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Muted muggles: Toronto Wal-Mart associates pledge not to reveal the ending to the last installment of the Harry Potter series, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Herald file photo.Article content
All you Muggles out there will remember that July 21, 2007 marked the release of the Harry Potter series’ final book, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Only minutes after author J.K. Rowling’s seventh and final installment was released in Britain, The Daily Telegraph published a synopsis on its website.
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Here is a story from our files on Calgary’s response to the book hitting the store shelves.
Article contentArticle content The adult edition book jacket for the upcoming book ‘Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.’Article content
Calgarians stage Potter love-in; Thousands line up for latest Calgary Herald Sun Jul 22 2007 Page: C1 / FRONT Section: Books & The Arts Byline: Stephen Hunt, with files from Ruth Myles, Calgary Herald Column: See POTTER, Page C2 Source: Calgary Herald On a hot summer night, a crowd of Harrys, Weasleys, mothers, fathers and a single, lonely Jedi knight travelled to the Stephen Avenue Mall to celebrate the release of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the seventh and final instalment in the series of fantasy novels that made a book the pop culture topic du jour in the heart of summer movie season. Taylor Luna, a blond 17-year-old dressed in black, was among the first Potter fans to receive a copy of the new novel when he swapped a voucher pre-purchased at McNally Robinson’s for a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows shortly after 12:01 a.m., an exchange repeated in bookstores across the city, the country and the world. Taylor’s reaction summed up the general feeling of Potter’s passionate fans, many of whom have been reading the adventures of Harry since they were children, when the first novel in the series, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, was published in 1997. He stood by the table where McNally Robinson reps continued to distribute the book, and screamed as loud, and long as he could, holding aloft the novel like it was the Holy Grail. “I’m just so excited!” said Taylor, who waited in line for more than 12 hours to get his hands on the Deathly Hallows. “I can’t wait. I’m going to read it in the car on the way home.” For one night, Stephen Avenue was transformed into Diagon Alley, a commercial and gathering hub from the novels. There was a sign in a window advertising the Gringotts Wizarding Bank. There were quidditch demonstrations, divination lessons, quality quidditch supplies, acrobats climbing poles, a perforated cow, art for Muggles at the Art Gallery of Calgary, innumerable Harrys, witches, moms, dads . . . and somewhat incongruously, 21-year-old Shawn Trainor, dressed in a swashbuckling Jedi knight outfit from Star Wars. “I don’t have a Harry Potter costume,” Trainor said, almost apologetically, in between posing for photographs and staging mock duels with fans of the boy wizard. For other Potter lovers, the rush to buy the final instalment in the saga was spurred by their desire not to have the plot revealed before they got the chance to discover it themselves. “The biggest thing for me is if I don’t read it fast, it’ll be ruined for me,” said 23-year-old Jeff Levy, a Houston, Texas, native who works in the oil industry. “I’m gonna go home and turn into a hermit. Unplug the Internet, shut off the TV, and crank it out.” “I booked work off just to read it,” said 17-year-old Jesse Horne, who works at Jugo Juice on Kensington Road. “I’m going to read it tonight until about five, then take a nap, then finish it.” The crowd was an unlikely blend of families and20-something Potter fans who grew up with the novels, quite different than the usual Friday night scene at the downtown locale. Despite the wall-to-wall humanity, the police on hand stood to the side, as the countdown to 12:01 wound down. “Everyone’s behaving themselves,” said one officer, who estimated the crowd at somewhere between 1,200 and 2,000. “It’s mainly families. I wish Flames fans were like this.” Upwards of 400 people stayed up late to pick up the title at the Chapters in Sunridge, while waves of Potterphiles boarded late-night C-trains at Chinook station after picking up the book at the Chinook Centre. If braving crowds isn’t your thing, there’s always the Calgary Public Library. There is, however, a bit of a wait: now that the first round of 250 copies has gone out, there are 1,330 people on the wait list. Patrons have also put their names down for the large-print versions and the Deathly Hallows on CD. Randy and Pam Workman were at Stephen Avenue with their nine-year-old son, Douglas, a purple-clad Harry who is attending Harry Potter summer camp in Calgary this week. When asked what he thought of the block party, Douglas said, “I expected lots of Gryffindors, but there’s only Harrys and Weasleys.” His parents said the books by J.K. Rowling were largely responsible for their son’s interest in reading. “It’s the first chapter book that he gets,” father Randy said. For Ellen Bunton, 18, who attended the street fest with Horne and 21-year-old Matt Learoid, the Potter Party marked the end of an era. “We’re kind of the Harry Potter generation,” Bunton said. “We were 11 when Harry Potter was 11. So we grew up with Harry, and now it’s come to an end.” She noticed that her friends had their books. Behind them, a lineup of hundreds of Potter lovers waited patiently for their turn to come. “Anyways,” she said to them. “Want to book it out of here?”
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