The Optimist’s recent coverage of Ladner playwright Allen Desnoyers’ Pier 21 musical has resulted in a local theatre company, Bard in the Yard, securing a local public performance of the topical play.
The musical will be performed on Saturday, Nov. 2 at 7 p.m. at South Delta Baptist Church in Tsawwassen.
Tickets for Pier 21 are $20 and can be purchased online.
“I’m thrilled to be able to provide this opportunity for local residents to see this wonderful musical,” said Jim Martens, spokesperson for Bard in the Yard. “My father and his family came through Pier 21 in March 1948 and it’s a pleasure to offer a production that means so much to my dad, his siblings and me. This story is actually the story of millions of new Canadians and their offspring, of which I am a grateful part.”
For the Remembrance Day weekend, Desnoyers’ Canadiana Musical Theatre Company will stage the musical at the Tsawwassen Arts Centre on Saturday, Nov. 9 at 7:30 p.m. To purchase tickets, call 604-943-9437.
It was at Pier 21 in Halifax that immigrants and refugees fleeing Europe in 1939 arrived in Canada. It’s also where half a million soldiers departed from to fight in the Second World War and where war brides and a new generation of immigrants arrived to take their first steps on Canadian soil.
After playing more than 100 shows in B.C. and Alberta since the production opened in January under Desnoyers’ Canadiana Musical Theatre Company banner, it moved on to Ottawa and then to Halifax to complete the story’s journey. Desnoyers said reviews from the shows in Halifax were excellent.
The company just finished a week-long tour in Winnipeg and has arrived in Alberta for shows in Medicine Hat, Calgary, Edmonton and Cochrane before coming home to South Delta.
