It was a three-day festival of Victorian-inspired fantasy and ingenuity. Canada’s first National Steampunk Exhibition, held this past weekend in Markham, Ontario, delivered an elaborate mix of wild gadgetry, exotic dancing, daring sideshow escapes, and mad tea parties. In one hall eccentric scientists gathered to compete in evil laughs while explorers enjoyed a mummy unwrapping in another. There were lessons in fashion and prop-making, chemical etching, and digital painting. You could take in a Victorian séance or partake in an evening of extraordinary gin-tasting. An unconventional convention it most certainly was and hopefully the first of many.

Steampunk is a growing genre in fiction, one that explores a mix of history with fantasy. It takes a knowledge of our modern times and applies it to the Victorian age, a period of great scientific and technological innovation where eccentrics explored the early properties of steam, electricity, locomotion, and clockwork. It exists in novels, music, and paintings, and while other genres of fiction rely on super powers and magical gifts to give their heroes adventures, Steampunk characters devise insane contraptions, creating cellphones, spaceships, and ray-guns out of steam engines, tesla coils, and vacuum tubes.

Alexandre Adam and his CELL Steampunk invention

One of the attendants who delivered a perfect example of this was Alexandre Adam. His elaborate costume includes cables that travel from his wrist to a large wooden box on his back. He describes the invention as The CELL, short for compact electromagnetic linguistic launcher, a kind of cellphone inspired by the telegraph.

Alexandre taps out messages using a Morse Key on his wrist, which travel up the cables along his arm to a stream-powered transmitter/receiver on his back. A clockwork component regulates the frequency of the radio waves being sent out through a large antennae. His prop is spectacular. Peering into the port window on the back, you can see the red ember-like glow of the coils heating up and you’re rewarded with flashes of electricity each time he taps away at the switch on his wrist.

By today’s standards it’s ridiculous, but then that’s part of the appeal of the Steampunk world. It maintains of touch of humour and delight, never quite taking itself too seriously.

Chris Warrilow and his robot Egbert 

“Nothing in Steampunk is ever small”, explains Chris Warrilow, a professional props-maker for the movie and television industry. Dressed as a Royal Engineer, Warrilow contributed a massive steam-powered robot for the exhibition. Too tall to even photograph in one shot, the double Gatling-toting automaton goes by the name “Egbert” and was designed as a costume for the Canadian television series Murdoch Mysteries. It can actually be worn like a costume, but only by someone very skilled in wearing stilts.

Steampunk technology has a very distinctive and ornate look to it, something that attracts many artists and designers, but a common theme is that it can’t just be something that has the right look and feel, it has to move and sound like the real thing too.

Steampunk artist and props-maker Kenny Purchase is a master of sound and motion with his devices. He showcased a remote-controlled weather ray which tilted and panned across the room, lighting up with oscillating beams when fired. A clockwork arm prosthesis he wears on his right arm doubles as a fictional weapon, lighting up with charge coils before letting loose red beams and sounds of intense discharge.

Kenny Purchase and his Tesla Canon 

The large canon he carries in his arms he describes as “Dr. Forge’s Lighting Gun” constantly crackles with the sound of arcing electricity, at the ready he tells me to throwing lightning yards and yards away, either to battle forces unknown or simply to cook dinner.

Both Warrilow and Purchase helped lead a workshop offering tips on building devices, offering insights into creating prototypes first out of paper or sculpted wax and hunting for found items that are already half-way towards looking the part at Value Village, Canadian Tire, Active Surplus, and recycling bins across the city.

Of course if you’re going to adventure in the Victorian Age, you need to look the part. Everyone at this year’s exhibition showed up in costume, with very few exceptions, most of which had either made or bought their specialty wear online. Although there was a Vendor’s Area, the fashion booths focused heavily on tech-themed jewellery rather than clothes proper.

Cecilia K.’s  Charming Charm Jewellery offered a delightful catalog of robots, gears, and TARDIS hanging from earrings, necklaces, and pins. She travelled down to the exhibition from Montreal and, thankfully, continues to sell her charms online.

Cecilia K. and her Charming Charms

Marina Smith, president of the Jules Verne Society in Halifax, had a range of intricate, and most importantly moving, necklaces and pendants on display. Made with watch parts from between 1820 – 1875, each piece feature cogs and wheels that are set in motion when you walk. The idea is that they play the role of kinetic Motion Time pieces and look authentic thanks to intricate ornamentation copied from genuine pieces using a mold castng.

The Jules Verne Society of Halifax's Dimensional Rift Rippers 

I’ve been to more than my share of fairs and conventions, most you can do in just an hour or so, and it’s to the great credit of the organizers of the Canadian National Steampunk Exhibition that you never felt a lack of something to do over the course of three days. A main theatre delivered a constant flow of entertaining acts including clockwork operas, belly-dancers, cabarets, sideshows, and musicians of all types.

My favourite is Professor Elemental, a comedic rapper who dresses in a pith helmet and safari jacket while throwing out rhymes expounding the glory of tea, the need to defend one’s honour in fighting trousers, and falling to the influence of strange elixirs. Flying in from his home in England, he came armed with a pair of royal wedding masks and had two audience members jump on stage to play as “Will and Kate” while re-enacting the marriage with a dance-off.

His writing and characterization is so dead-on and smart, I have to leave you with one of his music videos just to give you a taste. And keep in mind, this is only a drop of the mad tea party that was this past weekend.

For more upcoming Steampunk events, check out SteampunkCanada.ca