Bob Murphy is putting the final touches on an elaborate pink and purple ice cream truck design as Halloween quickly approaches.
The handyman by trade is working around the clock to finish creating the ensemble for young Florence as part of Rolloween, an initiative that crafts adaptive costumes for children with reduced mobility.
“People love Halloween and we love helping the kids,” Murphy said in an interview over the weekend inside his garage in Montreal’s Rosemont neighbourhood.
The outfit, called Cornetterie chez Flo, boasts a window display of multicoloured ice cream cones and tiny lights line the interior of it. Pool noodles were used to design the wheels and it also features headlights for safe trick-or-treating.
It is one of two costumes that Murphy and about a dozen volunteers who form Duct Tapers Anonymous are crafting this year. The other is a supersonic motorcycle outfit for a boy named Harold.
“We’re all builders and creators so this brings us back to our childhood,” Murphy said.
In 2018, Duct Tapers Anonymous came up with Rolloween to make the holiday more inclusive for all children. Kids can request just about anything as a costume and the team does their best to make their dreams come true free of charge.
The whole initiative is supported by volunteers who fill Murphy’s workshop and driveway. Over the years, they’ve learned to make the costumes as light as possible. They work with all kinds of materials, including latex paint, metal, foam, rubber and magnets. Their elaborate creations are built with the help of welding, gluing and painting.
He doesn’t keep track of how many hours they put in, but they come together every Sunday for the entire month of October along with countless weeknights to customize the costumes.
“We deliver them to the kids with a truck and make sure they are all set up correctly and that nothing breaks. So just to help them out,” Murphy said.
Émile Laliberté was the first beneficiary of the initiative six years ago. Chad the Dragon — a creature with 3D-printed scales, motorized wings and animated eyes — was his costume in the fifth grade.
The outfit was specifically adapted to Laliberté’s wheelchair. It included walls that fit over his wheelchair frame, giving the illusion that he was a flying dragon. He even got to show it off to his classmates.
The following year, Duct Tapers Anonymous got to work on another intricate design for Laliberté: the Mars Rover. When he wore it to school, he received a standing ovation and was crowned best costume.
“For me, it was to be like the other kids,” Laliberté, 16, said. “Because, you know, already a disability, visually you’re different from every other person.
“So just to be like everybody else — it means (a lot) to me.”
The unforgettable experience has left a mark on the teen. The Rolloween initiative and the group of volunteers have “empowered children” like him, Laliberté said, and it means so much to him that he says he feels inspired to pay it forward.
“I want to be a computer engineer. I want to make new tech to help people with handicaps, so make new accessibility products,” Laliberté said. “So we can thank them. We can thank him.”
For volunteers like Murphy, it’s a thrill to see how happy the children are but he had no idea their projects would ignite such a spark in Laliberté.
“We hadn’t foreseen that,” Murphy said.