History of the Festival
Nancy Vermond on stage at the 2004 Festival (photo: Dean Vermond)
The Beginnings:
The St. Marys Storytelling Festival was conceived in the spring of 2003, when a group of volunteer storytellers in schools, a chapter of Spellbinders (www.spellbinders.org), got together and decided to take storytelling to the wider community. We decided to have a festival on the Flats beside the Thames River the first weekend after Labour Day in 2004. Fair weather usually extends into September, and school would be in session and able to participate. John Stevens gave the festival its name: “Once Upon a Thames”.
Nancy and Louis Vermond had attended and volunteered at the Toronto Storytelling Festival and had attended the Illinois Storytelling festival, held outdoors in tents in a park in a small rural community in northern Illinois. Even with the additional expense of renting tents, an outdoor event, both visible and festive, was the unanimous choice of the first organizing committee. Now to do the work!
In the summer of 2003, we incorporated as a not-for-profit organization and began choosing the professional storytellers for our first festival. Nancy Vermond, coordinator and artistic director, attended both the US National Storytelling conference in Chicago and the Storytellers of Canada/Conteurs du Canada conference in Ottawa to network with other festival producers and scout for talent. In Chicago she met and heard Michigan storyteller La’Ron Williams, who has become a St. Marys festival favourite. She met Jo Kuyvenhoven and Louise Profet-LeBlanc, co-founder of the Yukon festival, in Ottawa and had already invited Jim May, Illinois festival founder, Marylyn Peringer, bilingual storyteller from Toronto, and local storytellers, Gail Fricker, Mary-Eileen McClear, Reed Needles, Dorothy Bowman, and Diane Halpin. That was our roster of tellers for 2004.
To help pay for the first festival, the organizers started looking for sponsors among local businesses and organizations. More than fifty sponsors supported that first year’s efforts, though almost no one in the community had heard of a storytelling festival. They only knew that it was a wholesome outdoor family-oriented cultural event with some enthusiastic volunteers. Admission prices were kept low, and we almost broke even, making up the difference with a benefit storytelling concert later in the fall.
Changes in the festival since 2004
We dropped the children’s activity tent, as it was in competition with the storytelling performances. We changed the admissions to “by donation”, and we added a Sunday afternoon intergenerational music and storytelling concert to the schedule. Our roster of talented storytellers continues to grow. We have been able to receive major funding from the Ontario Ministry of Tourism and the Ontario Arts Council, but we still invite and need local sponsors to support the event. This year, 2008, Carol McLeod is the festival coordinator and continues as marketing chair; Gail Fricker volunteered to be the artistic chair; and Tony VanderSchot is the production manager. The board members of St. Marys Storytelling Inc. include Monique VanderSchot, president, Janis Fread, vice president, Arlene Callender, secretary, Christina Kerekes, treasurer, and directors John Stevens and Tony Vanderschot.
Storytellers and Nancy Vermond at the 2006 Festival (Photo: Irene Miller)
At storytelling conferences and festivals across Canada, we have heard from many story-lovers that the St. Marys Storytelling Festival, “Once Upon a Thames”, is one of the best, if not the best, storytelling festival in Canada. We are getting a reputation! One unique aspect of our festival is that on the first day, a Friday, around 800 students from St. Marys and Stratford come to the festival. The St. Marys students, grades 1 to 8, are piped down to the Flats by bagpiper Mark Fletcher.
St. Marys schoolchildren being led to the very first Festival in 2004 by Mark Fletcher (Photo: John Stevens)
With continued excellent performers and dedicated leadership, the festival will carry on to touch the imaginations and the hearts of the audiences who come to hear stories from around the world and down the street. Best of luck to the 2008 festival committee!
Nancy Vermond
