Local flight attendant and standup comedian takes shot at filmmaking
Unlike the character he plays in his web series The Parent Council, Patrick Creery is a fly-away dad, not a stay at home dad.
“I am a flight attendant at WestJet which means when I’m away, I’m really away, but when I’m home I’m really at home,” says Creery, who created The Parent Council with longtime friend Charles Andrew Payne for Telus’s STORYHIVE competition.
This year, the STORYHIVE contest funded 30 of the 215 submissions it received, with 15 based in Alberta and 15 in British Columbia. Each filmmaker received $10,000 to create a pilot for their web series. The two final winners will each receive $50,000 to continue working on their project.
The web series in the competition can be viewed on Telus’s STORYHIVE webpage at Also, it’s available for free On-Demand on Tel us Op ti kT V. The Parent Council also has a webpage at the parentcouncils eries. com.
Voting on the entries begins on Feb. 5 and closes on Feb. 9.
“We’re at the audience-building phase of the competition so we want as many people as possible to see our show and to vote for it,” said Creery.
In The Parent Council, Creery plays Con nor McPherson, a former accountant turned stay at home dad who decides to join the parent council a this daughters’ school just so he can par take in some adult conversation. Little does Connor suspect he will immediately be recruited to serve as the council’s treasurer and that he will become embroiled in the power struggles of the other parents.
Creery, who sees the series as a combination of Modern Family and Community, said he and Payne wanted “to do something that talks about commonality and that’s what it’s all about when you get concerned parents together.”
They also wanted to “make light of how different cultures raise their kids, which is why we created such a diverse group of parents.”
The cast includes Creery and Payne as well as Stacy Da Silva, Roberta Mauer Philips, Filsan Dual eh, Lydia Lau, Emma Duke and Ashley Come au, as well as Cree ry’ s real-life daughters Zoe and Riley Creery.
Creery and Payne met in Vancouver 15 years ago doing standup comedy. They lost touch when Creery moved to Calgary in 2003, but eventually bumped into each other at a Chamber of Commerce meeting and started doing stand up together again.
“I told Charles about my idea for a web series and asked if he was interested in helping me write the script. We began working together and created a part for him to play.”