Heather Borean, the first conchair, wanted something a little closer to home and proposed the idea of founding a new con.
In 1994, the convention drew a large crowd, with guest Kathy Mar, and has been quietly growing since that time.
Gradually the convention has grown from modest beginnings to offer programming Friday evening through Sunday afternoon, with requisite filk circles until the early morning, workshops in the mornings and a "Dead Penguin" (a play on "dead dog") sing Sunday evening.
In 2007, in cooperation with Interfilk and after two years of fundraising, FilKONtario's only guest was the n'Early Music Consort, a choir of sixteen performers from England.
Programming typically includes: Concerts, song-writing contests, workshops on guitar, voice, performance, etc., one-shots, dealers' room, a fund-raising auction for Interfilk, theme circles, and, especially, open song circles where everyone who chooses can sing and play, and listeners are especially welcome.
Citation: Songs noted in citations for inductees to the Filk Hall of Fame were used as part of the empirical database for this academic article[16] The FilKONtario Concom (convention organizing committee) has twice produced the filk track at a Worldcon: At Torcon 3, 2003, Toronto, ON[17] and at Anticipation, 2009, Montreal PQ.
[18] In preparation for Anticipation, two of the concom developed a multi-media presentation called "From the Earth to the Moon: a celebration of manned space flight".
Since then the concom has staged "From the Earth to the Moon", four more times: FilKONtario 2010, a meeting of the USS Hudson Bay (a local science fiction fan club) June, 2010; SFContario, November, 2010; and ConFusion, January, 2011.
In addition a similar performance focusing on both manned and unmanned space exploration was performed at the invitation of the University of Toronto's Astronomy and Space Exploration Society presentation on 26 September 2009 as an opening act for keynote speaker Dr. David Charbonneau.