Watch: This B.C. magician wants to show you a few tricks

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The magician asks you to pick a card. Any card.

It’s the two of clubs. You put it back in the deck. He shuffles the cards and then turns over the eight of clubs and puts it face down in your palm.

“Don’t tell me if it’s right or wrong,” he says.

For the briefest instant you think you may have him tricked, but of course when he asks you to turn over the card it’s now the two of clubs.

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Paul Romhany sees the resulting smiles of two spectators, hears their laughter.

It’s what he loves about magic.

“What I get out of it is seeing the audience’s reaction the first time they’ve seen a trick,” he said on Friday at a Delbrook Village cafe a short walk from his North Vancouver home. “You make them feel childlike. You’re watching people smile. It’s not about fooling people, it’s about making somebody feel good.

“Their sense of wonder, it’s what keeps me young.”

The audience could be school children or South American orphans, seniors in a care home or hospital patients, the royal family in Monaco, or a couple of journalists on a coffee shop patio. Every magic trick seems new to him, even as Romhany performs it for the 100,000th time.

Last month, Romhany was honoured by the Academy of Magical Arts at what amounts to the Oscars of the magic world, receiving a Literary and Media Fellowship for his magic magazine Vanish.

It’s a 76-page glossy that promotes young magicians worldwide. The June edition (No. 119) includes how-to drawings to build a door and frame for an act that involves the magician suddenly appearing after the doorbell rings and the door opened again.

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WATCH: Paul Romhany has a few tricks up his sleeve

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The 55-year-old Romhany began publishing Vanish 13 years ago when his son Jon-Paul was born and the new father didn’t want to travel much anymore.

He has written more books (maybe 60) and performed in more countries (more than 125) than he can remember. At any rate, he has lost count.

Burma, as Myanmar was then called, was like going back in time because of how isolated the country is.

In Fiji, after Romhany turned a small stone into a few coins of the local currency for a youngster who had knocked on his hotel-room door, another child approached with stone the size of a grapefruit. Smart kid, figuring more rock, more cash.

In Dubei, Romhany performed in front of an auditorium audience of women only, who were veiled and passive at the beginning, but mostly unveiled and whooping by show’s end.

There was the time airport security in Columbia made him perform a trick to prove the item he was carrying was a magic prop and not a bomb.

“I had machine guns trained on me.”

Then there was the year that airlines lost his luggage 14 times.

“Not my favourite disappearing act,” he said. He would make do with whatever items were nearby, and soon made sure he always included some magic gear in his carry-on.

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Born in New Zealand, Romhany fell in love with magic at eight years of age after watching The Circus, a 1928 Charlie Chaplin film. He also fell in love with the silent-film star’s character, and often performs his magic while impersonating Chaplin.

“From then on, I knew what I wanted to do, which my parents weren’t too happy about,” he said. “I tell people I wasted the first eight years of my life.”

Romhany became a teacher, but by 21 was making more money on stage than in the classroom. He became a full-time professional magician, performing on cruise ships, for private events, at trade shows doing magic tricks with sponsors’ products.

He still performs, still travels a bit, but most of his devotion to the craft now involves creating and selling magic tricks, acting as an agent for up-and-coming magicians, and publishing his magazine and books.

“The young magicians today are phenomenal,” he said, pointing at an article about 11-year-old Rachel Ling Gordon in his magazine.

Indeed, magic had traditionally been a man’s game, but Romhany features a female magician on the front or back cover of every issue of Vanish.

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“These days, you can turn on America’s Got Talent or Penn and Teller, for example, and see the face of magic is changing, becoming much younger.

“Magicians on YouTube and social media have 80 million followers. Even (David) Copperfield never had that on television.”

gordmcintyre@postmedia.com

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