Editorial.

After a year of the will-he or won’t-he saga, it’s understandable if Niagara residents have a little Wallenda fatigue. Get over it. Daredevil tightrope walker Nik Wallenda is here to stay, after the Niagara Parks Commission voted unanimously Wednesday to give him the green light to walk a wire over the Niagara gorge this summer.

Yes, folks, the NPC is bringing the circus to town.

Not just this summer — every 20 years a new generation of Niagarans will be treated to a similar spectacle. The government agency has changed its anti-stunting policy to an “occasional-stunting” policy, a move that puts the parks commission at the top of a slippery slope.

In a reversal of its decades-old policy banning stunts on the Niagara River, commissioners voted to allow a “qualified” stunter every 20 years to use the sublime, majestic, serene landmark as the backdrop for a tawdry circus act, presumably because they realized how much the commission will cash in on.

There are at least two cans of worms the commission has opened.

Firstly, who is going to be the judge of who is “qualified” and who is not? Tightrope walking and barrel-riding are not professions like accountancy or law. When we want to hire someone to do our taxes, we know there’s a professional body telling who’s qualified to be an accountant. There’s no Professional Association of Tightrope Walkers to certify one guy and keep out the unqualified bozos.

Secondly, it’s easy to predict there will be pressure to water down the “once every 20 year” provision. Within seconds of this news breaking, Review readers were cracking jokes on Facebook about practising up now so they can be the 2032 stunter. Rest assured, Wednesday’s move is going to open the door to other daredevil-wannabes to allow someone to go every 10 years … five years … six months.

Now that the NPC has lowered its standards, the floodgates that had been holding back the daredevils are now open.