By Jim Hagarty
1990
Some homeowners have to contend with the disturbing sounds made by barking dogs. Others put up with church bells that gong out a hymn or two every hour on the hour. And many people who live on busy streets and highways must suffer through the constant roar of cars, trucks and motorcycles as they race by.
Noise pollution, it seems, at least in our cities and towns, is here to stay.
As for me, when it comes to being bothered by unwelcome noises, I guess I’m sort of lucky and unlucky, all at the same time. At the moment, there are no yowling dogs within earshot and no churches with pealing bells. And my street is relatively free from the sounds of traffic revving up and gearing down.
But there’s a flaw in every perfect picture and so it is with my place. My house is located not far from the Shakespeare Festival Theatre in Stratford and not far from the cannon that the theatre uses to announce the start of its performances. Every day during theatre season at 2 p.m. and 8 p.m., the cannon lets fly.
“KAAAABOOOOMMM!!!”
It’s not that long a sound, really, or even all that aggravating, for that matter. But it is loud.
And it’s sneaky.
For some reason, the Festival’s cannon shot always comes as a big shock to me, though I’ve heard it dozens and dozens of times since I moved to my present home in 1986. You might think, after all this time, that a person would get sort of used to such a sound. He might, for example, look at his watch at 1:59 p.m. and say, “Well, the cannon ought to be going off any minute.”
But it doesn’t work that way. Other people can count on Fido to raise the roof next door every night and on the church around the corner to start into clamouring every hour on the hour. And, of course, who’s surprised at traffic noise at any hour? The Festival cannon, however, is infrequent enough an experience that it is never expected. And therefore, never welcome. Each time I hear it, I react the same way as the first time I heard it. And the first time I heard it, I thought I’d been hit in the chest with the blast from a shotgun.
If I want to hear our lovely neighborhood cannon, all I have to do is crawl up 20 feet to the top of my ladder with paint can in hand, stretch out for a hard-to-get spot on my house as far as I can until I’ve only got one foot and one hand on the top rungs and reach out for …
“KAAAABOOOOMMM!!!”
As upset as some of these brushes with near-fatal, cannon-induced heart attacks have made me in the past, I’ve refrained from complaining. That’s just life in the city, I’ve figured, and the Festival Theatre is this city, so I’ve always shut up.
But no more.
Tuesday night, my wife and I set up the new gas barbecue we’d bought. Neither one of us had ever had anything to do with one before and were very nervous about it all.
I checked for leaks, tightened the connections and then timidly pressed the automatic igniter.
“Poof!” went the first burner.
“Poof!” went the second burner.
And just before I held a match to the side burner, which had failed to light automatically, I issued this warning.
“You better stand back, Barb. This thing could blow us into the neighbour’s yard.”
Barb stood back and I lit the match. I moved it cautiously toward the unlit burner and …
“KAAAABOOOOMMM!!!”
“Dear Festival Theatre: As a concerned citizen and taxpayer, I am writing this letter regarding your use of a cannon …”
