INSURANCE CLAWS RETRACTED FROM BYWARD MARKET BUSKERS
Ever so briefly Tuesday morning, there was a plan afoot for buskers at Ottawa’s outdoor markets to buy their own liability insurance, lest something horrendous happen involving fresh carrots and bad Gordon Lightfoot.
Why had the state gone State Farm? The imagination gallops with possibilities.
The bare-chested, flame-tossing juggler who accidentally sets all those Ecuadorean mitts on fire incinerates the cut flowers, flambéing the whole mess with genuine maple syrup in an inferno that threatens Ottawa’s very soul, the BeaverTail hut. As for the Charlie Chaplin figure on stilts, well, it’s hardly a leap in the mind’s eye to picture a highvoltage handshake with hydro wires and a spontaneous remake of La Machine from the sesqui-summer of ’17. Pretty soon, it’s bye-bye ByWard.
One had to wonder about the practicalities, as well, from the insurer’s side. A tuba, surely, is one hell of a lot more dangerous than, say, a harmonica — no matter how they’re played — and there is the age-old question of what, short of death, to do with scary mimes. So the issue of premiums would be a new swamp to traverse, even for Geico.
It was bound to come crashing down, and it did.
But we’re covered! By mid-morning, Jeff Darwin, the executive director of Ottawa Markets, had reconsidered. (Ottawa Markets is an arm’slength municipal service corporation, and at arm’s length in a stand-alone position is pretty much where Darwin found himself for a spell after the news broke.)
“I’ve walked it right back. It’s been retracted,” Darwin said in early afternoon, his ears a little raw from a busy morning following a CBC Radio report. “Buskers do not have to have liability insurance to operate commercially in the ByWard Market as of 10 o’clock this morning.” But why the switch? “Officially, I’m walking it back because I’m new, I’m stupid, I’m learning, I’m listening and I made a mistake.”
Wow. How can you not love this guy? A leader unafraid to learn from an error in judgment?
Darwin is new to the job, taking over on Jan. 1, which means his memory of the ByWard may not stretch back as far as some crusty typists. Some of you will recall the great bagpipe skirl of 2004, an earlier attempt to modulate the Market’s natural voice.
An admirable teenager from Navan decided to busk on York Street to raise money for an upcoming trip to Scotland. He played fiddle for a while but, only being a fiddle, he pretty soon had to change his tune. Out came the bagpipes on a lovely Sunday afternoon.
Within a minute or two, two security coppers arrived. “These two security guards walk up and say I have to stop,” reported the enterprising 17-year-old, George Muggleton.
“It sounds like discrimination.” Of course it is, even though the charter guarantees any citizen the right to wear a kilt and make God-awful sounds from squeezed sacks in pretty much any public square.
Well, hell hath no fury like a wounded Scot. (Remember these people eat haggis, on purpose.) Scottish groups from around the world came to the defence of young Muggleton, including one outfit that urged all of its 100 pipers to boycott Ottawa. One imagines the boot-quaking at city hall at the prospect of all those bagpipes being played somewhere else — but we digress.
Darwin is a sharp fellow and, if bloodlines be helpful, he will do spectacularly well in his new job. His father was Howard Darwin, one of the city’s legendary sports entrepreneurs, who died in 2009, age 79, after entertaining throngs for much of his adult life. Darwin had a founding role with the Ottawa 67’s and the Ottawa Lynx triple-A baseball franchise, and was a well-known boxing and wresting promoter.
A risk-taker? The elder Darwin once brought to town a wrestler famous for taking on a bear in the ring. One doesn’t take a bear to the Holiday Inn, does one? So Darwin had Yogi and his cage parked in his garage overnight in west-end Ottawa, insurance claws or not.
In any case, the younger Darwin — who looks after ByWard and Parkdale — hopes to have lively markets this year.
“I love the buskers,” he said. “They have to be down here. People like the music and vibrancy they bring, and I’m going to have more of that kind of thing down here.”
It’s a promise — and we’ll be watching — loaded with liability.
Buskers do not have to have liability insurance … Officially, I’m walking it back because I’m new, I’m stupid, I’m learning, I’m listening and I made a mistake.