Bring in the Beliebers
Justin Bieber’s hometown exhibit draws fans from all over the world
For most tourists of a certain age, the quaint city of Stratford, Ont., is synonymous with its world-renowned Shakespearean theatre festival. But for a large number of young pop music-loving females, it’s the mecca for Justin Bieber tours, artifacts and purple-tinged curiosities.
Indeed, since the Steps to Stardom exhibit opened Feb. 18 at the Stratford Perth Museum, carloads of young women have been arriving to spend quality time, says general manager John Kastner. The exhibit displays an assortment of Bieber’s Teen Choice Awards surfboards, running shoes, star-studded photographs and personal letters.
“We should have seen this coming, but I didn’t see this coming,” Kastner admitted sheepishly on the eve of the exhibit’s third weekend. “It’s been unbelievable, it’s been overwhelming, it’s been fantastic. Universally positive.”
Kastner says the exhibit drew 1,000 visitors on its opening weekend, a huge uptick from the 25 people who dropped by last year at the same time.
Traffic has dropped considerably since then — averaging 30 to 35 people a day during the week and about 100 people on the weekend — but Kastner says that’s still higher than the typical February turnout.
The exhibit caters to a very specific audience that is exactly the demographic you’d expect, he says, describing their core draw as young women aged “18, 19 to about 25 or 26.”
“I would say that makes up 75 per cent of the people who come through,” he says. “They may have a brother who’s had to drive them, or in some cases we have girls that age who come with parents, or younger kids who come with grandparents.”
He says most make the pilgrimage from the Greater Toronto Area, but the exhibit is also attracting visitors from U.S. college towns near the border, including Buffalo, N.Y., and Ann Arbor, Mich., and further afield. Four 20-year-olds told him on the first weekend that they came from France.
“They flew in Friday, were flying home Monday,” he says incredulously. “And I said: ‘You came for this?’ ”
The most popular attractions at the museum include an aluminum cut-out of the star positioned in front of a replica of the Avon Theatre where he used to busk — a set tailor-made for selfies.
Then there’s a chalkboard for visitors to write messages directly to Bieber — it’s photographed every hour and the images are posted on Instagram, a well-established haunt for the singer.
Previous museum displays have drawn much more staid crowds.
“(Our) Anne Frank exhibit was terrific, very meaningful — we saw people in tears and reflecting. But to see people come in here and really excited, you get this sort of positive energy from them and you have to like these kids,” says Kastner.
It seems some make the trek to meet fellow fans they know only through social media, he says, pointing to separate groups of opening-day visitors from Indiana
The Stratford Perth
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Museum is located at 4275 Huron Rd., and is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., while the operating hours are 12 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Sundays and holidays.
Admission is $7 for adults,
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$6 for senior and students, $5 for children six to 12, while kids five and under get in for free. A family pass for two adults and two children is also available for $20.
The Steps to Stardom
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exhibit is scheduled to run through the end of the year.
For more information, visit
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stratfordperthmuseum.ca.
and Montreal who met for the first time in Stratford.
“And there were about 40 people staying in the Stratford Hotel (that weekend) and they all belong to this Facebook group,” he says. “They ’d never met in person physically until that weekend. … This is different from other exhibits; it’s a new demographic and their way of deciding to go is different and a lot of it is social media-driven.”