I was raised in a small town where theatre was pretty much one of the only reasons to go out for a night. Unless you were a kid in sports, or maybe sometimes in band, you didn’t go out for a night on the town in a small town, unless it was to bike around at midnight or drive the same streets you’ve driven for the past 18 years. But on some nights, you would go to a small little theatre, and watch a show. Annie, or Mary Poppins, or Joseph and his Technicolor Dreamcoat. This is where my lighting journey kind of started. Me as a kid in a small town, doing it for free. This kind of place is where often I would build community, get to know people more, and get to create something and be part of a group of people working towards the same goal, to entertain. Being part of this same group of people is why I ended up moving to the city immediately upon finishing high school, to pursue getting a diploma, and later a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theatre Production.

Fast forward a bit to 2020, and the world shuts down. It’s the same story you’ve heard before. Nothing to do, everyone is stuck at home, gas is cheap but you can’t really use it to go anywhere. (An aside, nearest to me, it was about 56 cents per litre, something else for Americans), and during this time I started to use a pretty popular game called VRchat. Some friends I had met had got me into it, and over the course of the pandemic, I started to meet new people, and get more and more ingrained in the furry community as a whole. It wasn’t until 2022, when I attended my first convention, Fur-Eh!. That year was Mardi Gras themed, or more aptly put “Mardi Paws”. It was my first time since becoming part of the community in 2022 that I had been in a space with people like me, who liked the same things I did, and getting to spend a weekend just enjoying the company of my friends, and making new ones, getting lost in the theming, and just being me, for one weekend. I spent that weekend probably having one of the best ones of that entire year for me, and at closing ceremonies, I saw the next year of Fur-Eh! was broadway themed, and I KNEW that I had to be involved.

Since that first year of Fur-Eh! in 2023 that I was involved with, I have since gone out to get involved with 4 different cons in Western Canada. Fur-Eh!, Calfurry, Howloween, and VancouFUR. You would definitely ask the question in the title by this point, because if you don’t know, the people who run these conventions, and staff them, do not get paid for their time. Everyone gets paid absolutely nothing to make these things happen for you. Now, the answer to the aforementioned question? A complicated one.

The TLDR of it all, is because I want to give people the experience I had in my first year of going to conventions. The longer of it, all the previous backstory, and a bit more. In a world where queer and trans rights are more frequently under attack, by politicians, and folks who seek to divide rather than unite, these conventions and queer spaces are becoming so much more important to keep alive, and maintained. We need these authentic spaces to be ourselves, in a world that might not otherwise let us. More often than not our queerness is something that we have to hide or suppress in our everyday lives, and if for some people a convention is the one thing they go to all year, I want them to get to have the best experience, the only way I know how. By putting together a fun light show, or a main stage, and giving them a place to watch things, dance, chat, and experience community. It’s why I feel anyone should be staffing a convention these days. I do it to give back, to help foster community, and to be completely honest, give myself a chance to play with some fun lighting tech in a way I don’t get to do in my day job, which still involves lighting and trussing and everything like that. I get paid to set up lights, set up truss, audio and the like for my day to day job, but for a few weekends a year, I get to do it for the friends, the folks I don’t know, and everyone, just to give them a place to be themselves.

I do what I would normally get paid to do, for free, because I love this community, that has given so much to me. From me to all of you, thanks for giving me the space and the community to be myself. You are all amazing.

Love, Adam/Addie.