace, who seems to be 13 going on 30, is part of a new generation trying to shed the stigma of the "dirty carnival worker" — or "carnie," as some people call them.

His mother and stepfather also work at the Campbell Amusements carnival, Kayla Harvie at the slushie stand and Steve Arsenault at the balloon game. They live in Charlottetown and travel all over the Maritimes, Quebec and Ontario in the summer months with the rest of the crew. Arsenault figures they'll put in 50,000 kilometres this summer alone.

It's a life Arsenault is familiar with. His parents met while working at a carnival.

He said the image of a carnival worker has changed over the years, and he wants it to stay changed. He made sure young Jace put on a new shirt, turned his ballcap brim around to the front, and stood up straight before a CBC News interview this week.

"The days of the old dirty carnival workers, those days are gone," Arsenault said.

"We have uniforms now, we're clean now. It's not like it was in the '60s and '70s. Like, this is a respectable business now, where it's sales-focused and team-driven."

Arsenault said he averages about $1,200 a week and is a member of the Canadian chapter of the Showmen's League of America. Being called a carnie doesn't do the job justice, he said.