I previous shared with you all of my adventures from 2018, except my last one.

In December of 2018, I returned to the East Coast, but instead of going to Maryland (Day 1, Day 2, Day 4, Day 5) or New York/New Jersey (Day 3), I went to Montreal this time, where I got to spend two days doing Houdini research in the McGill Union Ballroom, where Houdini delivered a lecture on October 19, 1926, three days before the fateful dressing room encounter with a McGill student.

The McGill Union Ballroom is now part of the McCord Museum, which houses one of the largest collections of Houdini Material held in a public institution.

Much of the collection is view-able online, so I spent my two days going through everything (with the help of the Reference Archivist, Heather McNabb, PhD) that is not available online, which included scrapbooks/binders of challenges, news, letters, programs, magazines, and other memorabilia. It is going to take me some time to digest all of the information I gathered, but it will be worth it.

In the meantime, thought I would do a series of posts (beginning January 6th) that share many of the details (with some new info) about Houdini’s lecture that I found in newspapers (made available by the museum’s curator, Christian Vachon) like the McGill Daily, Montreal Gazette, and Montreal Daily Star.

H A P P Y  N E W  Y E A R ! ! !

Special Thanks to the McCord Museum, Christian Vachon and Heather McNabb. It was a very productive two days and will help out my research greatly.