Some Classification Talks are informative. Arkady Spivak’s was a full performance. Introduced by Arlette Utton, who described him as intelligent, funny, and daring, Arkady arrived at the podium with a story that spans continents, cultures, and at least one very lucrative wallet business.
Born in 1975 to Russian Jewish parents in the Soviet Union, Arkady lost his father to cancer when he was five. In typical Arkady fashion, he responded by scheduling an appointment with a neighbouring family and proposing that their father become his stepfather. The man was already married. Arkady was undeterred. He spent much of his childhood backstage at his mother’s theatre, started his own theatre company at twelve, and toured orphanages. When Gorbachev allowed travel in the late 1980s, the family visited Canada, and his mother filed emigration papers the moment they returned. There was a brief stop in Italy, where Arkady cleaned squid, offered translation services, and sold handmade magic wallets, a venture that became considerably more profitable when he added naked lady stickers. He regrets not seeing it through to this day.
The family eventually settled in North York, where Arkady attended Glendon College to study French, got distracted by a theatre course, and ended up needing a job at the end of the school year. The only opportunity was at Gryphon Theatre in Barrie. He found a screwdriver to get the ignition working on his old Mazda, drove to Barrie, and never left. Twenty-five years later, he is the Artistic Director of Talk is Free Theatre, a Globe and Mail Arts Hero, and the recipient of Barrie’s inaugural Arts Award. PP Brian Galbraith won the arm-wrestling competition to thank Arkady for his talk.