Carol Baldwin
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
Wakaw Recorder
The fourth annual Canada West Performing Arts Festival was held at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon from July 24 to 26.
Stefan Jones won the Canada West 17 and under – Spoken Word competition, performing a “concert group,” a combination of various speech arts surrounding a common theme. The theme of the multiple pieces he performed is “Seeing Things.”
The group included Stephen Dobyns’ poem “Spiritual Chickens”; Act 2, Scene I of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth”; and “Rhinoceros”, a play by playwright Eugène Ionesco, written in 1959.
Born in Wales, Jones emigrated to Canada with his family at the ripe old age of nine months, and has been involved in theatre groups like the Saskatoon Summer Players and the Barn Playhouse and in 2024 performed in Music for the ‘Gut’, a concert presented yearly by the Saskatoon & District Lions Clubs to raise funds and awareness for Crohn’s and Colitis Canada.
Jones, whose mother has been his main coach since he was young, could not say for certain whether he would be participating in the Sask Valley Music Festival again in 2026, since he will be in Grade 12 and at this point is not certain of the workload that he will be carrying. However, he does intend to spend the school year reaching out and making connections in preparation for a move to Vancouver following high school.
He appreciated the workshop and adjudication he received at the Canada West festival, instructing him in techniques he had never implemented and one that he was utilizing without even realizing. Jones has one more year in high school, which he is completing at RJC High School in Rosthern. He has had an acting part in the last two annual musicals the school has presented and says he looks forward to learning what musical they will be performing this school year. This past year, he held the lead role in “Fiddler on the Roof” as Tevye, a poor Jewish milkman with five daughters and a wife in czarist Russia.
Judging the Speech Arts and Drama was Jessica Watson, a Canadian actor, writer, and educator. Born and raised in Acton, ON, Jessica fell into acting in middle school while performing in school musicals and working with local theatre companies and improv troupes. She holds a master’s degree in acting from LAMDA, the London Academy of Music & Dramatic Art, where she studied classical theatre, stage combat, dialects, clown, and many other disciplines.
Professionally, Jessica works mainly in film and TV, most notably as the recurring character Susanna Augustine in Hallmark’s Canadian Screen Award-winning series “The Way Home.” She has performed on stages across Canada and the UK, and coaches youth actors in Toronto’s professional acting industry. When not focused on performance, Jessica develops and edits screenplays with writers across Canada, and she is currently in development for her first feature screenplay.
