THUNDER BAY – When Stacie Mistysyn was eight years old, she filled out a yellow leaflet seeking acting talent for a new television show.
Little did she know that 44 years later she’d be sitting on stage at the Canadian Lakehead Exhibition, along with fellow Canadian TV legend Pat Mastroianni, answering questions about the iconic Degrassi franchise.
Mistysyn and Mastroianni were the star attractions of this year’s two-day ThunderCon event, which opened on Saturday, inviting everyone to get their geek on an immerse themselves in the pop-culture world.
“I don’t think any of us could have predicted how long the show would be popular. At the time it was a cool job. It was fun. I think we didn’t really get a sense of it until we started doing publicity trips, and then we would see the fans in different countries. It was kind of a mind-blowing experience,” said the now 52-year-old Mistisyn, who got her start as Lisa Canard in 1979 in the Kids of Degrassi Street and became famous playing Caitlyn Ryan, first on Degrassi Junior High, then on Degrassi High and Degrassi: The Next Generation.
It's been an unbelievable ride, said Mastroianni, who played Joey Jeremiah, the fedora wearing class clown on the show that brought teen pregnancy, drug use and eating disorders to the small screen, in an era when those topics were taboo on shows aimed at teens and pre-teens.
“We didn’t get into this thinking we were going to become part of Canadian pop culture,” he said. “Degrassi was a summer job for many of us and every year that we’d come back for a new season, we were like, ‘Wow, we’re going to get to do this again?
“Then after Degrassi ended, we were like, ‘OK, our fun is over and we’ll go back to our regular live and go to university and have families. But the show has this longevity and the fact that the audience keeps coming back to watch the different variations of DeGrassi, from Next Gen to the Next Class, it just means that a show like Degrassi is needed, so each generation has its own version.”
It was the way the show tackled its topics that allowed it to resonate with its younger audience – while also making it must-see television for entire families, getting the approval of parents despite the touchy nature of the subject matter.
“We don’t talk down to our audience. We allow them to (see) there’s a consequence for the decisions you make and it’s not like an adult comes in and fixes everything. Young people are not dumb, but they’re not experienced. And that, I think, is the reality of life for everybody,” Mastroianni said.
“I think they appreciate the honest discussion we created with our series.”
The writers didn’t sugar-coat anything, Mistysyn added.
“They (also) didn’t avoid topics at the time that were taboo to talk about. All these topics, they may be more complicated now with social media, but they’re sill at the heart of it, the same basic issues that everybody has to deal with.”
ThunderCon co-founder Heather Dickson said they’ve been trying to get the Degrassi franchise to Thunder Bay for several years, and in 2023, the timing happened to work out.
The two actors will be back for another Q&A session on Sunday afternoon, along with other special guests like Larry Hama, C. Andrew Nelson, Alex Zahara and the Klingon Pop Warrior. Star Trek actor Patrick Kwok-Choon, who was scheduled to appear, had to back out due to illness.
