"Major Magic": A Salvation Army Officer's Unique Ministry

What started as a fun hobby for Captain Matthew Trottier has become a meaningful ministry as he uses his magical talents to share the gospel message. As "Major Magic," Captain Matt proves that anything can be used for God’s glory—even a rabbit in a hat. 

Major Magic will be performing at Oakville Community Church's Fall Family Carnival this Saturday, September 13, 2025. Visit their Facebook page for more information: Facebook Page

Transcript

Kristin Ostensen

This is the Salvationist podcast. I’m Kristin Ostensen. At this time of year, our Salvation Army churches are getting ready to kick off their fall programming, and are holding events like rally day to welcome everyone back after the summer. Oakville Community Church in Ontario is no exception. The church is hosting its annual carnival this Saturday, which will feature a very special guest—a magician known as Major Magic, also known as corps officer, Captain Matthew Trottier. As an officer, Captain Matt has been using this special talent to reach people with the gospel and build bridges with the community, proving that anything can be used for God’s glory—even a rabbit in a hat.

Hi, Captain Matt, and welcome to the Salvationist podcast. 

Matt Trottier  

Hi, glad to be here. 

Kristin Ostensen  

Yes. Thanks so much for coming. I think this shall be a very interesting and, dare I even say, magical conversation. So thanks so much. Looking forward to chatting. So to start off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came to be a Salvation Army officer?

Matt Trottier

Oh, yeah, I'd say it's a long story. I think once you get to a certain seniority, most stories become long. [laughs]

Kristin Ostensen

You're not wrong, yeah.

Matt Trottier

[laughs] But I was a youth pastor for about four different denominations over a 20-year span. Eight of those years was with The Salvation Army in Ajax, and I sat with my officer, my corps officer, Jason Sabourin, and he asked me about my five-year plan as a career youth pastor, I could pull out a five-year plan and explain it all to you in 30 seconds. It was easy for me, but that one time, I was stymied, and I said to him, I think we're going to go on the mission field. And he said, Oh, well, why don't you just become an officer? I'd been asked to become an officer before, but this time, it kind of hit differently. So I brought that home, and through a series of confirmations and prayer and, you know, checking in on each other, my wife and I, we ultimately applied to become candidates and then became cadets, and here we are, second-career officers. And, yeah, we're in Oakville now. 

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah, that's wonderful. And of course, you've been doing magic a long time as well. So can you tell me when you first encountered magic and what was your reaction to it? 

Matt Trottier  

The first time I encountered magic was when I was in Cub Scouts. One of the kids in Cubs did magic, and I thought that was brilliant, like everybody's seen Doug Henning and all those guys on TV, the famous magicians. But that was the first time I saw it up close, and I thought that was really cool, and it kind of laid dormant for a while, until after I got married, much to my wife's chagrin, and wanted to buy magic tricks and learn about magic and all this sort of thing. So when I tell when I tell friends, college friends, and people who've known me for a while that I do magic tricks. They say that, yeah, that fits—Matt Trottier, yeah.

Kristin Ostensen

So, what led you to do that, then, if it had been dormant for all those years? What was the spark that led you back?

Matt Trottier

Really, it's a curiosity, magic. Magic is a feat of engineering when you get down to it, because, you know, I think I can probably let the cat out of the bag—there's no such thing as magic. 

Kristin Ostensen

Oh no! 

Matt Trottier

Yeah, I'm really not making those coins disappear. They are just going somewhere where I'm not going to let you know. It's the engineering, it's the puzzle, it's the creativity of it. If I showed you 10 magic tricks, each one of them has something really unique about it: how it works, how it maneuvers, how you maneuver it. And I find that fascinating. I'm also a woodworker, and so I like thinking about these things as puzzles. Trying to think, mid build, how am I going to finish this? Or how is this going to work best? And magic is part and parcel with that. I've actually built a number of my magic tricks. 

Kristin Ostensen

Oh, cool. 

Matt Trottier

Yeah, it's kind of cool—substitution trunks and all that stuff, if that means to anything to anybody listening. And it's a lot of fun. And I think what I like most about it is the joy that people express when they see something that they find interesting. You know, their eyes light up. Or if I show—especially kids, you know, they're face value. I show them a magic trick, and if they're amazed, you're going to hear about it—like, it's literally a gasp. And I just, I love it.

Kristin Ostensen

Yes, that's amazing. I mean, who of us haven't been to, you know, a busker fest or something like that, and been totally astounded? Like, “I know magic isn't real. But, like, how did he do that?”

Matt Trottier

“That was crazy.” Yeah, I get it, yeah.

Kristin Ostensen

And so, from that initial, you know, purchasing of the magic kit, how did you kind of develop as a magician? And then at what point did you go, “Hey, wait a minute. Maybe I could use this for ministry”?

Matt Trottier

Well, you know, I kind of, I guess, like everybody else, I kind of toyed with it for a while. You know, it's like music or any form of art. You practise it, you discover it, you investigate, you work with it, and you know, a couple of church talent shows and on and on. But I think I really discovered it as a ministry, it probably was at training college. There was a situation in Winnipeg when the training college was there—across the street on Vaughn Street, where the training college was—was a YMCA, where they had daycare. And one day, the daycare flooded and the kids had nowhere to go, so we invited them over to the training college. So all the kids are now in the training college and going crazy because they're bored, because training college is boring for kids, right? And so, my wife and I saw it as an opportunity. I had a few magic tricks because we were going to do cadet commissioning. It was close to that time of year. And so I pulled my magic tricks together and got everybody into the chapel, and we gave them a half hour magic show, and the kids were excited, and we impressed our training officers, and on and on and on, right. But, you know, I think that's where it just kind of triggered, everything kind of settled in the right place at that point.

Kristin Ostensen

And then, I want to know, how did you come up with the name Major Magic? Because that is pretty clever. [laughs]

Matt Trottier

Well, it depends who you are. If you're a Salvationist, yeah, it's really clever. If you're not, it's like—Major Magic? I was billed at one event—wasn't billed as a person, but more of a thing. “And we will have major magic.” I thought, Well, OK, that's almost there. That could be misunderstood, though. They're thinking a big magic show or what are they, what could be thought of? But it's kind of tongue-in-cheek, you know, because as a cadet, I called myself Major Magic, and I would always say, “I give myself a field promotion whenever I do magic tricks.” And I haven't gotten a real chuckle. You're really the first person other than my wife to laugh at this. But I think it's funny, you know, because you know, all the army talk in The Salvation Army—all the ranks and all that stuff that we just casually use, just calling myself Major Magic. A friend of mine said that he'd like to be my magic assistant, and call himself Brigadier Bedazzled.

Kristin Ostensen

I love it, let's do it, honestly. 

Matt Trottier  

That's right. 

Kristin Ostensen

This is a perfect duo in the making.

Matt Trottier

Shout out to Andrew Cherry there. 

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah—nice. Well, you started with this really cool opportunity with the daycare, and then how did it kind of go from there, and then sort of leading up to today? But, yeah, how did it develop from there?

Matt Trottier

How did it develop? You know, it just kind of came together. You know, one of the things that Commissioner Floyd Tidd said, when he was doing great work, he said he wants all the officers and all the mission partners to use the gifts that they have, use the skills that they have in ministry. And that challenged me, because up until then, I kind of held it as a hobby kind of thing, right? Like, it's just for me, it's me and my friends, or I want to do little, you know, free shows somewhere with kids, or whatever. But that's when it just hit—you know, this could be a real ministry. This could be an opportunity to share the gospel with children and their families together, because you're not going to see a public magic show with only children. Their parents are going to be there, or cousins or siblings or aunts or uncles. And have an opportunity to share the gospel—and I think it is very important to say, share the gospel in a non-forceful way. I think gospel magic gets kind of a bad rap, because too often gospel magicians are forcing a message inside a magic trick where it doesn't really fit.

Kristin Ostensen  

Yeah—so how do you do that? Make it feel organic. 

Matt Trottier

Well, you wait. You wait for the right opportunity, the right trick. You know, you put together your—it's like a band. You put together your set list, and make sure that the tricks that can help you relay the message are embedded in that set list. One of my favourite tricks is something called a dream bag. And it was, I want to say it was one of the first tricks that I invested in. It was, you know, more than just a $5 trick. About 30 years ago, I paid $80 for it, which was a substantial amount for us. We didn't have a whole lot of money. But I brought this trick home, and my wife shook her head—but it's beautiful. It's beautiful. It's a paper bag, and you show the paper bag empty, and then, you know, the magician waves their hand and reaches in and pulls out a silk scarf—in this case, would be yellow—and then goes back and it goes back in and pulls out a box with—what do you call the, what's the Japanese art of folding things? 

Kristin Ostensen  

Oh, origami. 

Matt Trottier

Origami, there we go. With origami flowers inside this clear plastic box. And it's just gorgeous. It happens three times, red and blue. But each time you're showing the bag empty. It's a really good trick to relay the gospel. You might feel like you're empty. You might feel like you're running on fumes. You've got nothing left, but if you trust in God, he can fill you. He will help you to soar like eagles. You know, young people will be able to run and not grow weary. Whatever you want to add in there. God can help you when you're feeling empty and lonely. It's not forceful in that situation, because you're showing an empty bag, and then you're showing the miracle of—eventually these plastic boxes with origami flowers stack up as high as the bag is, and it shows that the bag, though it looked empty, was actually completely full and overflowing with the scarves, you know. So there's a message there. And so you look for those instead of trying to cram something in and make it feel artificial. So the art of gospel magic is to draw the folks in, help them to let their guard down, help them to enjoy themselves, and then share from your heart, and even if that's just one or two tricks in a set where you're doing six different tricks, then that's where it hits. The reality of it all is that usually the kids won't remember what you say, unless the Holy Spirit's involved—you know, they're not going to remember what you say, or what you taught them; they're going to remember that they had a good time. They're going to remember, Oh, I remember Major Magic. He was a lot of fun. He had that giant wand. He had that magic emergency, which is one of my routines, and the next time I'm in the community, they come out and see me. And I've had that happen over and over again. The kids come up after a show and say, you know, I saw you over at Rib Fest. I saw you last year at the carnival. I saw you at—and they come back to see it again, and they're going to hear about God's love again. And so it's more than an opportunity, it's a privilege, right, to be able to share it in such a joyful way.

Kristin Ostensen

Yeah. Oh, and that sounds just amazing. I love that you actually shared one of the tricks and how you blend that together. It's really moving, and you're absolutely right—these kinds of opportunities, when people are open, people are having fun, and people remember. And you mentioned doing Rib Fest, doing carnival, yeah. Can you tell me a bit more about how you're using magic in your ministry today in Oakville?

Matt Trottier 

Well, you know, I jumped in with the local Rotary group and trying to network and let people know that, you know, the Army is here. We're ready to work. And they’re also the particular Rotary group in Oakville that operates Rib Fest. And so, the first year they listed off the things that they had to spend money on. And one of them was a magician. And I said, You know what? I'll do that. I'll take that, and I'll do it as a donation to Rotary, I don't have to do it for money, and so I do it for free. And I hope the magician that they used to hire doesn't hear this. But you know this—it's hard out here for a magician, you know? So this is the second year that I've done Rib Fest. Yeah, second year I've done Rib Fest. And unfortunately, the weather has been horrid both years. This past year, it was 40 degree heat plus humidity. It was insane. But I got to do three shows, three shows out of the four, which was great. And carnival, you know, really, I just make my own show. I make my own opportunity with carnival. We do a fantastic—we call it fall family carnival. And we have five bouncy castles and carnival games with prizes. We give out free hot dogs, popcorn and candy floss, face painting, balloon art and two magic shows. And so for three hours, our clients can come and entertain their kids, and the kids can wear themselves out on our Rally Day weekend, and last year, we got 1,000 people. The year before we got 800 and the year before that, we got seven. So we've gotten fairly big numbers for a corps of 45 people, right. It's really hittin’ above our weight class. So, we're excited about it, and we have our hall that holds about 80 folks, and we pack it in for the magic shows. They just keep coming. So it's a lot of fun. So I kind of create my own opportunities with that one. And I also do kettle magic, and it's one of the things that I would really love an opportunity to share kettle magic with other corps. I've spoken to a few officers before, and I've said, you know, I do kettle magic. People enjoy it. It's up to you if you want to do it, but if you'd like to learn a few tricks with kettle magic, you know, let me know. And, you know, I'll school some folks, and we can do some stuff.

Kristin Ostensen

What is kettle magic, exactly? Do you mean you actually use the kettle?

Matt Trottier

Yeah, no, I make the money disappear, yeah. [laughs] My AC is not going to like that one. No, no, I do magic at the kettle. So I bring a table, or you could bring a music stand even—that's what I did when I started, when I was a cadet—and I just do magic tricks at the kettle. So I entertain at the kettle. I say, Hey, would you like see magic trick? And often people say, Yeah, I want to see magic trick if they're not in a hurry. And they stop, and they watch, and they throw something in the kettle, right? Just an opportunity to make the kettle seem less daunting, you know, because unless they're going to give, they don't want to look at you, you know, they're looking the other way—there's the kettle again. But this crazy guy with flashing lights around his neck and, you know, table and cards and all this stuff is standing there. They're going to wonder, what's this guy all about? And so I'll do a series of magic tricks. You know, some are props and, you know, they’re copyright and stuff like that. Other ones are just so old that, you know, you can literally find them on the internet to figure out how it's done. But it's all simple stuff. It's all easy stuff. And it's just a neat way to engage the folks. It's much better than, say, having the person at the kettle stare at the ground, right? Being disengaged and not saying Merry Christmas. It's just another way to engage, I guess, at the kettle,

Kristin Ostensen

And it sounds like you've had some pretty amazing engagement with this ministry. Can you share about some of the broader impact you've seen? Do you have any stories that really illustrate why this is a powerful, meaningful ministry for you?

Matt Trottier

Yeah, there are a couple of stories. The best stories usually are the smaller ones. One of them is a story that I got from a client where they caught their kids in one of my shows, we can't make this silk scarf disappear, so I get a bigger wand and a bigger wand and a bigger wand, and then finally, you hear a siren, and I yell, “It's a magic emergency. “We can't,” you know, “this is not happening.” So it's a magic emergency, and the big sirens blasting in the speakers, and that's why I pull up this six-foot wand. And one of the clients reported that their kids were running around the house yelling, “Magic emergency! Magic emergency!” You know, that's cute. But the best ones are usually with kids like individuals, the ones that want autographs and ones that actually think that I'm somebody when I'm really just an officer having fun, right? And there's this one kid that, a client's son who's on the spectrum, but he likes to come—his mom does so much work at the corps. She is such an amazing person. She helps us out so much. And her son loves to come because “mago” is there. They're Spanish. “Mago” is Spanish for magician. He says, “Hey, Mago!” right. That's what he calls me. And he just loves being there, and I'll show him a trick every day, and high five and all this. He's just such a sweetheart. The fact that he's so comfortable there speaks volumes, because of all the things that he struggles with. Another story is one of my favourites. One year the Prime Minister came to Oakville, specifically Oakville Place, the mall. And so our TC was there, and our DC was there, and, you know, they're going to talk to Justin Trudeau. And Justin Trudeau comes in, and, you know, just as you would think, the media elbows everybody away. You know, I didn't get a chance to shake his hand because the guy literally elbowed me out of the way to take his picture—whatever, all that craziness. It was chaos. It was chaos as an observer, and I was doing kettle magic while the Prime Minister was there, and they were stopping to take pictures with Salvation Army clients and volunteers and all that sort of thing. And this kid—he didn't want to take a picture with Mr. Trudeau. He wasn't interested in the Prime Minister. He said to his folks, I want a picture with Major Magic. I said, Are you kidding me? You'd rather have a picture with Major Magic than with the Prime Minister of Canada. I thought that was the best thing in the world. 

Kristin Ostensen 

You're more cool than Justin Trudeau. You can put that on your resume.

Matt Trottier

I'll tell you, it certainly made me feel great.

Kristin Ostensen 

Yeah, well, it's wonderful to hear these stories. And you know, I think the wonder of magic is something we can all relate to. You know, who among us hasn't been to a magic show, and the fact that you're able to share the gospel and build bridges with your community through that—it's just such a wonderful ministry. And before we go, I have to ask you, what is your favourite magic trick to perform, and why?

Matt Trottier

Well, you got me over a barrel on that one. Because, you know, quite often my favourite magic trick is the one I just got in the mail. Because, you know, the newness always. But the one I keep going back to is that dream bag. The dream bag is a great old magic trick. And it's one of the things that I would love to do as a craft with some older kids, because it would take a little more skill than just, you know, like elementary students, but high schoolers would be able to put this together. And it's such, it really is such a powerful trick. It works so well, and the message comes across so, so easy and natural. I really love it. My son says it's his favourite trick. He's 19 years old. It's just such a pretty trick, right? With the colourful flowers and the and the ribbons and all the stuff that's involved. So I probably would have to say it's my favourite. And if I may say, you know, if someone would like Major Magic to come over and do a show for them, contact me. If I'm able to get there and it fits in my schedule, I'll come. It's free of charge—it's just something that I like doing.

Kristin Ostensen

Well, I hope some folks listening will take you up on that.

Thanks for joining us for a new season of the Salvationist podcast. We’re looking forward to sharing more new episodes, on a range of topics, with you this fall. In the meantime, you can get caught up on past episodes by visiting our website at salvationist.ca/podcast.