City of Toronto's Annual Street Festival - July 4-6, 2003

Weekend Review

From the 4th to the 6th of July 2003, the City of Toronto hosted their annual Street Festival and AEMMA was one of the many participants of the festival.

Click the above for a short video clip of the armoured judicial duel after the fact, pulled together by Peter Yu

AEMMA had setup an area on Yonge Street, just north of St. Clair Ave. which included the medieval pavilions, banners, fighting lists, weapons rack, etc. A number of 14^th century armoured and unarmoured duels were held on the Saturday and Sunday of the weekend's event. The weekend included regular training on the Sunday, of which the spectators found extremely interesting. The training included unarmoured dagger and longsword.

To view the original web page from the City of Toronto's website promoting this event, click here.

For more information on the Academy's 14th century armoured judicial duels demonstrations and possibly hosting
duels in your area, click here.

See below for images which captures the essence of the weekend. Click on any image for a larger view of the same. Hit your browser's "back" button to come back to this page to view more images. The images are extracts from digital video, and therefore, the resolution is somewhat low. Thanks goes to , our long time video and photo chronicler.

14th Century Armoured Duel #1
These images depict Brian and Murph squaring off with pollaxe. The third image shows spear fighting followed by longsword in the fourth.
Continuing with longsword, Brian and Murph demonstrate some 1/2-sword techniques. The last three images depict dagger fighting. At the conclusion, Brian bested Murph.
14th Century Armoured Duel #2
Here David and Kel square off the duel beginning with pollaxe. The second image shows a well place blow to David's neck by Kel with his pollaxe. The duel continues onto longsword. The longsword bout is fairly intense, as you can see the blunted steel sword bend under the force of the close-quarters combat.
The bout concludes with armoured dagger and Kel is vanquished by David in the end with a dagger to the back of the head. In the third image, David "hams" it up for the spectators of his victory, and Kel promptly hoofs David in the rear in the fourth image.
14th Century Armoured Duel #3
The images depict the beginning of the duel between Brian and David, starting with spear, followed by pollaxe. The last pair depict Brian taking a fall, however as shown in the last image on the right, he was able to roll back onto his feet as depicted in the next pair of images below left.
The first pair depict the completion of Brian's "roll", however, in the end, he is vanquished by David.
14th Century Armoured Duel #4
The images depict the beginning of the duel between Kelly and Murph, beginning with the spear. This is followed by a pair of images depicting pollaxe, concluding with an image depicting longsword on the right.
Continuing with the duel, 1/2-sword techniques become evident once again. The duel concludes with armoured dagger with Murph vanuqished by Kel.
General Photos
Here's Brian conducting a duel as herald, reading the "charges" to the spectators. The second image, is Brian preparing to fight in a duel later that day. The third image is David in a restaurant at lunch obviously throwing his weight around, followed by him taking a stroll on Yonge Street armed with a spear.
Various images of the event, including the banner which indicates our sponsor of this event, the Canadian government. Other images include some unarmoured training, and Frank wearing a mail coif.
Here, a sequence of images depicting the procession which occurs at the beginning of each duel. This is based on historical accounts and images of the period. The coffins or "beirs" indicates the seriousness of these ancient duels.
Here is Phil and Mary. Phil is a long time AEMMA scholler, and who offered his services as herald for a number of duels. This is followed by a pair of damsels who were the centre of the "charges" laid for the duels. The 3rd image is that of Kelly, followed by Kelly and David having a conversation with the local police.

Some images of volunteers who helped to make the event a successful one, beginning with our videographer/chronicler Peter, Luis, Brian, Lilith and Miguel.
More images of volunteers who helped to make the event a successful one, beginning with David, John, Frank and Matt. The last image is a photo experiment conducted by Peter with an attempt to create an "effigy" like portrait of David's harness.