By Joanne Rodgers, Bruce Peninsula Press
Aria Thomas, a Grade 8 student from the Bruce Peninsula District School achieved first place at Legion’s sponsored Public Speaking Competition at the Intermediate school, Legion Zone, District and Provincial Level.
Aria competed over an 8-week period from March to May, taking her from Lion’s Head, to Owen Sound, to Fergus, to Hanover and finally to Stouffville on May 6 to compete against three other finalists to win top honours.
Aria’s 3.5 minute long presentation tells the story of the “History of Witches”. She describes the stigma related to witches through the ages and the frequent prosecution of these women.
Aria was inspired to do research on witches when she landed the role of The Witch in her school play “Into the Woods”. She says in her presentation to the judges “I am super excited to tell you that I recently landed the role of The Witch in our school musical, Into the Woods. I wanted this role so much because I’ve always loved the idea of casting spells, making potions and just being magical.”
Aria says while magic and witches are common in pop culture and “Women are no longer being hung for practicing witchcraft, the negative stigma from these past times remains. Throughout pop culture, films and stories, witches have been portrayed as old, ugly, green and evil. Here’s a fun fact, did you know that the famous book, The Wizard of Oz, was originally banned for portraying a witch as young, beautiful and good? Times have changed a lot since then, so why do you think we still love to hate witches?”
Aria makes the plea in her speech that ”it’s time to show some more compassion to all the healers and innocent women who were tortured and murdered for so-called witchcraft.” She ends her speech by inviting everyone to come see the BPDS play.
After her Hanover presentation, Aria headed back to act in the final performance of the school play, thinking the whole time about her results. As soon as the performance ended her mom informed her that she had won and was moving on to the Provincial level.
She describes the experience as lots of hard work but also a lot of fun. She advises other students interested in taking part in the Public Speaking competition to choose a topic they love. Aria says “you have to recite your presentation so many times, you don’t want to get bored.”
