Lucas Wilson encourages people to “be the change”

Catherine and Lucas joke about maybe needing to ‘tighten’ the straight-jacket straps. 

Chris Abbott 

Editor

Illusionist Lucas Wilson, holder of four Guinness World Records, might be slowing down his performances a little these days, but he’s still amazing people - young and old - across the province.

Big crowds, smaller crowds, he and his talented assistant Catherine entertain them all with humorous and eye-popping magic tricks and illusions as they did during three shows at the 2025 Simcoe Heritage Friendship Festival on August 2nd.

“Still performing, still out there entertaining folks over the long weekends and short weekends,” said Wilson, after more than a decade of shows. “Not doing as much travelling now… because during the pandemic, everything changed…

“During the pandemic I actually went and got myself a 9 to 5 job - for the first time in my entire life,” he smiled. “It was one of the weirdest, strangest experiences of my life because it’s very different from being an entrepreneur. I also found some joy in it as well because when you work gig to gig, that brings its own anxieties, stress and all the stuff that comes along with that.”

Starting with a contract at Community Living Access, he was offered more of a full-time community relations position after the pandemic.

‘Can I still do magic?’ he remembers asking.

‘Take as much time as you need, you can still do it,’ they said.

‘Absolutely then,’ was his quick response.

“So now I get to balance both, and it’s great. I get to do a job that is very meaningful as well,” said Wilson. “We support adults with developmental disabilities. It’s a wonderful job and having been a part of the community as a whole, weekends like the Friendship Festival and the Norfolk County Fair, so many people that we support, there were already so many people that I had met and seen at shows. So it felt very natural to go into this role of community relations. It’s nice to be able to balance it.”

Saturday afternoon’s first show at the Heritage Friendship Festival community stage concluded with one of his famous straight-jacket escapes. And the small crowd went wild.

“We’re very blessed to be able to do big shows, breaking records at the Sanderson Centre, still travelling across Ontario, but these have always been my favourite places to perform… because I get to see people I know. I get to make new friends in the community and I get to see old community friends.

“There’s something that is so charming about the Friendship Festival, in particular, because it really is homegrown. It’s not this big multi-million-dollar event. It’s literally run by just a handful of volunteers.”

Wilson always invites the audience to ‘meet and greet’ with photo opportunities after his shows. Sometimes he meets people who watched him when they were kids.

“It’s just amazing. I started when I was a little kid, too. I’ve been performing since I was a little, little kid. A lot of folks make it a tradition, and these same families come out year after year and say ‘It’s so great to see you!’ So it’s not Friendship Festival if we don’t do it. I think, like so many of these festivals, it really is a tradition thing… whether it’s the Friendship Festival, the Panorama, the Fair.”

Wilson has taken a more hands-on role in recent years helping with the Simcoe Panorama River of Lights, joining the organizing committee.

“If you want to see a change in the community, go and ask how you can make a change. That’s what I did for Panorama. I called and said, ‘Can I do something?’ And they said, ‘Yes! Yes, yes, yes.’”

During the first year of the pandemic, he helped clean displays, vacuuming, painting and doing refurbs.

“Because I want to see that festival – a very unique festival – continue as well. So I always encourage people, if you want to see change in your community, go be that change. Just go volunteer, because these organizations, these groups, they’ll jump at it.”

Originally from Port Rowan, Wilson now lives in Port Dover.

He still remembers one of his first-ever public performances in the Junior Talent Show at the Langton Fair.

“It took all the years I was there to finally get first in my last year.”

He still has most of those childhood magic props displayed in a cabinet at home.

“I kept all of them!” he laughed. “Some are a little tattered around the corners. I see them and smile because there are so many great memories. Magic has brought so many incredible opportunities for me in my life, I just smile. If you’re not smiling, then what’s the point of doing it?”