Last year, thieves took a bouncy castle away from children at the Beechwood farmers’ market in Vanier. This year, the Ontario government did it.
The bouncy castle, a three-by-three-metre inflated trampoline with sides, replaced a much bigger one stolen last summer. That was a six-by-six-metre, 200-kilogram leviathan, so big it had to be stored outside, where, as it turned out, it wasn’t safe.
There was never any real question about replacing it.
“Parents come and they can leave their kids for 10 minutes while they shop — so that’s value, huge value,” says Chris Penton, the manager of the Beechwood Market. “It may mean the difference between spending the extra $20 for the vendors or not. I can’t quantify it, but I know it’s a huge draw. I put it on all the marketing.”
The new one, imported from the U.S. for $600, has cost $13 for each minute it’s been used.
“We inflated it on the first day of the winter market,” Penton says. “We did this thing and within, I don’t know, we opened at 10, within 45 minutes this guy just came out of nowhere and said, ‘I’m a patron, I’m a customer, but I’m also a safety officer for the Technical Standards and Safety Authority of Ontario and … you know, you have to have this permit for your bouncy castle.’ Which I didn’t. I was totally ignorant.
“I deflated it. I had a youngster with me, a 15-year-old, who helps me with the market, and he was beside himself.”
The inspector was extremely decent about it, Penton says. Didn’t fill out a report or anything, just gave him a heads-up. But when Penton contacted the authority’s ombudsman in Toronto to make sure that what the guy told him was true, she referred the question to the inspector’s boss and a formal cease-and-desist notice followed, because sometimes the government works exactly the way its meanest critics say it does.
mo
Reevely: Beechwood market’s bouncy castle busted | Ottawa Citizen
The bouncy castle, a three-by-three-metre inflated trampoline with sides, replaced a much bigger one stolen last summer. That was a six-by-six-metre, 200-kilogram leviathan, so big it had to be stored outside, where, as it turned out, it wasn’t safe.
There was never any real question about replacing it.
“Parents come and they can leave their kids for 10 minutes while they shop — so that’s value, huge value,” says Chris Penton, the manager of the Beechwood Market. “It may mean the difference between spending the extra $20 for the vendors or not. I can’t quantify it, but I know it’s a huge draw. I put it on all the marketing.”
The new one, imported from the U.S. for $600, has cost $13 for each minute it’s been used.
“We inflated it on the first day of the winter market,” Penton says. “We did this thing and within, I don’t know, we opened at 10, within 45 minutes this guy just came out of nowhere and said, ‘I’m a patron, I’m a customer, but I’m also a safety officer for the Technical Standards and Safety Authority of Ontario and … you know, you have to have this permit for your bouncy castle.’ Which I didn’t. I was totally ignorant.
“I deflated it. I had a youngster with me, a 15-year-old, who helps me with the market, and he was beside himself.”
The inspector was extremely decent about it, Penton says. Didn’t fill out a report or anything, just gave him a heads-up. But when Penton contacted the authority’s ombudsman in Toronto to make sure that what the guy told him was true, she referred the question to the inspector’s boss and a formal cease-and-desist notice followed, because sometimes the government works exactly the way its meanest critics say it does.
mo
Reevely: Beechwood market’s bouncy castle busted | Ottawa Citizen
