The 134th St. Paul Winter Carnival’s new King Boreas says his royal inclinations could be traced to his New Zealand-born mother, who took him to see the visiting Queen Elizabeth when he was 7 years old.
Darrin Johnson, crowned Boreas LXXXIV on Friday night, grew up in New Zealand and New Jersey, moving to Minnesota when he was 16. He’s probably best known in recent years as the winter celebration’s main photographer, but he’s also been a Royal Guard in 1993, Prince of the North Wind in 1996 and Captain of the Royal Guard in 2006.
Kirstin Knutson was crowned Aurora, Queen of Snows from among 10 candidates. The Pioneer Press will interview her Saturday.
“I’ve been on the bus following the Royal Family for the past 10 years,” Johnson says of chronicling the royalty as chairman of the Carnival Photography Club. In fact, he planned to take photos Friday until he had to go on stage for the coronation at Saint Paul RiverCentre.
But Johnson’s royal connections have a painful side. On Dec. 14, 1992, a little more than a month before his first role with Winter Carnival, his aunt and an employee were stabbed to death while working at the flower shop Johnson and his mother owned on Rice Street. “I came in and found them,” he says.
Johnson wanted to back out of his selection as a guard, but King Boreas in 1993, Tom Huppert, told him: “You need to do it. It will be good for you — a good distraction.”
Johnson knew Huppert as a fellow businessman on Rice Street (“He was like a stepfather to me.”). He knew others on the North End who were active with Carnival and says the Royal Family “really do become family.” Without many relatives in Minnesota, he says, it was the family he needed — after the tragedy and in years growing the business, The Flower Hut.
A LIFE IN FLOWERS
The 52-year-old father of two gets emotional when he tells about his mother building the business.
Johnson’s father was a U.S. government worker in Antarctica who shipped in and out of New Zealand, where he met and married Lesley Johnson. He was transferred to Washington, D.C., where Darrin Johnson was born.
Johnson says his mother missed her homeland and would go back and forth for two-year stretches after the family moved to New Jersey. When his father said she had to make a choice, Lesley Johnson opened a flower shop in New Jersey and her sister, Elaine, came to help her run it.
The marriage ended in divorce, though, Johnson says, and his mother reconnected with an old boyfriend in Minnesota. She found a flower shop for sale in Stillwater and they moved here with Elaine’s son, Andre. It was 1984 and Johnson was 16. The old boyfriend didn’t work out and The Flower Hut in Stillwater was a bust. “We lost everything,” Darrin says.
Lesley Johnson asked how to get to the Capitol, her son remembers. She was told to take Highway 36 west from Stillwater and take a left on Rice Street. As they headed toward the Capitol, she spotted a small vacuum shop while sitting at a stoplight at Front and Rice streets. She parked and got out of the car.
She returned about 30 minutes later and announced they would rent space for a flower shop. There was no “for rent” sign, nothing to indicate the building owner wanted a tenant.
“She just had that kind of personality,” Darrin Johnson says. “She was a firecracker.”
But he didn’t want to move again. “I’d been in 12 grades in 12 schools,” Johnson says, so he, his aunt and cousin stayed in Stillwater. Their car had been repossessed, so his mother slept on the flower shop floor. The vacuum store owner would take food to the family.
Valentine’s Day 1985 was a turning point, he says. Lesley Johnson got a $500 Small Business Administration loan through Women Venture of Minnesota to get some roses. As the stock sold out, Darrin Johnson would take that money and run to the wholesaler to get more. “We made enough money that we knew we were going to be OK,” says Johnson, who became an equal partner in The Flower Hut in 1986 after he graduated from high school.
The business moved to a larger space on Rice Street and Johnson got to know some of the Winter Carnival North Wind Titan stalwarts. “I was fascinated,” he says. He also started performing, joining the St. Paul Clown Club in 1996.
Johnson applied to be a 1992 Guard, but didn’t make the cut. His Rice Street businessman friend Huppert told him to apply for the 1993 court. “The only way I’d run again is if you were going to be King Boreas,” Johnson told Huppert, who already knew he was the next Boreas.
The Flower Hut continued to do well, but Johnson says his mother blamed herself for being away from the shop on the day of the murders. “Our hearts weren’t in it,” he says.
A NEW DIRECTION
Johnson had always been a paintball enthusiast (“I was a hyperactive kid and it was a great way for me to release that”), so when the teams and tournaments were getting expensive, his mom suggested he find a way to make it a business project. He started Splat Tag Inc. as a booking agent for other paintball businesses, but they didn’t bite. Eventually, he started running his own paintball park near Rice Street. It was by appointment only, so he would work at the flower shop and run down to do a game when he got a call.
The paintball business got busier than the flower shop.
The city eventually wanted to develop the Rice Street paintball park. Johnson closed the flower shop and wound up with two locations for Splat Tag Inc. in Wisconsin — Hudson and Baldwin.
Since paintball slows in the winter, Johnson has been able to spend time photographing Carnival events, from coronation through parades. He knows the job of Boreas is a year-long commitment, filled with visits to schools, nursing homes, festivals and parades … he has photos of it all.
His wife, Emily Gerbig, who studied graphic arts and works at Best Buy corporate, is on board. She helped design the unique crest and medallion each Boreas must have. Johnson’s has a rose for the flower shop, a theatrical mask, a fern for New Zealand, a snowflake “for my love of Carnival and all my roles in it,” two flags (one red and one blue like paintball teams) and three roses at the bottom for wife, Cindy, and their children, 5-year-old Sydney and 2-year-old Theodore.
THE LEGEND OF KING BOREAS
The role is based on a legend that goes back more than 130 years. According to the legend, Boreas “King of the Winds” and his four brothers (one for each direction of the wind) discovered St. Paul on his extensive travels and decided to make it the capital of all his domains, celebrating winter. Vulcanus Rex, “the god of Fire,” vowed to resist him with “heat and roar.” King Boreas chose to fight fire with fun: “There will be a Carnival in old St. Paul!”
IF YOU GO
Winter Carnival events kick off this weekend. Highlights include:
- King Boreas Grand Day Parade starting at 2 p.m. moves down West Seventh Street from Smith Avenue and ends up at Rice Street.
- Ice carving competition at Rice Park. Check out the Baileys Warming House tent for beverages in front of Landmark Center.
- The Jigsaw Puzzle Contest on Saturday inside Landmark got a whole lot bigger this year, with 234 teams competing from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m.
- The Saintly City Cat Show takes place on Saturday and Sunday at Roy Wilkins Exhibition Hall at Saint Paul RiverCenter (saintlycitycatclub.org).
- The Vulcan Snow Park at the State Fairgrounds has a snow slide that’s 20 feet high and more than 300 feet long. The Minnesota State Snow Sculpting Competition runs through noon Sunday. Vulcan Fun Day is Sunday and features rides on the Vulcan fire truck and a kids’ snow treasure hunt. There will be two Polar Plunges – one in the daytime and one at night – to benefit Special Olympics Minnesota. For details, see mnsnowpark.com.
- On Sunday, Bingo and Bloody Marys from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Warming House on Landmark Plaza; canine companions are invited to Hops and Hounds in Rice Park from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; and the Saint Paul Civic Symphony has a free concert at 2 p.m. inside Landmark Center.
The 2020 St. Paul Winter Carnival runs through Feb. 2. For more Winter Carnival information and updates, go online to wintercarnival.com.
Copyright 2020 Pioneer Press.
