For Magic Ben’s next trick: Appearing in finals on Canada’s Got Talent?

“Remember when I said I didn’t fit in?” asks Magic Ben, as Canada’s Got Talent judge Kardinal Offishall picks a card, looks at it and slides it back into the deck.

“No matter how low I got, I always came back on top,” says the magician, as the judge turns over the top card to find it’s the same one he’d just tucked into the deck.

Benjamin Déziel, from Kangiqsujuaq — stage name Magic Ben — wowed Canada’s Got Talent judges with a performance that got him to the semifinals of the show, and it’s still possible he might be picked as a finalist.

The video of his audition has received more than 1.8 million combined views on Youtube so far.

Déziel applied to be a contestant on the show last year, but was not picked.

But he applied again, and got his audition in October. The next month, after his episode aired, he learned he had advanced to the semifinals of the TV talent show.

The whole experience has yet to fully sink in. When Déziel took the stage during his audition, he faced an audience of 5,000 people in the Niagara Falls, Ont., theatre where it was filmed.

Ben Déziel, who performs as Magic Ben, entertains an audience at Kuujjuaq’s Aqpik Jam Music Festival last Aug. 9 at the Kuujjuaq Forum. (Photo by Cedric Gallant)

“I am trying to find the right words to describe this,” he said in an interview. “It was magical.”

“I remember at the auditions when I first entered the stage, I took a few seconds, I closed my eyes and I thought of my people at home, the people of Nunavik.”

That gave him the confidence to perform, and to have fun. The audience gave him a standing ovation when he was done.

Performing for a crowd is Déziel’s bread and butter. But performing at Canada’s Got Talent gave him a new challenge he was not prepared for — TV cameras.

“Now we are on television, magic is completely different,” he says.

In his audition, he had to quickly improvise to make sure the tricks he was doing worked. Thankfully, he’s been doing this since he was a child so it’s not too difficult to adapt.

“What is important to know is that now, the camera is hiding the magic,” he said.

The audition, and the attention it brought him, has changed the way Déziel thinks about his career.

Looking back to when he played at Kuujjuaq’s Aqpik Jam Festival last August, he said, “I was a magician then, but today I am now a performer. I do all sorts of productions, magic shows, hypnosis shows, weddings. I do all sorts.”

As Magic Ben, Déziel is booked to perform all around the United States, Canada and Europe with multiple TV appearances scheduled over the next year.

For now, what matters most is how he does in the semifinals of Canada’s Got Talent.

“I made sure that the magic happened in the judges’ hands during the auditions,” he says, “but in the semifinals I want to make sure that all 5,000 people in the audience can feel that same magic in their hands.”

Magic Ben’s semifinal episode airs May 9 on Citytv and online at citytv.com. To qualify for the finals, he must win in a Canada-wide vote that will be conducted that night on the Citytv website.