Keycon, Winnipeg's Finest Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention

Who
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What
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When
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HOME
   

Con Chairs
   Nancy Fetterman &
   Levi Labelle &
   LeAmber Kensley
   
Art Show Team
   Phynix Caskey &
   Linda Mansfield
   
Dealers Room
   John 'The Bear' Speelman
   
Editor
   Laurie Smith
   
Extravaganzas
   
Gaming
   Piere LeBlond
   
Guest Liaisons
   
Hospitality
   
Hotel Liaison
   Kim May
   
Programming
   Ed Walker &
   Dave Strang
   
Registration
   Skye May
   
Volunteers
   Ed Paradis
   
Website
   Natalie Verge
   
   

The Keystone Province

Manitoba is one of the prairie provinces of Canada, in the central part of the country, bounded on the north by Nunavut, on the northeast by Hudson Bay, on the east by Ontario, on the south by the states of Minnesota and North Dakota, and on the west by Saskatchewan.

Manitoba's unofficial nickname is the Keystone Province. It earned its nickname due to its location in the central, or keystone, position of the "arch" formed by the 10 Canadian provinces. Manitoba from its inception has acted as the "gateway" to the West and as the "key"' to gaining access. Through fur trading times and railway times, Manitoba was the first stop to journeys further west and up north.

Like Pennsylvania in the United States, which is known as the Keystone State, Manitoba's central location and fertile land created a province with two strong economies: industrial-manufacturing and agricultural. But Manitoba also has cultural keystone roles uniting east and west, and our population includes both English and Franco-Manitobans. Each side of Canada thinks of Manitoba as part of the other. The far West thinks of us as east, while in "Central Canada" (Eastern Ontario and Quebec) we are the west. Even if you look at the history of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, you can see the flip flop - sometimes the team has been in the Western division, sometimes in the Eastern division.

Naming Conventions (pun intended)

When naming anything, whether a child, business or even a science fiction and fantasy convention, there are traditions or rules for best practice. First, it has been a long standing practice to incorporate "con" into convention names. Prairiecon is the Brandon gaming convention, Balticon a Baltimore science fiction and fantasy convention, and WisCon the Wisconsin feminist science fiction and fantasy convention (to name a few examples). The other part of the name tends to be an identifier of either place or theme: WindyCon is in Chicago, which is known as the "Windy" city; ValleyCon is in Fargo, which is in the Pembina Valley; while LosCon is in Los Angles, and GateCon is a Stargate convention.

When WINSFA members decided to name our convention they went through a similar process. To prevent using a name already in use, they pulled out copies of Locus and looked them up. Some names passed over were: Unicon (already taken), AggieCon (taken), Pegcon (did not flow off the tongue), Manicon (taken), Mancon (gender bias), Bufflocon (didn't want to be confused with Buffalo New York), Buffcon (not the type of con we were having), and Winnicon (sounds too much like Minicon which was held in Minneapolis).

So it was then decided:

From: The Keystone Province & Naming Conventions (pun intended) as found in "Through the Keyhole, 25 Years of KeyCon Memories", published 2008 for the 25th Anniversary. Pick up your copy at the next Keycon Event!