In 2018, Michael Turcotte and his wife Beth Davison, owners of Vintage Games ‘N Junque on Queen Street East, launched the SteelCity NerdCon, a celebration of comics, vintage video games, anime and collectibles.
The first year event was a smashing success with well beyond 1,000 attendees.
By 2019, with positive word of mouth getting around the community, Turcotte and Davison not only repeated the success of their inaugural NerdCon event, but they made it even more of an attraction with a Horror Night, guest speakers and approximately 50 vendors.
The duo fully expected to be hosting the third annual event in 2020 and then COVID-19 hit.
As with many community events, the likelihood of the event taking place came into question.
Wednesday evening, Davison and Turcotte made a surprise live announcement on the Vintage Game ‘N Junque’s Facebook page.
“A lot of people have been asking me, ‘What’s going on with NerdCon? Are we going to have it? Are we not?’ It’s been really, really hard to decide,” says Turcotte.
“After all careful consideration, weighing different options and ideas, we are going to have it. Or maybe ‘we are going to try and have it’ is a better way to put it.”
The event’s organizers met with the Bushplane Museum staff yesterday to go over the options for the event.
“We were trying to find the best way to do it. We don’t want to let anyone down. It’s been really back and forth, thinking of different things …[but] we have a lot of good ideas to make it work for everyone, so everyone can still have a good time.”
Turcotte noted the various safety precautions that would be put in place to make the event work under the current conditions, including cleaning stations, limiting the number of people at one time, and ensuring proper social distancing.
“The number one reason that we decided to try to move forward with [the event], even at the risk of losing more money than we did in April, is 2020 has been kind of like a huge negative … it sucked huge in almost every way.”
He notes how things seemed to keep going from bad to worse.
“[2020] has just been a big negative downslide,” says Turcotte.
“We were thinking that if we can make it possible, for even one day this year, to have a positive thing or something positive to look forward to, we thought it would just be nice.”
Turcotte notes that there has been a feeling of negatively in the community.
“Lots of people have been asking us, so we are going to give it a shot.”
The organizers noted that some things may look different than in previous years.
“I don’t want to get too much into what we are and what are not going to do, because all that will be announced as we [continue] planning,” says Turcotte.
“Whereas we normally have six months to plan…we now have a month and a half. So, we just have to get cracking on it and try to do the best we can.”
One example of how things might be different at the event is for the organizers to wait to announce the prize draws until the day after NerdCon to ensure people aren’t gathering to find out about winners.
“We have a lot of good plans to keep you safe,” he says.
“There are some other things in the works that I can’t talk about [yet].”
Although it was Turcotte who made the announcement, he gave a shout out to his wife for her major role in the organization of the annual event.
“Primarily, Nerd Con is planned by Beth. So anyone that enjoys it, it’s really mostly Beth doing everything,” he laughs.
There is one caveat that Turcotte has that could negatively impact the event from moving forward.
“We have decided to do it, but the one big [thing] that could stop it is if people go back to school next week and there is a huge outbreak of COVID again,” he says.
“Then, it will inevitably be cancelled.”
But for the time being, NerdCon fans can rejoice that the event is most likely returning.
“This is not really for us,” says Turcotte.
“We’re not likely going to make much, if any money, so it’s not about [that]. It’s about people having something to look forward to.”
The 3rd Annual Steel City NerdCon will be taking place on Saturday, Oct. 17 from 12 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Canadian Bushplane Heritage Centre.
Further details about NerdCon will be coming in the coming weeks on Vintage Games ‘N Junque’s Facebook page.
