Here Come the Bouncy Castles

'We wanted every child to have a beautiful smile on their face.'

Part 1: The Hope and the Light

Photo supplied by Bianca; taken 7:30 pm on February 4, 2022.

On the evening of Friday, February 4th - exactly a week after the trucks had begun arriving in Ottawa - Bianca and a team of helpers laid out the first bouncy castles on a stretch of Wellington Street. Each one inflates in minutes, but requires a constant power source. She'd borrowed a generator from her father, another was loaned by a trucker, still others were supplied by the folks at the Coventry supply depot.

"That first time, I think I have ten big bouncy castles," she says. These were available for a few days at a reduced price, courtesy of another Quebec woman.

Conditions were less than ideal. The material from which bouncy castles are constructed isn't intended for prolonged use in the depths of a Canadian winter. Under normal circumstances, children remove their footwear beforehand. Between the cold weather and the winter boots, some didn't survive.

This fabulous photo was published in the Epoch Times here. Learn more about the photographer, Justin Tang, here.

Bianca had originally envisioned a small play area. Maybe a dozen kids would stop by, she thought. But young families pushing strollers and pulling wagons flooded into downtown Ottawa over the weekend for the same reason they'd stood in the wind at prairie crossroads: To show their children history-in-the-making, to meet and greet Canada's heroes - the only group in society loudly proclaiming Enough is enough.

On Saturday, bales of straw arrived and were piled high. Toddlers in snowsuits climbed on them in the sunshine while passersby took photos. "We wanted every child to have a beautiful smile on their face," says Bianca. For some, it had been ages since they'd been permitted to just be kids.

Click image to watch this brief video of kids playing on the straw. It’s worth noticing that no truck horns can be heard, despite the oft-repeated claim that the horns blared incessantly.

While the straw and the games emphasized the family-friendly atmosphere, the bouncy castles were an inadvertent public relations masterstroke. Brightly coloured and whimsical, they made the overwrought, anti-Convoy rhetoric look ridiculous.

On the same day that the bouncy castles appeared Jim Watson, Ottawa's mayor, thanked GoFundMe for suspending the trucker's wildly successful fundraiser. His false claims that this was an illegal protest had played a major role.

Click image for source

By noon Sunday, rather than admitting he'd misjudged matters, Mayor Watson was calling the bouncy castles and carnival atmosphere "disturbing." Insisting this was "the most serious emergency our city has ever faced," he used his authority to declare a formal state of emergency.

Click image for source

Ottawa city councillor Diane Deans, then serving as Chair of the Ottawa Police Services Board, was also struggling with cognitive dissonance. On Saturday, a distraught Ms Deans denounced the protest as "a threat to our democracy...this is a nationwide insurrection. This is madness."

Click image for source. Dean speaks throughout, uttering those specific remarks at the end of the clip. See also this CTV news article from the time.

next installment: What Kind of Terrorists Have Bouncy Castles?

---

previous posts involving the mayor and councillor Deans:

• Ottawa Mayor’s Disturbing Confusion

• What Was the Mayor’s Brain Damage?

• The Hide-Under-Your-Desk School of Leadership

• A Mayor, A Protester, An Agreement

• Drama Queen Diane Deans

• The Emergencies Act & the CBC