LET THE GAMES BEGIN!
Track & field championships start
Long lines, rain and confusion marred Canada Day for some, but for Art Kaplan-Myrth, the hullabaloo downtown proved to be Saturday’s best attraction.
The 17-year-old Ottawan ventured downtown with his parents, his 13-year-old brother and his camera.
The family arrived earlyish, sometime before 10 a.m., he says.
With lines already snaking around the Parliamentary precinct, Kaplan-Myrth knew they had time to kill.
And so, apparently, did his brother Noam. Boredom paired with a high-energy attitude led Noam to start running up and down the line, high-fiving people.
That’s when inspiration struck for Kaplan-Myrth, a budding amateur photographer.
“Why don’t I take 150 photos of a 150 different people high-fiving my brother as a fun Canada Day project?” he thought.
“I sort of realized this was the perfect opportunity to get a lot of photos” hooked to one theme, he says.
He wanted to showcase the best Canada has to offer, he says, symbolizing how friendly and accepting Canadians can be — even in sub-optimal conditions.
So off they went, leaving their parents behind to keep their spot in line.
“Everyone was really, really friendly,” KaplanMyrth says. “I think it made people happier. Standing in line like that sucks and you don’t have much to do. And when a kid runs up, highfiving you, it brings out a happy spirit.”
Noam high-fived roughly 400 people, his brother says.
All told, it took his family about 2½ hours to make it onto the Hill, which it turns out, was time well spent.
“Being in the line was more fun for me” than the rest of the festivities, he says.
And for those out there who paused on Saturday to have their photo taken highfiving a stranger, where will they get to see this project?
That’s still to be determined, Kaplan-Myrth says. He hasn’t finished processing all of the photos (more than 500 in total, though a good chunk of them were fireworks shots), and he isn’t exactly sure how he’s going to compile them all.
“(I want to) Photoshop them all side-by-side into one collection,” he says, before publishing them online for others to look at.