A Commentary by Doug Draper
Well, the mayor of Niagara, Falls sure was right!
Jim Diodati, who was a booster of Nik Wallenda’s dream to walk a high wire across the Falls when the Niagara Parks Commission and provincial government were still saying ‘no way’ to it, promised in the days leading up to the June 15 extravaganza that it was “going to be exciting, historic (and) the biggest event in the world.”
Nik Wallenda, to the right, in a media scrum that you would likely not see in Niagara if they found deadly concentrations of dioxon in the Niagara River. Photo by Doug Draper
A drive along the Niagara Parkway the day before the walk certainly gave every reason to believe that was going to be true. Satellite trucks for more than 80 accredited media organizations, including ABC television, which had purchased exclusive rights to air the event live, and a Chinese broadcast network boasting more than a billion viewers, were parked for hundreds of metres along the parkway. Inside Niagara Parks’ Table Rock Welcome Centre, near the brink of the Horseshow Falls, the man of the moment was surrounded by swarms of reporters for another in a series of media briefings where the inevitable, no-brainer question was pitched to him for the umpteenth time – ‘Are you getting nervous?’
As one journalist among possibly no others, as far as I know, who chose not to write much about this in the months and weeks leading up to Wallenda’s walk, I must admit that I finally found myself getting caught up in some of the excitement the mayor was talking about and in this 33-year-old tightrope walkers infectious personality.
Nik Wallenda may very have turn around those who initially said ‘No’ to his decades-long dream to walk across the Falls with a winning personality that saw him giving generous amounts of his time to media and growing numbers of adoring fans.
Once again, the media descends on Nik Wallenda (to the right), the morning following his walk. Wouldn’t it be nice if the media cared this much about toxic threats in the Niagara River and Great Lakes at large? Photo by Doug Draper
Yet, let’s face it. Wallenda’s request to do the walk was also ultimately approved because of an intense amount of lobbying from hoteliers and others in the Niagara Falls area who knew there would be plenty of money to be made in it. And who wouldn’t want to see a tourism industry that has been bruised since 9/11 with all of the business over passport requirements, higher gas prices, a lower American dollar, etc., receive a boost? As for the worldwide media coverage, you could not afford to buy that kind of publicity for the Falls. How could anyone promoting the Falls as a tourist destination give up an opportunity like that?
The day after the walk, during a final media briefing, Wallenda told potentially millions of people through the reporters who gathered that it is hardly enough to view the Falls on television or in pictures. “You have to come here and experience it for yourself. … It is spiritual and awe-inspiring,” said added, as Thomson as Niagara Parks Chair Janice Thomson and Ontario Tourism Minister Michael Chan stood at his side smiling.
There again, and here is where I speak to some of the reasons I was reluctant, earlier on, to write about this, I have always felt that it is sad that we can’t seem to simply enjoy, on a spiritual level, the natural majesty of the Falls without having a circus land of amusement rides, gambling establishments and all the other razzle-dazzle around it. I could have gone so far, a few weeks back, of talking about how in the case of the Falls as a piece of Mother Nature in particular, we can’t let it be. We have to find some way to tame it, to control it, to divert it, to “conquer” it. It is something that seems to go back to the Book of Genesis in my King James version of The Bible where we are told it is our job, as humans, to “fill the Earth, and subdue it.”
But that column would probably have gone over like a poorly constructed barrel over the Falls (and I think we all would have known what would have happened to that one) in the middle of all the euphoria over this event. It would have been like walking sober into a late night party of drinking revelers, and saying; ‘Now let’s try to settle down kids’. You know where that would get you.
Then there is the thing about the darker side of human nature that has a segment of us going to a hockey game for a fight or car racing for a crash. I lost track of how many people I heard say, when they learned that ABC was directing Wallenda to where a safety harness in order to keep that lucrative contract; ‘Well, I’m not so sure I want to watch it now.’ That is almost an admission that they wanted to watch it in case he fell.
Well thank God he didn’t for the Parks, for Niagara Falls and for Nik Wallenda and his family’s sake.
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