B.C. woman homes to inspire creativity, kindness with 'Wizard of Oz' Halloween display

VICTORIA, B.C. -

It was almost like Deborah Briggs had been working in black and white.

“It was just a mundane job,” Deborah says. “The doldrums.”

There was certainly no opportunity for creativity. Until —like Dorothy waking up in the world of Oz — Deborah retired.

“It’s been just liberating,” Deborah says.

But instead of following a yellow brick road, the empty nester started turning one of her kid’s old rooms into a new space for her previously unexpressed creativity.

“It’s a joy to be able to do that,” Deborah says.

When she’s not making up for lost time by transforming ordinary wool into extraordinary animals,

Deborah’s turning thrift store finds and custom creations into one-of-a-kind Halloween displays.

“All the girls in the front,” Deborah says, pointing to a line up of green-costumed characters. “They are made from shower curtains and bath towels.”

There’s also a large structure with a door that was re-purposed after a neighbour was set to discard it during a recent renovation.

“It’s now the house that landed on the witch,” Deborah says before adjusting a pair of legs sticking out from under the door frame.

And it’s not just any witch — as you’ve likely already guessed — it’s the Wicked Witch of the East.

“It doesn’t have to be blood and guts and gore,” says Deborah, who hopes young families will wander around her brightly-coloured interactive displays. “Everything is a story for me.”

And the story that Deborah is telling in her front yard this Halloween, on Victoria’s Linden Avenue, is about a girl named Dorothy with a dog called Toto, who gets sucked up by a cyclone, dropped down in a magical world, and befriend by a trio of now-classic characters.

“Here we have the Tin Man. This is the Lion,” Deborah says, pointing to a pair of skeletons —one painted silver, the other wearing a lion’s hat — before fixing the straw on another skeleton dressed as the Scarecrow.

Sometimes her now-adult kids return home to dress up in the character’s costumes too.

Deborah says she spent a year designing the displays and constructing the elements. Hundreds of visitors are showing their gratitude by donating thousands of dollars to local charities.

“The world is a very precarious place right now,” Deborah says. “People need to smile a bit more and they need some joy.”

And if we can connect with our unique creativity, and use it to help out others, Deborah says we just might find that instead of longing to be somewhere over the rainbow, we’re celebrating that there’s no place like home.