Montréal International Fireworks Competition Reports

Hands Fireworks, is technically Canada’s oldest pyrotechnics company (founded in 1873 by William Hand) and last competed in Montreal at the inaugural competition in 1985. They returned for the 35th anniversary edition of the competition where they are performed the out-of-competition opening show. Finally, after 38 years, they’re back as full competitors.

It’s interesting to read what George Plimpton wrote in his seminal book “Fireworks” about Canadian fireworks in general and Hands in particular.

The structure of Hands is somewhat complicated now as there is a relationship between Hands, Lidu (Chinese manufacturer), and GFA (display operator). I met with Guillaume Chartier who has an equity interest in both Hands and GFA, as does Bob Deng, who also has a stake in Lidu. To make a complex story simple, Guillaume stated that Hands is an importer and distributer whilst GFA is a display operator, though Hands does do some displays in locales outside of the range of GFA. Hands’ manufacturing side (they used to have a factory in Papineauville in Quebec), became HFI and they still manufacture some speciality products, though their CEO, John Witherspoon, retired recently. Guillaume said he was proud to use some Canadian-made HFI products in his show and that we would “know which they are”.

Guillaume told me that the soundtrack was created through a brainstorming process – with everyone in the company contributing to a list of about 150-200 tracks. He said it was very important to him to fully represent the founders of Canada, so there are an equal number of songs in French and English as well as one in Inuktitut for a final sountrack of 14 pieces – all by Canadian artists. Simon David, a designer from GFA, also did the design of two of the songs and Guillaume left it as a challenge to the audience to work out which ones they are! Guillaume also noted that it was essential to include music from the First Nations for a fireworks show that represents Canada as they “are part of our history”.

The name of the theme is “150 years of Passion” but Guillaume emphasized that it’s really passions, plural. Guillaume listed several, but, of course, the most important one is his passion for fireworks, which he’s had as a child and subsequently he got his professional licence when he was 18 years old. Passion for music is important and he noted that co-designer Simon helped with this as he’s quite a bit younger than Guillaume. With his involvement in the importation of fireworks, Guillaume has spent quite a significant amount of time in China and he said his experience of watching displays in Asia has strongly influenced his design style. The design of the show took many months of his time, though he was working his daytime job at the same time. His aim is for the public to feel the same passions and emotions as he and the rest of the team had put into the display.

From a technical point of view, the majority of products are from Lidu in China, though there will be both Vicente Caballer and Igual from Spain as well as Mystical and Dancing Fireworks from China as well as the aforementioned Canadian-made HFI products. Full use will be made of all five ramps, with 17 positions on ramp 3, positions with 100mm mines on ramp 4 and five positions on ramp 5 to give greater depth. Guillaume had prepared special visual aids for the setup crew that are colour-coded to ensure everything is assembled and positioned correctly. There will be around 1200 one-shots and a total cue-count of around 4200. Guillaume said there were more than 40 large calibre shells (200mm and up) including three 300mm shells from Igual. The display is being fired using PyroDigital on ramps 1 and two and FireOne for the other three ramps. Finale3D was used for the show design and visualization. I was also happy to hear there will be large nautical shells and that the test went well without causing any issues with ramp 5.