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Dreams and nightmares come true at Porter performance

Canadian Idol winner Kalan Porter is presented with a message book put together by Tricia Hiltz at the Heritage Festival Monday. Photo by Tim Dowdall/Special to Baytoday.ca.


Canadian Idol winner Kalan Porter is presented with a message book put together by Tricia Hiltz at the Heritage Festival Monday. Photo by Tim Dowdall/Special to Baytoday.ca.

Monday at Heritage Festival will be a day for North Bay resident Tricia Hiltz to remember.

Although Hiltz missed Kalan Porter’s performance due to heat exhaustion, she was able to meet her favourite artist backstage before the concert.

Hiltz, a member of Porter’s fan club, decided she would make a special gift for him. So, with the help of other fans from Kalanporterforums.com, she put together a book of messages from Porter enthusiasts for the Canadian Idol star.

“I posted a thread on the message board and asked everyone to participate,” Hiltz said.

“Then people emailed me and I gave them my address, and they all mailed their pages to me and I put them all in a book.”

Once Hiltz saw how well the book was coming along, she emailed Porter’s manager and he set up the opportunity for her to present the book to Porter.

“He definitely seemed genuinely impressed with all the effort the book took,” Hiltz said

“I was amazed at how long he took to flip through each page.”

Hiltz said she was able to spend 10 minutes with Porter and found him to be everything she expected, he even gave her a hug and signed autographs for her and her friends.

“It made me really happy to be able to give him something from his fans that he can always keep and treasure,” Hiltz said.

“He was really, really nice and really sweet.”

Hiltz explained that each of the 22 messages in the book explained the appreciation his fans have for his music.

“I wanted to make sure that it wasn't crazy stuff like ‘I love you’ and ‘you're hot, marry me‘,” Hiltz said.

“I know that he had a hard time sometimes with some of his fans doing weird stuff.” She explained.

“He's not really used to that yet because he's only been around for less than a year.”

Whether he’s used to it or not, fans at the Heritage Festival show were certainly up to “weird stuff.”

Although Porter puts on a family friendly show, anxious fans began to use language that makes Billy Talent look like Davy Jones.

Verbal fights broke out between fans when seated concert goers became annoyed with people standing in the way of their view of the stage.

One verbal fight between a middle aged man and a younger woman turned physical, but was broken up by other fans.