The Toronto Star published this story
after AvCon07 - in the newspaper
there were also three large photographs, that do not appear on the web
site article.
A few ( Minor corrections/
additions have been made by me - Kitty Hadley )
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ROAD TO
AVONLEA
TheStar.com -
entertainment - Fans still follow Road to Avonlea
July
31, 2007 04:30 AM
Philip Marchand
- entertainment columnist p;
Driving past the towers of Jane and Finch, one takes a right turn
into the 1800s. Tucked away behind those towers is Black Creek Pioneer
Village, a replica of rural old-time Ontario. What better place to hold
a convention of fans of The Road to
Avonlea, a TV series celebrating
rural old-time Prince Edward Island?
It was called AvCon 2007, the third such convention, held every two
years. Ninety people had registered for it. On Friday, 48 participants toured
Sullivan Studio back lot.,
with Dan Matthews as our tour guide, and in the afternoon a visit to
Spadina House for refreshments , tour of the historic house and a
behind the scenes commentary.
On Saturday afternoon,
about 90 participants –
more than two-thirds from the United States, England, Scotland and Hungary –
sat in the Garfield Weston Theatre in the Visitor's Centre listening to
Ian Clark, an actor who played the character Simon Tremayne.
The series, created by Kevin Sullivan based on the books of L.M.
Montgomery (also his source for his Anne
of Green Gables miniseries)
debuted in 1990 and lasted seven seasons.
Clark was talking about an episode titled "Hearts and Flowers,"
first aired in the show's fourth season. He called it a "madcap"
episode. It featured a dead parrot, a hotel dance and the spinster
schoolteacher Hetty King (played by Jackie Burroughs). A young woman in
the audience raised her hand. "I have a question about that episode,"
she said. "When Hetty picks up the parrot, why does her hand turn
green?'
Clark was flummoxed. "Really?" he said. "Uh, you know, it might be
... " Finally he confessed he hadn't noticed Hetty's green hand.
Afterwards I talked to the questioner, a 24-year-old from San
Bernardino, Calif., named Nafissa Thompson-Spires. She is doing her
doctoral dissertation at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., on
the subject of Canadian television exported to the U.S. She was also a
serious fan of Avonlea.
"I saw it on the Disney Channel when I was a kid and then I bought
the DVDs as an adult," she said. "I grew up loving Sarah Polley (a.k.a
Sara Stanley) and I really wanted to be her when I was young. I just
love the family values. It's a show where you don't expect anybody bad
to be in it."
The theme of family values kept coming up. After John Welsman, who
composed the music for the series, talked about the "gentle, old-time"
quality of that music, a woman named Angel Willoughby, 31, there with
her family from Brooklyn, Ont., thanked him for his work. "It's an
escape. Today in the world there's so much garbage going on, and when
you play that music it brings back a time of innocence."
Most moving was the testimony of a special education teacher named
Jean Grant, 57, from Queensbury, N.Y. Many of her students were
emotionally troubled children, veterans of foster homes. They loved the
series. She told actor Michael Mahonen his character, an orphan named
Gus Pike, was a particular inspiration to one young man .
"Watching Gus, there was something good for him to connect to, a role
model," she said.
The next morning, an auction was held in an auditorium of the Royal
Ontario Museum, AvCon07
designated charity. An overcoat worn by character Jasper Dale
went for $300
to Newmarket's Barb Watts, 52. "I have no idea," she said, when asked
what she would do with it. "I bought it because I went to school with
Mag Ruffman (a.k.a. Olivia King)."
And because the auction items were
donated by the committee and Sullivan Entertainment with all proceeds
went to the ROM - thanks to the skill of auctioneer , Mike
Matthews, $4.700.00 US dollars were raised.
Later, the audience heard from Sullivan. He talked about various
episodes, including one titled "A
Dark and Stormy Night," that opened
with Christopher Reeve riding a galloping horse, just a few months
before a riding accident left him paralyzed. But that wasn't the point
of showing the clip. The point was that the episode was a parody of
19th-century melodrama.
"We went out of our way to make Avonlea tongue in cheek," Sullivan
told his audience. "It was an overriding concern of the writers and
myself that the show not become too sentimental or sappy."
The irony of Avonlea was worn lightly, however. It did not shake
the sense, entertained by the participants of AvCon 2007, that the
actors themselves were as basically good-hearted and innocent as the
characters they played.
Kitty Hadley from Peterborough, N.H., discussed an episode titled
"How Kissing Was Discovered" that might have raised eyebrows because
one kisser, Mahonen, was 26 years old at the time and the other kisser,
Gema Zamprogna (Felicity King) was 13.
"He actually kissed her on the cheek," Hadley said. "He said he was
very much aware of the time period and the fact that in real life she
was only 13 and he was 26, so he was being extremely careful that no
part of him touched her."
"There was a real family that was on the set playing all those
parts," Sullivan said. "It was a magic time when everyone really was
related to each other, and they felt as strongly about each other as
they were on screen."
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Other information not mentioned (
I am sure for lack of space). Kevin McCabe, author of the "Lucy Maud
Montgomery Album", edited
by Alexandra Heilbron, was our first guest speaker at Black Creek
on Saturday morning.
Early Saturday afternoon, along
with Ian D. Clark, we also had James O'Regan (Constable Jeffries)
as a guest speaker.
Later Saturday afternoon,
John Welsman and Michael Mahonen spoke together of the importance
of music to the actor, and the actors skill making the music work
well in each scene ... The afternoon ended with Ian, John,
James and Michael doing questions and answers, then signing
autographs and posing for pictures with all who attended.
Saturday evening, 40
attendees, the committee and Ian, John and Michael all went out to
dinner together. The dinner was "open" to all who attended
AvCon07, and it gave the attendees another chance to speak with each of
the guest speakers and to take more photos. It was a relaxing
evening , and gave the Avcon07 attendees a chance to talk to each
other ... many new friendships were made during the three days of
AvCon07.
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