Trigger happy
Sundays in Ottawa - and all of Ontario, for that matter - were once as quiet as a curfew. Residents were expected to be either in church or otherwise solemnly observing the Lord's Day. You couldn't shop, have a drink, gamble or be seen enjoying yourself too much.
The province and the city are now much more multicultural than they were in the 1950s, and the old, sacred traditions have pretty much all fallen by the wayside. Except one. The last of those prohibitions - hunting on Sunday - was lifted in Ottawa on September 1, and it feels, well, just a touch profane.
I'm okay with Sunday shopping. I've no objection to the casinos, or liquor stores, opening for business. But there's something about the thought of a guy loading his rifle on a Sunday morning to amble out and shoot bambi that strikes me as a stride too far.
Hunting on Sunday has been illegal in Ontario since the founding of Canada in 1867. Municipalities in some of the most northerly regions of the province, where many people depend on wild game for winter meat, began allowing a Sunday hunt in 1959. And now, Natural Resources Minister David Ramsay has given permission to communities everywhere to allow the hunting season to include Sunday, if they so wish. Ottawa, the capital of the country, has decided that it indeed wants a Sunday hunt, so this month the crack of gunfire will echo the ringing of church bells.
The minister says the change is being driven by necessity. And, I would add, by the lobbying of the 500,000 licensed hunters in the province. 'We believe these expanded hunting opportunities will help address concerns about vehicle-wildlife collisions and crop damage caused by burgeoning wildlife populations in some areas of Ontario,' Mr Ramsay said.
He's talking about deer, whose populations have exploded with the disappearance of their principal predator - wolves, driven north by residential and commercial development. Deer thrive in semi-rural areas that wolves have abandoned, and where hunting is restricted.
A dramatic expansion of Ottawa's municipal boundaries a few years back means that about 90 per cent of the city is now rural - farms, smallholdings, parks or other protected areas. Those areas are so dense with deer that close to 1,000 drivers collided with wildlife in the Ottawa area last year, the highest number in the province.
Shooting on Sunday doesn't mean hunters will now be stalking game in downtown parks. Some sensible restrictions still apply. You can't hunt in densely occupied areas and you can't hunt in the spring and summer, when people are out picking berries or engaging in other, non-lethal outdoor activities. But this autumn, when the leaves are turning glorious hues, I think I'll stick to city streets until the hunting season closes.
