I went to go see magician Chris Bruce at the Hamilton Fringe Festival last night. His show, Why Card Tricks Are Important, is part of the Fringe’s “Gallery Series”. It’s an unusual collection of short shows — this one runs about twenty minutes — performed for much smaller audiences.
The show contains — spoiler alert — card tricks. In fact it contains nothing which could not be called a card trick. They are spiffy and well-executed card tricks and fiercely interactive.
The burning question is whether or not the show could succeed in convincing someone that card tricks are, in fact, important. A more interesting question might be could anything convince you that card tricks were important. The answer is, unless you are slightly deranged, no… Unless you accept a perverse artistic meta-definition of important which allows that frivolous pursuits are important as a celebration of their own right to exist. After all, if we have a species have evolved to the point where we have so thoroughly beaten back the threats of disease, malnutrition, predators and war that we have the free time to wonder what exactly Justin Bieber is up to, isn’t that a triumph worth celebrating?
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Today's Big Show at Holland Bloorview wraps up the last of three simultaneous sessions we had been running at the hospital. We worked in partnership with Hands2Hands and Helping Hands; and hosted a full session of My Magic Hands. We had 27 clients participate with nearly 1:1 magic coach support! Needless to say these kids blossomed beautifully with such encouragement. We are so fortunate to work with such dedicated staff and volunteers at Holland Bloorview.
Even though each program and client had a wide range of goals, we were pleased to see so many kids not only achieve their goals but to also discover new skills they didn’t realize they even possessed! There is power inside that kind of self-confidence and self-esteem - and we find it simply inspiring.
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At the Calgary Magic Circle’s 2015 Annual General Meeting on June 18, 2015, the Calgary Magic Circle nominated the Executive team for the coming year.
- President: Dan Stephenson (re-elected)
- Vice President: Ryan Pilling
- Treasurer: Yeats Wong (re-elected)
- Secretary: Rob Vanden Heuvel
- Sargent at Arms: Chris Hogan
We welcome Chris Hogan, who is on Executive for the first time. All other members have held Executive positions in the past.
- Member at Large: Malcolm Russell
As well as the elected positions, Rob Vanden Heuvel has also volunteered to be our Lecture Coordinator again, and help us make our professional lecture series run, and Charles Silbernagel and Ryan Pilling are volunteering their time to run the Junior Magic Club for the coming year.
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