‘I’m doing what I love’: Children’s entertainer brings bag of tricks to Rankin festival

A seven-year-old approached 75-year-old Al Simmons outside the Rankin Inlet community hall. The boy didn’t say anything, he was just curiously looking at the old brown tailcoat that Simmons was wearing, along with a clip-on bow tie and a red boutonniere.

So Simmons did something he felt like he had to do – he started flapping the tails of his tailcoat and walking in circles as if he was trying to fly off the ground.

“Isn’t that cool?” he asked the boy. The boy shook his head.

“Okay then,” Simmons said and masterfully removed his thumb and put it back on. Nothing.

Finally, Simmons made his red boutonniere jump off and back on his suit with a thin silver string attached to it.

The boy started smiling and gave the nod of approval without saying anything.

“I wonder what he was thinking,” Simmons said afterwards, adding that he felt he had to try to cheer him up.

Simmons is a kids entertainer based in Winnipeg, Man., who says he always treats children like equals. He was in Rankin Inlet with his wife Barbara Simmons from Aug. 2 to Aug. 5, hosting and performing at the Jammin’ on the Bay music festival alongside KISS, Elvis Presley and the Beatles impersonators.

“Looks like Paul McCartney had a little accident here,” Simmons said after stepping in a puddle of spilled water on the stage after the Beatles tribute.

“But don’t worry, global warming is on our side.”

Simmons became well-known thanks to his endless supply of wacky hats: a duck-shaped hat, fish-shaped hat, water-shooting hat, a twirling hat for drying socks and many more.

Overall, he brought more than 15o kilograms of hats and other props to the Kivalliq, all of which were made by him and Barbara.

Barbara said she grew up in a German family where they rarely joked. So she does the bookkeeping in the family and also plays the role of a “joke guinea pig.” Simmons would often test his jokes over the dinner table to see if she would laugh.

“If I laugh – everybody is gonna laugh,” she said.

But northern communities can be challenging in that regard for Al, Barbara said.

“The kids are different here than in the south. They are more quiet; it can be difficult for him to get them engaged and participate,” said Barbara, who sat through dozens of her husband’s performances over more than five decades.

Simmons started his career performing for adults at Winnipeg bars in 1970s.

He was singing Buddy Holly songs in a rock band.

“The audience absolutely hated me,” he said.

“I kept some of the request notes. There was quite a bit of swearing.”

So one week he came to the show with his father’s vast collection of hats: old fedoras, cowboy hats, prison caps, old-fashioned women’s hats and more.

“When you put on a hat, you don’t even need a stage. You are on the stage,” Simmons said.

The audience accepted him. So the following week Simmons did his performance in a hula dress and coconut brassiere with tassels that he could swing in different directions.

“And of course, the crowd loved it,” he said.

He then invented his very first prop, an exploding toilet.

The boom from the toilet would make a finale of a very “rockin’ song.”

A few years later — past the hula dress and detonating toilet phase — Simmons and the band were invited to perform in a school in Churchill, Man.

“Confidentially, I think the teacher just really liked the bass player,” he said.

“It’s always the bass player.”

Al would do a similar style of goofy entertainment he did at the bars. He would sing Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer in July, dressed as a reindeer.

“We didn’t change anything and the kids it loved too,” he said.

He became a kids entertainer who would later write and perform songs for Canadian Sesame Street and perform for 55 years all over and outside Canada with his “crazy” hats and props that can all be tracked back the that first exploding toilet.

And he said he plans to continue doing it for as long as he can.

“I don’t see the point in retiring,” Simmons said.

“Retire from what? I am doing what I love.”