- By David F. Rooney
This weekend’s Grand Railway Days Victorian Magic Lantern Show will be an extravaganza of Victorian-era story telling and slide shows culminating in the Nickelodeon Museum’s signature grand finale — the Victorian Light Show.
If You haven’t seen one of these rare shows you should — as “it will be,” according to the museum’s Leslie Evans, “the only of its kind in the world.”
That’s not an exaggeration. Each Magic Lantern Show is pulled together from the museum’s library of centuries-old hand-painted, glass slides. This year’s Railway Days show will feature an amusing little play, entitled Mrs. McGinty and The Billy Goat. The slide set is by the an American artist, Joseph Bogg Beale, whom she said was the best that country produced. The story line, however, has been adapted by Leslie and her husband, David.
There will also be a tour of BC and Alberta courtesy of a set of
slides originally produced by the Canadian Pacific Railway, slides of notable locomotives of the British isles, a rare Mickey Mouse cartoon produced for Magic Lantern shows and a set of the morally uplifting “life studies” so beloved of the Victorians.
Just ensure this is as interactive an event as possible patrons will be asked when they purchase their tickets if they’d also like to see the man-eating rat slides — a perennial favourite — again.
The different shows will be narrated by Gary Pendergast and Graham Harper.
And of, course, the climax of the show will be the Evans’ Victorian Light Show.
The show begins at 7:30 pm. Tickets are $12 and can be reserved by calling 250-837-5250.
Click here to visit the Nickelodeon Museum website.
Click here to visit the Railway Days website.
