There was considerable summer weather in this weekend’s second annual By the Bay Fall Fest on Barrie’s waterfront.
And just enough magic.
Magic Ian was there for family and kids shows, balloon animals and something old school - card tricks.
“Card tricks are constantly fascinating because everybody uses cards, everybody plays cards, it’s something they’re familiar with,” he said. “So when you take a deck of cards that someone was playing Crazy 8s or Go Fish with their family last night, and suddenly you’re changing an entire deck to a blank deck or you’re changing it all to a single card and then back to all different cards, or you’re making a card vanish entirely - you’re in a completely different place.”
The festival, at Centennial Park on Saturday and Sunday, was presented by the Simcoe Makers Market and featured local vendors and food trucks.
The latter included clothes, baskets, woodworking, freeze-dried treats, crafts, frames, sweets and treats, mugs, jewelry, balms and something for pets.
And the magic of card tricks.
“It’s doing something mystical with something normal and regular and that’s what fascinates people,” Magic Ian said of the attraction of card tricks. “It’s an everyday object that everyone’s familiar with, but they’re doing something that is out of the ordinary and spectacular and that opens the mind to the wonder.
“When I get asked ‘is there such thing a magic’, I answer absolutely, but it’s not what the magicians does,” he said. “It’s what happens in the mind of the audience members or the spectator when they see something and say ‘that shouldn’t have happened, that’s amazing’.
“We become children, so I think card tricks are just something unusual with the regular and that’s what does it.”
Magic Ian’s motto is, ‘If you are part of the audience, you are part of the magic’.
Especially children.
“Kids like certain card tricks. They have to be visual. Things like you’re going to guess a card they don’t care about, but things that involve handkerchiefs, colourful objects…
“Adults get very blown away with card tricks. I’d like to think mine are particularly effective,” Magic Ian said. “Kids tend to like things with more colour, more vibrancy and I certainly do things like that as well.”
