They’ve been married for about as long they’ve been making balloon shapes together.
Ken, 94, and Evelyn, 92, Anstice – perhaps most widely known as Balloon Man and his wife – entertained the masses at Sault Ste. Marie and District Labour Council‘s Labour Day ‘Worker’s Appreciation’ event on Monday.
That might not surprise most locals since the couple do around 50 events per year, most of them in and around the Sault, and they’ve become mini-celebrities since they first started making balloon shapes over 40 years ago.
“It’s wonderful being known around Sault Ste. Marie, you walk down the street and all the kids point and say ‘hey, there’s balloon man!’ said Evelyn.
Ken and Eveyln travel around from event to event under the name ‘Balloon Magic’’ but people just usually refer to Ken, or ‘Balloon Man’, and in recent years they've been including Evelyn with the title ‘Balloon Woman’ as well.
Evelyn and Ken Anstice have been married for 42 years, just one year more than they've been in the balloon shape business. Jeff Klassen/SooTodayThey’ve done events as far as Honolulu and probably as near as your closest service club hall since their bread and butter is service club events and community days.
Ken has been with the Shriners for 55 years so they do a lot of events through them.
The couple’s biggest annual community event is in Houghton Lake, Michigan where they make Balloon shapes for a about 1200 children starting at 10 a.m. going straight until 5 p.m. - not bad for a couple in their 90s.
Since they use on average 3 balloons per child that event will have them inflating well over 3000 balloons.
At the Worker’s Appreciation event on Saturday, Ken and Evelyn said they made giraffes, crocodiles, wearable cat’s tails, swords, and hats for about 300 children.
To keep up with all those balloon-objects they bulk order about $300-$500 worth of balloons from Southern Ontario every year, it’s so many balloons they don’t bother keeping track.
At an event, Ken and Evelyn present children with a list of objects to choose from, a lot of it balloon animals and various types of wearable balloon stuff.
They notice fluctuating trends in what people ask for each year.
“Lately they’ve all wanted swords and we make them up like knights in shining armour. They get a special hat that’s like a helmet, a belt, and a sword,” said Evelyn.
Ken is the one who comes up with new designs, usually on the job when confronted with a unique request, while Evelyn asks the children what they want, inflates the balloons, and tells Ken what do.
Ken and Evelyn say their business is growing larger each year as is the range of events they go to.
Earlier this year they did their first adult birthday party for about 40 people; perhaps some of these people have been Balloon Magic fans since childhood.
Ken is actually a World War II veteran who first started out working with tanks but then moved on to become a pilot flying an Avro Lancaster bomber and other aircraft.
After the war he worked for Algoma Steel, then as a city police officer, and then he sold mining equipment, which he was doing in the early 1970s when he met Evelyn, who was in real estate.
According to Ken, she talked him into becoming a realtor as well, though Evelyn sees it differently.
“He decided he better get in the business with me quick seeing as I was running around the countryside going to different properties and meeting all these different men,” she said.
Ken and Evelyn were married in 1974.
Not long after their marriage, in 1975, they were at a Shriner’s dinner in Marquette, Michigan when Ken spotted a clown making shapes.
“Ken just watched him for a while and asked where he got his balloons from. Ken started using some of the clown’s balloons at the dinner and as soon as we got home he bought his own and away we went from there,” said Evelyn.
Sault Ste. Marie and District Labour Council Worker Appreciation Day organizer Emma Irwin said that when planning for the event “everyone” was telling her she “had to” get Ken and Evelyn.
“When some of the kids came today and they saw Ken and Evelyn they got really excited because they knew who they were right away. We often think that kids are different nowadays from older generations but I can’t even count the amount of kids that, after getting balloons, came back to thank Ken and Evelyn at the end of the day,” said Irwin.
Worker’s Appreciation Day started off with a parade that reportedly included 200 members from local unions and groups followed by a barbecue and family events at Roberta Bondar Pavilion that, reportedly, around 1200 people attended.