The Allan Slaight Awards

Saturday night, as part of a special gala show concluding the 44th Magic Collectors Weekend in Montreal, Magicana presented the Allan Slaight Awards. The awards, now in their third year, were created by the Slaight Family Foundation to honour Allan Slaight. A deeply passionate magician who is better known to the world at large through his work in broadcasting, he is now in his eighties, his idea of a quiet Canadian retirement involves quietly donating millions of dollars each year to various healthcare and arts organizations. 

The awards recognize the best in magic with $50,000 a year in prizes. There are awards for performances for the public and also those who advance the craft, publishing reference material within the field. In the two years the awards have been given previously, some of my favourite magicians have received the awards, including Penn & Teller. 

For the first two years, the awards were presented a private dinner. This is the first time they have been open to see. The winners were:

Max Maven
Lifetime Achievement - $15,000

Derek DelGaudio
Sharing Wonder - $15,000

John Lovick
Sharing Secrets - $10,000

Edward Hilsum
International Rising Star - $5,000

Eric Leclerc
Canadian Rising Star - $5,000

David Ben, John Lovick, Max Maven, Edward Hilsum, Julie Eng - Photo by David Linsell

This year, I was backstage for the show, so I had a slightly different perspective. For example, here is John Lovick who won the award for Sharing Secrets for a book he wrote in collaboration with Handsome Jack, the world's foremost male model magician. He's having a slight wardrobe malfunction.

Handsome Jack with his pants down... don't ask. 

Photos from Magic & Martini in Toronto

Last night, at SpiritHouse in Downtown Toronto, we hosted another sold-out Magic & Martini. Thank you to everyone who attended the show. We had a great deal of fun with a few surprises. Here are a few photos from the evening from Tyler Sol Williams. 

Our next few Toronto shows are already full, but we have dates listed through the end of September. Readers can use the code shaken for a discount on the price of tickets when purchasing online. 

A Sold Out Event No One Was Invited To

On April Fool's Day, Toronto saw a one day convention for magicians, The Browser's Bash. (Named after the local magic emporium, The Browser's Den of Magic.) The event received a rather prominent writeup on the front page of the entertainment section of Thursday's Toronto Star. 

“Browser’s Magic Bash is an annual massive meetup for 400 mostly local and a few international magicians. Here, amateur and professional escape artists, mentalists, comedians and prestidigitators convene for a quasi-networking, quasi-educational get-together that is really more like a massive family reunion than anything else.

With niche magic shops petering out, and web tutorials readily available, chances for modern-day magicians to hang out with tons of their peers don’t arise often. So when an opportunity presents itself, up-and-coming magical entrepreneurs jump on their chance to poke around for tips from the pros, while hobbyists come out to hang with part-timers and everyone gets to gawk at the impressive tricks done by masters of the craft.”

I'm frequently asked where I go to learn what I do.

[As an aside, I believe based on reading that "Where do you learn how to do that?" has replaced "How did you do that?" as the most popular question audiences ask. This seems to be a recent shift, and I think it's due to the influence that Harry Potter, or more importantly Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, has had in popular culture. My audiences can now imagine a magic school, even though there really aren't such schools in real life.]

The truth about us is that we're not terribly secretive people. Magicians are horrible at keeping secrets. The reason has primarily to do with vanity: If you come up with a truly interesting idea, you want credit for it which leads to the idea being promoted in one form or another. So in actual fact the "secrets" of magic are being disseminated all the time, just slightly off the side of the road where you don't notice. 

In a typical year, I add twenty to fifty books and a similar number of periodicals about magic to my library. By and large, these books aren't especially hard to procure. In the magic world, my money is just as green as yours — fabulously rainbow-coloured in Canada. But educational resources, and gatherings like this are easily accessible if you know where to look for them.

As Fox Mulder was famous for saying; The Truth Is Out There.

Magic & Martini at SpiritHouse

Last night, we hosted another sold out performance of Magic & Martini at SpiritHouse in Downtown Toronto. Thank you to everyone who attended the show. We are currently sold out in Toronto through the end of May with some spaces in Oakville and Hillsburgh. 

Readers can use the code olive for a discount on tickets purchased online. 

Photos by Tyler Williams

Bits of Mathematical Art

The Scientific American Blog posted examples of the kind of symmetrical and visually striking art you can make with mathematical formulae. The pieces are by "mathematical artist" Hamid Naderi Yeganeh and worth taking a look at. As the magician Cardini used to say, "Oh see the pretty thing. 

Msgr. Vincent Foy

I learned recently that Monsignor Vincent Foy passed away at the age of one hundred and one. He was an important figure in magic in Toronto who also happened to be a distinguished Catholic priest. 

As is, I'm sure, true of most disciplines; many of the notable figures in the field go completely unheard of in the world at large. I'm not sure what to say when people ask me who my "favourite" magician is (why would I be boring enough to settle for just one?) because most of the possible answers will involve people they have never heard of. And many magicians make meaningful contributions to the craft, sometimes over the course of decades, as pure hobbyists while maintaining normal human jobs. 

In this case, he was the ghostwriter for two very important books highlighting the magic of Canadian master magician Ross Bertram. He also published some smaller pamphlets under the pen name of Dr. George E. Casaubon (in case someone objected to a priest knowing his way around a deck of cards.) Later in life his collection of one-handed cuts with a deck of cards was compiled and released in A Cut Above. 

I had the opportunity to meet him twice when I was invited to perform at his residence as part of Magicana's Senior Sorcery program. They were always sure to reserve him a front row seat for the many magic shows hosted there. 

This photo was taken in 2015 a few months before he hit triple digits. 

Msgr. Vincent Foy