🗡️ The Fantasy You Never Outgrew: The Ironwood Fantasy Fair and Dan Niznik

Maybe there is a fantasy costume in your closet that gets out once a year and deserves better. Maybe you rewatched the duel and skipped the talking parts. Maybe you owned a lightsabre, and if we are being honest, you would still own one.

Maybe you had a Dungeons and Dragons phase. Maybe you still have one, and it happens on Thursdays.

Or maybe you are further in than any of that. Maybe you sew. Maybe you have a character, and a name for that character, and a good reason for the name. Maybe you have made the drive to Guelph, or Milton, or Trenton, because that is where this sort of thing tends to be.

This year it is on Sydenham Street.

On August 15, at The Spire, you can have a sword handed to you with an instructor teaching you how to use it. Down the hall, a witch is running a free potion-making table, a friendly dragon is looking to make new friends, a blacksmith is selling their work, and a medieval English village is waiting for you to walk through it.

You get to do it. That is rather the whole point.

For one full day, The Spire on Sydenham Street becomes a fantasy fair. Ironwood describes the venue as castle-like, which is a fair way to put it, and it means they did not so much have to build a castle as book one.

Inside, four things run at once.

There is the Wizard's Stage, a mainstage with shows going nearly all day. There are workshops you register for. There is a marketplace of local makers, food included. And there are the side quests, which is Ironwood's name for the things you simply walk up to and do, no booking and no experience required.

All of that is open to everyone, kids included.

Then, come evening, everyone under nineteen goes home, and the building becomes something else.

The evening is a separate ticket and a genuinely separate event. A catered ball with a live band, a DJ, a dance floor, a costume contest, and a plot. We will come back to the plot, because the plot is the best part.

Here is the surprising part. The Ironwood Fantasy Fair was not assembled by a festival company. It was assembled by a sword school.

Ironwood Sword School has been teaching in Kingston since 2014, with a second chapter in Belleville. What they teach is HEMA, Historical European Martial Arts, which means the actual fighting systems of the medieval and Renaissance periods, reconstructed and taught as a martial art. Mostly German longsword. Also dagger, spear, messer, rapier, sabre, and, yes, wrestling.

Their motto is three words. Strength. Flexibility. Growth.

If that sounds like a lot, they have gone to some trouble to make sure it isn't. Nobody spars on their first night. Nothing sharp is used in training. And the school's own FAQ, answering the question everyone is too polite to ask, promises that most lessons are no more tiring than going for a short hike.

Dan Niznik is the Fair Director, and one of the school's instructors. He knows exactly how all of this sounds.

For years, Ironwood has been the sword act at everyone else's party. Free lessons and demonstrations at medieval fairs and festivals all over Ontario. This summer they have been out near Guelph, and in Trenton, running live swordfighting inside somebody else's immersive plot at somebody else's fantasy ball. They arrive, they do the sword bit, they load the van, they drive home.

On August 15, for the first time, everybody else drives to them.

Dan is clear about why. The fair is a culmination, he says, of the school's love of fantasy and of bringing people together. But he also wants it to be a platform, a lasting one, for the creative people in this community who deserve a spotlight and rarely get handed one.

They did not do it alone. Kingston Gaming Nexus and Moonseed Productions came in as partners, and Dan says The Spire has been accommodating and encouraging throughout.

Start with the stage, because there is nearly always something on it.

The host is a wizard, professionally known as Lvl 99 Wizard, who casts summoning spells and plays classic covers, a combination you do not see every day. There is Enchanted Forest Princess Storytime for the smaller guests. There is Dungeons and Improv, where the audience builds the story and the dice settle the arguments. And Anthea Feaver, a Kingston folk songwriter with a record and a following, plays old-time fiddle and banjo.

Twice during the day, Ironwood runs its Tournament of Steel: real duels, unscripted, with the audience choosing the weapons. And Blades of Glory, who have been doing this out of Hastings since 1994, turn up in full plate armour to hit each other, which is a thing Ironwood does not actually teach.

The workshops need booking, and they are the part of the fair we did not see coming.

Rob Harrap, a professor at Queen's, brings Northeye, a medieval English village you walk through in augmented reality on an iPad. It came out of a university research project and is already being used in Ontario classrooms. Angela Carter-McAuslan will explain what flax has to do with Sleeping Beauty and Rumpelstiltskin, then put you to work twining your own cord, and later teach you to spin yarn. Adam "Mansa" Myrie teaches the five points of writing fiction. Laura Moses of The Woodland Awakenings runs a terrarium build and a botanical moss art class. And Wade Schriner, who has run tables at KingCon, will teach you how to be a Dungeon Master, whether you have never run a game in your life or have been doing it for a decade.

And then there is the marketplace, which Ironwood describes as a dragon's hoard of creative crafts and whimsical wares. That is about right.

The makers are the point of it. Crom's Anvil is an artist blacksmith out of Norwood who turns out everything from garden sculpture to medieval weapons. Iron Phoenix Armoury makes leather armour. There is a woodworker, a beadery, fibre artists, body art, and a good many more, plus food. You can see the full daytime lineup on the fair's site, and it is worth a scroll.

At the end of the day, the fair packs up its dragon and sends the children home. What replaces it is not a bigger version of the same thing. The evening soirée is a different event, with a different ticket, and it has a story.

It is called The Empty Throne.

King Agnacious, known to his subjects as the Mad King, has died. He left no heir. Two people believe the crown is theirs.

Jah'tau of the Riverfolk is a negotiator, charismatic, the architect of the trade alliances that keep the realm fed. General Nadya Prusik is a soldier, decorated, the reason the realm still has borders. Both have supporters. Both will be in the room. And all evening, a cast of courtiers and schemers will move among the guests, spreading gossip, making their case, and quietly working you.

Because before the night is out, the guests vote. The room decides who takes the throne.

And there is a band. Lo and the High Road play fantasy folk, which they cheerfully describe as music for your woodland high tea party. Then DJ Odin takes over, a viking flung through time and space who, by his own account, is performing musical rituals in the hope of finding the one spell that will send him home. There is a catered feast, and a bar with drinks that have clearly been given some thought. There is a dance floor at the foot of the throne, and a free lesson for anyone who wants one and has never had one. Dr. Crow and Ellievation perform. Talia reads tarot in the corners. There is a costume contest, sponsored by Kingston Gaming Nexus, with prizes and no sign-up sheet.

The Ironwood Fantasy Fair is at The Spire on Sydenham Street on Saturday, August 15. The day is for everyone. The evening is for grown-ups, partly because there is a bar and partly because of what happens in that room after the children have gone.

Tickets are on sale now and there are not unlimited numbers of them, so Dan would like you to move sooner rather than later. His exact advice was that you cast a summoning spell to acquire yours, which we are choosing to take as a joke.

The full schedule, the workshop bookings, the vendor list and the ticket prices are all on the fair's site. And if you are coming in from out of town, Ironwood has arranged a discounted block of rooms at the Hilton for that weekend.

Fantasy costume is encouraged. It is not required. Nobody is going to check, and nobody is going to look at you weird, or look at you strange. And all of it happens indoors, so you can count on the promise of rain or shine.

And one last thing, for the person this article has been quietly aimed at all along.

If you go, and you pick up that longsword at the training grounds, and something happens that you were not expecting, Ironwood's next beginner's course starts three days later. Right here in Kingston. Eight classes, no experience needed, a handbook and a t-shirt thrown in. And if their FAQ is to be believed, you will not even be particularly tired afterwards.

Because for twelve years now, Ironwood has been telling anyone who will listen that this is not a spectator sport.

On August 15, they have booked a castle to prove it. Over a hundred people are working that day to make it happen.