City hall to fly FanCon flag
City Hall is now flying on the Millennium FanCon.
Prince George mayor Lyn Hall announced this week that the Citizen’s flagship cultural event, Northern FanCon, would be celebrated with a commemorative set of days during the public convention this spring.
Now in it’s fifth year, Northern FanCon moved its dates to coincide with one of the calendar’s most fortuitous quirks. May 4 is already a friendly punch line in pop culture, since it can be said as “May the 4th be with you” to make an easily recognizable Star Wars pun. Now it forms the fulcrum of this interactive celebration of films, TV shows, books, comics, toys, arts, internetivity, costumes, makeup, games, hobbies and anything that gets your geek on.
Northern FanCon will be held at the CN Centre mothership from May 3-5, and that’s when the municipality will fly the event flag at city hall.
“Congratulations on five years,” said Hall to event director Norm Coyne of UNLTD Events. “FanCon has become an event that people wait for, and an event to go to.”
“I was scared beyond belief,” said Citizen publisher Colleen Sparrow, remembering the launch of Prince George’s own pop-culture convention back in 2014. Hall agreed that it’s difficult to get a major event up and running, but look at it now.
“All of these events mean that we are attracting people to Prince George to participate in something really special,” Hall said. “The variety and the diversity of events that take place here is what we’re talking about here today as well. You and your team, Norm, have done a helluva job and I’m so proud of that fact that, five years, a lot of events struggle (in their early years) so to get to five, you’re over the top. So congratulations.”
A proclamation will be entered into the public record as part of the commemorative Northern FanCon Days citation.
The presence of Northern FanCon over the years has played a noticeable role in the formation of the city’s fledgling but award-winning screen arts industry, and also its eye-popping cosplay industry. It has deepened the gaming and hobbyist recreations, taught useful skills in the various workshops that accompany the events on the convention floor, made some celebrity encounter dreams come true for devoted fans, and most importantly of all, has generated a unique and lucrative injection into the local economy.
Hall remarked at all the countries that have had citizens come through the Northern FanCon doors, sending them home with a truly unique and personal connection to our city.
“Prince George is already on the provincial and national map, but I would argue it is also now on the world map,” said Hall, citing FanCon as one of many magnetizing events this city is now accomplishing with regularity in the realms of business, education, sports and arts. FanCon, uniquely, touches a bit on all of that.