A princess takes Sudbury by storm
STUDENT BRINGS MAGIC OF FROZEN, WITH SOCIAL DISTANCING, TO YOUNG FANS
Bianca Ferland was deeply concerned about her daughter, Tiffany. The three-year-old, like most three-year-olds, was a merry little tot pre-pandemic, full of smiles and laughter and light. But as schools closed, social distancing became the norm and families retreated into themselves, Tiffany started struggling.
She didn’t understand why she couldn’t see her little friends and couldn’t venture further than the balcony of her parents’ second-floor apartment in Sudbury, Ont. She grew terrified of the “bad germs,” while nights for Ferland and her husband, Steve Mcarthur, became epic, talking their daughter down from her latest nightmare and soothing her back to sleep.
“Tiffany was having a really hard time and it was taking a toll on all of us,” Ferland says. “So I posted something on Facebook about it and a lot people left me kind messages, but Kass was the only one who reached out asking if she could help."
“Kass” is Kassie Bazinet, a family friend of Ferland, and a 22-year-old communications major at Laurentian University. Before COVID-19 Bazinet — or “Baz” for short — was studying, driving a bus for the disabled 30 hours a week and, in her spare time, working on her music. She has been performing with her father, Rod, a social worker by day and a musician by passion, for as long as she can remember. She plays a mean guitar, has a voice that soars and had an idea about how she might help Ferland with Tiffany.
Tiffany loves princesses, none more than Elsa and Anna from the animated Disney blockbuster, Frozen. For those without little girls in their lives, the film’s plot summary — a sequel was released in 2019 — is thus: Elsa and Anna are sisters and princesses. Elsa is older, with magical powers born of ice, and has the whirl of snow, winter, ice castles and talking snowmen at her fingertips. Anna is the happygo-lucky younger sibling.
Alas, when the pair are but wee, Elsa accidentally zaps Anna with her magic, nearly killing her. The gates of the palace are closed. Elsa quits playing with Anna, and the princesses are more or less isolated from one another within the palace walls. A bunch more stuff happens after that — the opening of the palace gates, for example — the sum of which made Frozen the highest grossing animated film ever, and an Oscar-winner twice over including for the song sung by Elsa and known by rote by parents with children of a certain age worldwide, Let it Go.
Bazinet, herself a Frozen fan, offered to rustle up a Princess Anna costume, throw on a wig and come to the parking lot beneath Tiffany’s balcony to belt out some tunes and say a few words.
“I planned out a whole script explaining how the gates might be closed right now, and that Princess Elsa and I had lived a really long time with the gates closed, but that I believed that they would open again, and if Tiffany believed they would open again — they would,” Bazinet says.
Says Ferland: “I had no idea Kass was going to show up in character. I was totally blown away.”
Tiffany’s nightmares went away. When a princess speaks, a princess-lover listens.
Ferland posted a video of Bazinet’s April 18 parking lot performance to Facebook. It was shared and, just like that, an accidental star was born, a princess with a message ideally suited to the pandemic age.
“Parents started sending me messages saying their kids were sad, and I kind of just jumped on it,” Bazinet says.
A natural extrovert, Bazinet lives alone. COVID-19 cost her her job, while all her classes moved online. Now she is performing 10 gigs a day in driveways and parking lots across Sudbury, and feeling fulfilled. Each morning she hits the road in her grey SUV with a speaker and cordless microphone that she borrowed from her Dad.
Kids typically will have one of two reactions at the sight of Elsa (or Anna) in front of their home: shock or questions, such as, why don’t you use your magical powers? “I tell them since it just warmed up in Sudbury that I don’t want to use my magic and make everybody cold again,” Bazinet says, laughing.
Sudbury city council has acknowledged Bazinet’s efforts; Mayor Brian Bigger spoke to her personally by phone.
“Kassie has picked up on something that is so important to young families," he says. “If you see videos of Kassie — the kids are singing along. It raises hope. She has made a lot of people happy.”
KASSIE HAS PICKED UP ON SOMETHING THAT IS SO IMPORTANT TO
YOUNG FAMILIES. IF YOU SEE VIDEOS OF KASSIE — THE KIDS ARE
SINGING ALONG. IT RAISES HOPE. SHE HAS MADE A LOT OF PEOPLE
HAPPY.
— SUDBURY MAYOR BRIAN BIGGER