The Magic of Magic Conventions

For Phil and me, the magic of Magic Conventions is not the magic. Its a place and time where people with a common interest, from all over gather. We get a chance to meet people we know and haven’t seen in years and we also get the chance to meet people who have been ordering on line who we never met personally.

The Browser’s Den Magic Bash was such a place. We spent time with Bernice Cooper, the late Len Cooper’s wife. Len was the original owner of The Browser’s Den. We used to visit them in Toronto and Bernice would be there behind the counter helping out as magic shop owner’s wives do. It was nice for her too, to see and speak to many people that used to come into their shop.

Hans Zahn from Newfoundland, a good friend, and pioneer in the magic video industry, was there with his son and granddaughter. The last time I saw his son he was the same age as his daughter is now, or even younger.

It was wonderful seeing Steffi Kay and Chris (Mysterion). Nobody gives you such a wonderful reception as Steffi.  They were recently in the shop and I wrote a blog about their visit.

We also met Joseph Culpepper there who I just wrote about last week. (Three Generations of Magic).

Nicole, who does such a wonderful job with canada’s magic blog, keeping us informed about what’s going on all over this vast land of ours, with all the magic meetings, performances, and whatever is going on in magic, was there with her daughter.

Michael Close  was there. He was performing. Besides magic he and Phil have piano playing in common.

We also spoke to Stephanie & Steve Kline, Greg Frewin ( who also performed), Nick Sacco, Dick Joiner (one of the MCs) Ben Train and Graydon Gilmore.

 

Dave Williamson was there, also performing. He had been a performer at Magie Montréal way back in the nineteen hundreds, 1993 to be exact. He was there the same year as Mac King. Jean Boucher also performed that year and I love the photo of them along with Carl Cloutier.

Back to the Magic Bash. We reconnected with Mike and Jen Segal, who runs the Sorcerers Safari magic camp and Christina and Lee Asher, who we had breakfast with every morning at the magic camp when we were there. Lee,  Jeff Pinsky and John Talbot were the group that organized the Bash.. They had a terrific day and as you saw on our facebook page, Jeff honoured Phil and me with an outstanding welcome.

I was happy to see Rosemary Reid, who we met at Magic Camp a couple of years ago. Although we are facebook friends, we haven’t seen each other since then.

And of course it was wonderful to see Danny Morrissey again. He seemed happy to be back and everyone was thrilled to see him.

I know I am leaving out people that I will remember as soon as I publish this, but there were 400 people there. Some came up to us and introduced themselves. We recognized their names as they were online customers. It was nice to put a faces to a names.

We look forward to next year!