Blades of Glory is an entertainment & educational history company that tries to ignite a spark of curiosity in history for the young and old alike. The ROM did it for me when I was 3 years old, seeing the many suits of armour behind glass.
History, I found, was so boring in school – elementary & secondary. When I decided that Blades of Glory was going teach history in schools, the one thing I wanted to do was make history fun because I found History was taught in a very dry manner. In order to do that, we brought in costumes, real artefacts & museum-quality reproductions, and we dressed up students in costumes as they acted out historical skits. Montse helped immensely in this process and we also implemented music and Lighting in the teaching process that made such an impact on students and their understanding of History.
When we opened our theme park it was, and is, based on attention span and follows the Ontario curriculum for the History unit plus the students get to watch a medieval Knight tournament. The Knights they cheer for are the same history teachers that were teaching at the different sections just an hour earlier.
When I started the Campbellford Scottish & Medieval Festival, I was trying to start a fun festival… because everything goes better with Knights!
That festival helped create Blades of Glory and our sword fighting style: armoured combat in front of an audience. Competition mixed with showmanship to entertain and educate people. Almost every other sword fighting style is participant driven – for the sword fighting student. Ours also takes into consideration the general public and our ability to entertain a crowd and to mix in interesting Medieval facts – learn history in a passive and fun way. All our shows have the same philosophy. We are still around after 25 years.
Our fighters are men, women, and youth that all share the same passion for the sport of sword fighting and the desire to entertain and educate people in ancient history. Come to one of our shows and be entertained, or you are more than welcome to come and join our BOG family.
