Fourteen-year-old Tyler Sturr's first experience riding on the Behemoth, a new Wonderland rollercoaster which features large drops and goes up to 125 km/h, left quite an impression on him.
In fact, he decided to turn that experience into an animated cartoon which was featured June 28 at le Festival de la mauvaise herbe, a creative writing and arts festival for children aged two to 17. The event was held at College Boreal, and included about 30 children from community groups such as Big Brothers, Big Sisters and Carrefour Francophone.
“My animation shows that I want to go on this ride because it's been advertised and it just looks so cool. So I go on it with a friend. The other character in my animation is a girl called Stephanie,” he said.
“We waited in line for two hours, and we go on the ride finally, and then we got off, and I was all dizzy and nauseous, and she was all like 'Let's go again.' It was my personal experience on the big ride, pretty much.”
The literary festival, translated roughly as the “bad weed festival,” was just one activity in the St. Jean Sudbury Festival, which took place between June 21 and 28.
The festival celebrates the French-Canadian holiday of St. Jean Baptiste Day (June 24).
Other events included a pancake breakfast June 21, a field day for students June 24, tributes to French-Canadian musical groups Harmonium and Cano on June 27 and a performance by French-Canadian children's singer Shilvi June 28.
Sturr, who got involved in the literary festival through Big Brothers, said it was a lot of fun to produce his own animation and see other people watch it. He said it made him feel like he was “part of something.”
Miriam Cusson, director of le Salon du Livre, said 20 writers and artists have been working with the children since early March to help develop their projects.
“I think it's one of those rare activities that actually gives kids a voice of their own. It's for kids and by kids. Kids determine what the content is. Sure, we help them to produce it, but it's completely their ideas.”
Denys Tremblay attended the festival with his three-year-old son, Dali Tremblay.
The little boy created a story about a bug who ate different flavours of ice cream after the festival facilitators visited his daycare, said Tremblay.
“They all had to make paintings of bugs. They put paint onto a ball and dropped the ball onto a page. Then they turned these little splatters into bugs, and asked the kids about the bugs...Today they read all the scripts that all the kids came up with about all their individual bugs.”
Norman Renaud, author of the 2008 children's book Bozo l'orignal vampire (Bozo the vampire moose), gave a reading at the event. The book is available for sale at Grand Ciel Bleu Librairie du Nouvel-Ontario on Durham Street.
“It's a like an arts festival. There's visual, there's photography, there's animation, there's theatre arts. It's like an arts festival for children. What a brilliant idea,” he said.
“Usually kids shows are usually pretty slack in production values. But this, today, was nice and tight. It looked like a real show.”
Renaud said the arts scene for francophones in Sudbury has gotten a lot better over the past 30 years.
“If you compare Sudbury in 2009 to Sudbury in 1979 or 1969, it's gotten a lot better. I mean, the drive and the will were always there, but the means weren't always there. But what's different now is we somehow got over a hump,” he said.
“We're doing well. We've won Governor-General prizes, and we've put ourselves on the map. It's gas in the tank. The next time you try to do a project, things seem to go better.”
