Attendees at the TED2026 conference had a unique opportunity beyond the signature talks that share paradigm-shifting ideas and the chance to interact with some of the world’s brightest and most influential thinkers. Thanks to Shawn Farquhar and a select group of five additional magicians, they were able to experience wonder even beyond the typical awe-inspiring experience TED is known for.
“We sent him over the script and Taylor and I were like, ‘Oh, there’s no way
he’s going to sign on to this,’” Pinch said.
But Hadfield agreed
“and we were off to the races,” he said.
“We thought this is
going to be our love letter to Sarnia,” he said. “And it just so happened to
work out the new judge this year is Katherine Ryan, who I actually went to
high school with.”
Ryan was a student in the year ahead of Pinch
at Northern Collegiate and they had some banter that didn’t make the final
edit, including a line where he said, “I remember you from high school . . .
where just like now, you were there judging me and I’m on stage doing my
silly comedy.”
Ryan is “so, so funny, like impossibly funny,”
Pinch said. “Where people would normally have one joke, she has 10 at the
ready.”
And Hadfield was a “real professional” and “nailed it,”
he said.
“If he has any aspirations to be a magician, I think he
may have something,” Pinch said. “He’s definitely got a future.”
“I can still remember the streamers coming out of his mouth, and the rabbit
coming out of his hat,” Ian said reflecting on watching a magic show at his
pre-school when he was three years old. “I made the decision then that I
would be a magician!”
Like so many record breakers before him,
Ian found his love for his respective talent early in his youth and luckily
for him, he had a solid support system around him that fostered his
enjoyment of magic and interest in learning. For instance, his father
learned some tricks to amuse Ian and his sibling and was able to convince
his brother to give him some funds for his first magic kit, a Fisher Price
one. Notably, Ian’s early skillset came in handy when it came to his
fulfilling future with Guinness World Records, as his earliest tricks were
mostly in the colourful-tied-ribbon trick subset and these very tricks were
used in some of his record-breaking stunts.
A new season of @familyfeudcanada is back this winter on @cbc and the free CBC Gem streaming service, and airs 4 nights a week - Monday through Thursday at 7:30pm. Our episode will air on April 7th 🥳
He's been buried alive, trapped in ice and suspended in the air while sealed
inside a box for 44 days. But in his new series,Do Not Attempt, Blaine is the one who's left speechless as he
travels the globe taking in extraordinary feats by some of the world's
greatest masters.
"It's an amazing chance to highlight these performers or these experts,"
Blaine tellsQ's Tom Powerin an interview. "Being able to meet the most incredible
people that have worked for thousands of hours on these skills that are, to
me, as close to magic as it gets because they've put the invisible work in —
the countless thousands of hours to be able to do this thing that shouldn't
be possible."
Have a read of the excellent interview in One Ahead, where Chris talks about the new online demonstration category in FISM 2025 and the future of magic in general.
The process involved much brainstorming to understand what the online shift would look like, and Ramsay credits FISM organiser Walter Rolfo for being receptive to the idea.
But the question naturally follows: Does an online FISM category translate to higher levels of attendance, and more importantly, a longer-term desire to upkeep and cultivate the event for future generations?
Ramsay believes this can only happen if changes are made to the fundamental structure of the event:
Resilience should be my middle name! I’ve built a successful entertainment career, only to be knocked flat to start again from scratch – FIVE times. I must really love my work, because I cannot give up, I don’t know how, but after every setback, I’ve always pulled up my socks and bulldozed forward.
My first love was dance, and at age seventeen I won a full scholarship to train with the National Ballet of Canada.
Henry Box Brown eventually returned to the United States, more than a decade
after abolition in 1865. He brought his second wife and children, who joined
him onstage, and sang with him.
He made his home base in Canada:
briefly in London, Ontario, and then settling in Toronto. It was here,
Cutter discovered, that he died and was buried in 1897.
Three
Toronto residents — history advocates Coralina Lemos, Adam Wynne, and
Pancheta Barnett — recently worked together to have a laneway named for him,
behind a house he lived in on Bright Street in the Corktown neighbourhood
east of downtown.
Enslaved in 1840s Virginia, Henry Brown has himself nailed into a postal crate
and mailed to a free state. But that’s less than half his story. In freedom,
he becomes Henry Box Brown, and uses his escape box as the basis for a
subversive magic act that sees him tour the stages of the UK and Canada — his
final home.
Gore, a skilled magician who has captivated audiences around the world with his mind-bending illusions and performances, knows that his profession is often met with curiosity, wonder, and a healthy dose of skepticism.
He sees magic as more than just a performance, but a chance to offer people a brief escape from the stress of their everyday lives.
“Everyone’s got stuff going on in their life. Everyone’s got problems. But for a moment, we’re going to forget about all that and just enjoy a moment together,” Gore explained. “After the show, you can go back and you can pick up that weight that you once had, but it feels so freeing just to just be like, ‘How is that possible?!’ That’s the power of magic.”
Joe Schwarcz has made it his life's work to debunk misinformation and snake oil salespeople in the scientific world. Now, the director of the McGill Office for Science and Society has been named to the Order of Canada.
He hosts the longest-running radio show on CJAD 800 on chemistry, writes a weekly column and has authored best-selling books, educating people about true, evidence-based science and promoting critical thinking.
But it was this year’s featured guest, Calgary’s ‘Brilliant Brent’ Smith, who was the showstopper, and fully interactive with his audience, especially children.
He was in town to offer those gathered for the event a magical touch with his very own ‘Books are Brilliant’ Literacy Magic Show.
“I knew he was going to be a different sort of magic,” said Ramsay. “This was shown by his first trick when he opened up a page and wrote the word bowling ball and then drew a bowling ball, and when the book opened up a bowling ball appeared and fell onto the floor to everybody's shock.
