There’s a funny thing about calling Vancouver a ‘green’ city. While we may judiciously recycle, reuse and repurpose, we’ve still not had a conversation about why Vancouver has huge fireworks festivals.
Festivals around fireworks bring in money, but there is also an ecological cost. Price Tags has previously written about the noise pollution and the impact on nesting birds in Stanley Park. There’s also the Point Roberts Eagle Man, who we’ve previously reported had been watching the nest activity of eagles and found that the sites near the fireworks displays were abandoned or did not produce viable eggs.
Some jurisdictions in the United States do not allow fireworks to be set off within specified distances of nesting eagles. The City of Enumclaw cancelled their July 4th fireworks last year when they found there was a nesting pair of eagles near the site.
Then there’s Steph Yin’s article exploring quiet fireworks in the New York Times .
In parts of Europe, quiet fireworks displays have grown increasingly common. In Britain, venues close to residents, wildlife or livestock often permit only quiet fireworks. One town in Italy, Collecchio, passed a law in 2015 that all fireworks displays must be quiet. By relying on rich color effects and tight visual choreography, designers of quiet fireworks programs can forgo the big explosions and still deliver a stunning show. The hope is that softer celebrations mean less stress for noise-sensitive children, veterans, older people, pets and wildlife.
You can read more about Collecchio’s approach here. And in Alberta, Banff has switched to the type of pyrotechnics associated with rock concerts, which are heavy on light and colour but don’t make a lot of noise. Canmore and Jasper Alberta have also banned fireworks displays, seeing quiet pyrotechnics as the more fundamentally ecological and ethical thing to do.
“We wanted to minimize the impact on wildlife in the townsite and obviously the surrounding national park, as loud fireworks can be stressful to them,” Deputy Mayor of Banff Corrie DiManno said. “And for us, moving to special-effect pyrotechnics helps us to walk the talk, so to speak. We consider ourselves leaders in this area of environmental preservation so we wanted to make sure that we were doing all we can.”
“Anybody who’s had a cat and dog in the vicinity of fireworks knows often what it’s like – you’ve got a pet adapted to an urban environment and often they run away or hide under the bed. So you can imagine the impact that might have on wild animals,” said Reg Bunyan, vice-president of the group that suggested the idea, the Bow Valley Naturalists.
Why is Vancouver still insisting on noisy fireworks?
Thank you. We are so sick of noisy fireworks after 32 years of terrified dogs and cats. We leave town if we possibly can; if we can’t leave we close all the doors and windows, turn the TV up really loud, and huddle on the bed with the quaking dogs. The cat goes under the bed, not to be seen for hours. Enough.
It’s difficult to take ‘my dog was scared’ or ‘I’m fed up with the noise 3 times a year’ as a serious reason to forego fireworks displays. But the fact that these displays – which it’s easy to forget are simulated bombardments – can cause actual species harm to some birds is a reason to reconsider that is easy to communicate and difficult to shrug off. Any campaign to end loud displays should focus on irreparable species harm; not a temporarily frightened pet.
My brother had a dog that was terrified of loud bangs. One time during fireworks, the dog tried to leave the house and luckily got stuck in the partially open window which stopped what would have been a long fall. Another time, the dog was outside when the fireworks started and ran far away to get away from the noise not to return until the next day. This is not just a little inconvenience – it causes intense stress to some dogs and to their human partners. Given that it also affects eagles and probably other wildlife, it makes sense to at least quieten the explosions.
Any campaign that works is fine with me.
That would be wonderful. Would also be wonderful if all fireworks sold in Vancouver for Halloween were based on the same idea – nice visual display and less noise.
Let’s make Vancouver a No Dumb City.
Having hordes of rubes from the burbs invading the city to experience this simulacrum of war …
The previous sponsors of this were choice: HSBC – convicted and fined $1.9 billion for laundering drug money; and a chief exec found guilty of masterminding a $3.5 billion fraud. Celebration of light indeed …
Now it’s Honda – as though paying for a demonstration of Shock and Awe is going to whitewash its killing of passengers with faulty airbags; odometer hanky panky; and crappy rodent-snack wiring.
Fireworks are a monumental waste of human energy. Nasty. Polluting. Stupid.
And what about any stray whales off Ambleside??? Yes, they have been there and would easily be in earshot way off the immediate shores. Gosh, here we ask shipping to slow down and to quieten down and then we continue to blast off these fireworks!! Was this Vision’s vision? Are we Green even one iota?
And does all that pollution – cars coming in from the whole Lower Mainland and threading through neighborhoods and idling and such even at midnight, does all that pollution – smoke and air pollution right near the time of raging forest fires around us- does all that pollution – water pollution from the audience in numerous boats gathred right at the time of high water temps polluting swimmers, does all that pollution and all the costs of security and clean up, does all that – balance out with the so-called economic benefits? The timing of the fireworks is the busiest time of the year for hotels and restaurants without even bringing in fireworks.!
People like it because it is FREE. But how free is this really.