Night Of A Lifetime For Parham Kids

Jeff Green | Oct 30, 2013

Reba McEntire may have been the headliner at the big country music show at the K-Rock Centre in Kingston on Sunday, but for Emily and Ben Baillargeon of Parham the real treat was the opening act, Canadian County star Gord Bamford. And now Gord Bamford is a fan of Emily and Ben.

Ben and Emily's mother. Melissa Hannah, missed the first run of tickets for the hotly anticipated show, and only found out on Friday afternoon (October 25) that another block of tickets had come available. She snapped them up and the family was starting to enjoy the show from seats near where Gord Bamford's stage crew were standing, when one of the crew members approached Melissa.

“He asked me if my son would go up on stage when Gord sang one of his songs, which is about his [Gord's] son. Ben is shy, so he said no. But then Ben said that he would go up if Emily went with him. The crew member said that would be fine. When the time came it looked like Ben might back out of it, but then he said he was scared but he was going to go up anyway.”

Emily and Ben were on stage while Gord Bamford sang a song about his own kids, who also happen to be a boy and a girl similar in age to Ben and Emily, who are 8 and 10 respectively and go to Granite Ridge Public School. Ben was pretty shy on stage but Gord Bamford took a shine to Ben and Emily, even though Ben said he was not interested in baseball when he was offered a baseball glove as a gift.

In the end both children were given signed guitars and cowboy boots.

“He was really generous, and really nice to them. It was the last show in a month-long run and he said he was really looking forward to seeing his own kids again so he was very interested in Ben and Emily,” said Melissa.

After the show Melissa, Bob, Ben and Emily spent the night in Kingston, and overnight and the next day they were stopped by people who had seen or heard about the show.

“Everyone seemed to recognize the kids and kept talking about how great they had been,” said Melissa.

By Tuesday the kids were back at school and everything slowly returned to normal, but they will remember their brush with fame for quite a while.