Events of the convention
First day (Friday) - visiting of filming sites
On the first day we visited some filming sites guided by Dan Matthews location manager.
First stop was Pickering Village Museum. Creators of Road to Avonlea and
Anne of Green Gables used this place for shooting exterior shots. Unfortunately the museum was under construction so buildings were not in their best
condition. Fortunately I took lots of pictures last year when all the houses were beautiful.
Our second stop was the wonderful Pine Grove Church in Uxbridge. We spent a few minutes there, everybody could take photos. The church is open about 2 times a year so it was closed this time. We did not loose too much because this place was used for exterior shots only.
Our third stop was also in Uxbridge, the farm where village of Avonlea was. King farm
is a real farm with real buildings, but unfortunately
the village was only a set, shells
and fronts
and it was destroyed after finishing shooting. The farm is a private property,
trespassing is prohibited, we agreed our visit before with the owner, the McDougall family. Thank you very much for their collaboration!
Dan showed us every important place and location. For example where the lighthouse or Rose Cottage or Peg Bowen's house stood.
Second day (Saturday)
We spent the second and the third day in a conference hall of Black Creek Pioneer Village, these 2 days were the convention itself. Mag Ruffman started the first day, she told us stories, signed autographs and posed for taking pictures over 2 hours. It was planned that R. H. Thomson (Jasper Dale) would be with her, but R. H. was a noshow because of other circumstances. Lynda Naranjo's presentation followed Meggie. Lynda talked about clothing in RTA's age, and presented lots of images about clothing. Next and our last guest for the first day was John Welsman, composer of the first few seasons of the series. John yarned us about composing music for a series.
Third day (Sunday)
We opened third day with a screening. We watched behind the scenes
stuff of DVDs released by Sullivan Entertainment.
Lunch came, then Alexandra Heilbron, writer answered our questions related to LMM's life and work. Alexandra wrote several books about Montgomery.
After Alexandra our auction for charities came. Lots of fans and even Sullivan Entertainment donated items for this event.
Auction was a success last year too, but this year it was much more fun and interesting. :-)
After the auction we had our last guest speaker, James O'Regan. He shared his experiences with us about filming RTA. Then farewell came...
We might meet again in 2007...
Other programs
Beside AvCon fans could attend other programs and meet actors too. Zachary Bennett (Felix King) couldn't come to AvCon but he played a gig on Saturday evening in Blue Moon pub with his band called Yonder, and anyone could visit the pub and watched him playing. Some of us went and enjoyed his playing. Zach was very kind and met some of the AvCon organizers before AvCon and signed some items donated for the charity auction. Thank you for his help and we hope he might attend AvCon next time...
On Monday after AvCon 3 RTA-actors played in Shakespeare's The tempes in North Bay on a festival.
Although North Bay is hundreds of kilometres from Toronto, some of us travelled there and got the chance to
watch David Fox (Clive Pettibone), Michael Mahonen (Gus Pike) and Robert Collins (Blaire Stanley, Sara's father) acting.
After the play all the 3 actors were very kind and we could talk to them for a few minutes, they posed for photos and gave us authographs.
Moreover, Mickey Mahonen suggested to have a lunch together (Mickey and the fans) in a restaurant in North Bay.
It was not a big surprise that the luch took about 3.5 hours... everybody enjoyed it and nobody wanted to leave...
