Illusionist Greg Wood is an award-winning magician, speaker, and comedian who has performed throughout Canada and the United States. He has also performed in Sri Lanka. England, Hong Kong, India, Fiji, Belize, Brazil, and Mexico. Greg has also lectured and shared his effects with other magicians in England, The United States Canada, Fiji, and India.
Sri Lanka, officially the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka, is an island country in South Asia, located in the Indian Ocean to the southwest of the Bay of Bengal and to the southeast of the Arabian Sea. The island is historically and culturally intertwined with the Indian subcontinent, but is geographically separated from the Indian subcontinent by the Gulf of Mannar and the Palk Strait. The legislative capital, Sri Jayawardenepura Kotte, is a suburb of the commercial capital and largest city, Colombo.
Hong Kong, officially the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China and commonly abbreviated as HK, is a special administrative region on the eastern side of the Pearl River estuary in southern China. With over 7.4 million people of various nationalities in a 1,104-square-kilometre (426 sq mi) territory, Hong Kong is the world's fourth most densely populated region.
Greg started in theatre in his teens and worked with:
- Manitoba School for Theatre and Allied Arts
- Manitoba Summer Theatre Workshops
- Circle of Dionysus Theatre Company
- Transcona Amateur Theatre Association
He left performing to attend post secondary education and to become a professional Land Surveyor. He ran a successful Land Surveying and Consulting Business for over 20 years. Wood returned to the performing arts in the early 1990s as he started to perform magic and illusions, and left his business to become a full-time entertainer.
Higher education is an optional final stage of formal learning that occurs after completion of secondary education. Often delivered at universities, academies, colleges, seminaries, conservatories, and institutes of technology, higher education is also available through certain college-level institutions, including vocational schools, trade schools, and other career colleges that award academic degrees or professional certifications. Tertiary education at non-degree level is sometimes referred to as further education or continuing education as distinct from higher education. The right of access to higher education is mentioned in a number of international human rights instruments. The UN International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of 1966 declares, in Article 13, that "higher education shall be made equally accessible to all, on the basis of capacity, by every appropriate means, and in particular by the progressive introduction of free education". In Europe, Article 2 of the First Protocol to the European Convention on Human Rights, adopted in 1950, obliges all signatory parties to guarantee the right to education.
Surveying or land surveying is the technique, profession, and science of determining the terrestrial or three-dimensional positions of points and the distances and angles between them. A land surveying professional is called a land surveyor. These points are usually on the surface of the Earth, and they are often used to establish maps and boundaries for ownership, locations, such as building corners or the surface location of subsurface features, or other purposes required by government or civil law, such as property sales.
Performing arts are a form of art in which artists use their voices, bodies or inanimate objects to convey artistic expression. It is different from visual arts, which is when artists use paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Performing arts include a range of disciplines which are performed in front of a live audience.
Greg has had some of his original tricks published for other magicians, has appeared on TV a number of times including CBC’s "On The Road", Global’s "It’s a New Day", CityTV’s "Breakfast Television" and CTV's "The Amazing Race Canada".
He has also appeared on the cover of "Seeing Truth" an international magic magazine. Greg is also a featured magician in the magic documentary "Pick A Card"
Over the last twenty-five years he and his wife Oonaugh have entertained hundreds of thousands with their comedy and magic at festivals, schools, churches, and corporate events. Greg is a three-time winner of Winnipeg’s "Best of Variety Act" and has twice won Manitoba’s "Close Up Conjuror’s" award.
Greg also uses his magic as a professional speaker and used it recently to earn the "Accredited Speakers" designation and was inducted into the Toastmasters Hall of Fame in 2018. The Accredited Speaker designation is the prestigious designation recognizing professional-level public speaking skills offered by Toastmasters International. It recognizes speakers who combine expert knowledge in a particular subject with mastery of the spoken word, making them sought-after experts in their respective fields. He is the 77th speaker to ever win this award since it started in 1981.
Winnipeg is the capital and largest city of the province of Manitoba in Canada. Centred on the confluence of the Red and Assiniboine rivers, it is near the longitudinal centre of North America, approximately 110 kilometres (70 mi) north of the Canada–United States border.
David Arnason is a Canadian author and poet who lives in Winnipeg with his partner Mhari Mackintosh.
Patrick Frank Friesen is a Canadian author. He has written many works, from poetry to stage plays. He began his works in 1970, writing books of poetry. This Canadian poet, who was born in Steinbach, Manitoba, studied at the University of Manitoba. While there, he received a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degree and a teaching certificate. After being a resident of Winnipeg for thirty years, Friesen now lives in Victoria, BC and is a teacher of creative writing at the University of Victoria. Friesen often collaborates with dancers, choreographers, composers and musicians. Along with writing poetry, he also writes songs for musicians and texts to Improv Piano. Friesen grew up in a small religious community, and comes from a Mennonite background, but he broke away from that small community physically and spiritually at a young age. His Mennonite upbringing still influences his work such as, “The Shunning,” which is about the persecution of a Mennonite farmer questioning his religion. The winner of Manitoba Book of the Year for his work on “Blasphemer’s Wheel," Friesen was also the runner up in Milton Acorn’s People’s Poetry Awards. In a 2004 interview Friesen has noted that, “Being Mennonite in background had all kinds of effects on [his] content.” In 1997, his work, “A Broken Bowl,” was short listed for the Governor General’s Award.
Thomas William Cochrane is a Canadian musician best known as the frontman for the rock band Red Rider and for his work as a solo singer-songwriter. Cochrane has won eight Juno Awards. He is a member of the Canadian Music Hall of Fame, an officer of the Order of Canada, and has an honorary doctorate from Brandon University. In September 2009 he was inducted onto the Canadian Walk of Fame. Cochrane has also been recognized for his significant charitable work.
Leon Giglio, better known by his stage name Leon Mandrake, was an Italian-Canadian magician, mentalist, illusionist, escapologist, ventriloquist and stunt performer known worldwide as Mandrake the Magician, albeit simultaneously and unrelatedly to the comic strip character Mandrake the Magician.
Gordon Edward Pinsent, CC, FRSC is a Canadian actor, screenwriter, director and playwright. He is known for his roles in numerous productions, including Away from Her, The Rowdyman, John and the Missus, A Gift to Last, Due South, The Red Green Show and Quentin Durgens, M.P. Since 1989, for nearly 30 years, he has served as the voice of Babar the elephant in television and film.
Frederick Ralph Cornelius Penner, is a Canadian children's music performer who gives appearances throughout North America. His television show, Fred Penner's Place, aired on CBC in Canada from 1985–97, and was seen in the United States on the cable channel Nickelodeon from 1989-92.
Rurik (Ric) Nordman was a businessman and politician in Manitoba, Canada.
Columpa C. Bobb is a Canadian photographer, actress, playwright, poet and teacher of Coastal Salish descent. She has been performing, writing plays, and teaching for 20 years.
Sisler High School is the largest high school in the province of Manitoba with over 1900
students. It was built in 1957, and named after William James Sisler. As principal of Strathcona School in the North End of Winnipeg, W.J. Sisler was instrumental in helping new immigrant families adjust. He faced a great challenge in the fact that a majority of the students did not speak English; there were twenty-two countries of origin and eighteen language groups in his student body. In addition, many of his students came from areas where they were deprived of their right to an education. In his book Peaceful Invasion, W.J. Sisler says "Once they understood the value of education that was freely offered to them they took full advantage of all that we could give them". He adapted the education system for his immigrant students, and the provincial government of Manitoba soon officially adopted his method of teaching. Sisler High School today has a large ESL program.
The Weakerthans is a Canadian indie rock band.
John Henry Anderson (1814–1874) was a Scottish professional magician. Anderson is credited with helping bring the art of magic from street performances into theatres and presenting magic performances to entertain and delight the audience.
Greg Frewin is an illusionist and "World Champion of Magic". His awards include First Place at the International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM); The Gold Medal of Excellence, also from the IBM; First Place at the Society of American Magicians' annual magic convention competition; and first place at FISM, the "Olympics of Magic", which were held in Yokohama, Japan in 1994.
John Stephen Hirsch, OC was a Hungarian-Canadian theater director. He was born in Siófok, Hungary to József and Ilona Hirsch, both of whom perished in the Holocaust along with his younger brother István. Hirsch survived after spending most of the Second World War years in Budapest, and came to Canada in 1947 through the War Orphans Project of the Canadian Jewish Congress. Arriving in Winnipeg, Hirsch was taken into the home of Alex (Sasha) and Pauline Shack. He remained close to the Shacks for the rest of his life, and although he lived in New York City and Toronto, maintained strong ties with the city of Winnipeg.
Manitoba Theatre for Young People (MTYP) is a theatre for children and young adults in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada performing at the Canwest Performing Arts Centre in The Forks, Winnipeg. MTYP's annual attendance regularly exceeds 100,000 people per year.
Richard Condie, is a Canadian animator, film maker and musician living and working in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Condie is best known for his 1985 animated short The Big Snit and has won six international awards for Getting Started in 1979.
Laverne M. Lewycky was a New Democratic Party member of the House of Commons of Canada. He was a professor of sociology and communication studies. He served also as an executive assistant and consultant to governments and other organizations by career.
Victor Albert Davies is an award winning Canadian composer, pianist, and conductor, best known for his opera Transit of Venus and The Mennonite Piano Concerto.
David Ben is a Canadian stage magician, sleight of hand artist, illusionist, author, publisher, keynote speaker, magic historian, magic consultant, magic collector and former tax lawyer.
Magicana is a Canadian federally incorporated not-for-profit arts organization dedicated to the study, exploration and advancement of magic as a performing art. Magicana is governed by a volunteer Board of Directors. Julie Eng serves as Magicana’s Executive Director and David Ben as its Artistic Director.