It’s the end of another Toronto summer. Folks wear all things sleeveless like gift certificates about to expire. South-bound geese make first stops in long trips. Half the city suddenly remembers the Islands. Islanders brace for arrival of half the city.
And fighter jets buzz overhead.
In a city of green civic culture whose mayor was elected on promises to defend the waterfront from an airport, how is it the Canadian International Air Show still takes place every year?
You might say the good thing about the show is that you don’t have to pay to see it. In fact, such free shows are ongoing worldwide, though not everyone appreciates them.
The Innu of Labrador are still trying to halt military test flights over their territory. And no Afghan family seems thrilled about their free admission.
Sure, the whole thing’s over in days, but what if you came here to escape that ghastly circus? Over 60 per cent of refuge-seekers in Canada settle in the GTA. For them, Air Show memories may quietly take up residence with pre-existing trauma.
For many, the din is the ultimate thrill. But all I see when the jets scream overhead is pornography – in French writer Jean Baudrillard’s sense. He mused that modern pornography is impossible without our religion of science, “this excess of the real in its microscopic detail, this voyeurism of exactitude,” a nice description of what it feels like watching the strict timing and coordination of those manoeuvres.
Somehow, in a town where smoking makes you a pariah, the show still isn’t seen as anti-social.
The obvious effect is the second-hand screeching the “sound of freedom,” as pilots joke. According to U.S. Navy figures, from a distance of 500 feet, an F-16 (one of the “acts”) is heard at somewhere between 105 and 130 decibels. Hearing damage begins at 95.
Navy doctors recommend that flight deck crews be exposed to no more than two and a half minutes of sound over 108 decibels to avoid permanent hearing loss. Look around on the Net and you’ll find a few of those crew people’s loved ones airing concerns about exposure to jet fuel: how it lingers in the laundry, how their kids are showing signs of disease or developmental problems.
There’s nothing safe about the fuel after it’s burned either. Depending on thrust and altitude, an F-16 burns anywhere from 200 to 400 kilos of fuel a minute – equivalent to the emissions of several Escalade SUVs burning their entire tanks. Help fight the war on Antarctica.
A Canadian Forces recruitment pavilion accompanies the Air Show at the Ex. I wonder aloud about the choice of target audience.
Peace activist Matthew Behrens of Homes Not Bombs finishes my thought. “It’s for the people who can’t afford to go to Wonderland,” he says.
Sometimes the pavilion lets little kids load artillery shells, he tells me. “These are the same kids we’re telling to stop violence in schools. How can the city endorse anti-violence initiatives and [not take on] these kinds of recruitment drives?”
It’s not that I think families go to celebrate war. I think they attend to revel in the skill, the know-how, in acrobatics that make it easy not to see the connection with conflict.
The CNE, for its part, says it needs the Air Show. “There’s no question our final weekend is make or break,” says Dave Bednar, GM of the CNE Association. Vendors report making a third of their revenue in three days. “There is the final weekend factor, but the waterfront is jammed, both inside and outside [on Labour Day].”
Gord Perks, Parkdale councillor and a member of the board of governors of Exhibition Place (an 11-person body appointed by council, including four councillors and the mayor, that manages the grounds year-round, while the CNEA manages the summer event) says there’s not much the city can do to mitigate the Air Show’s effects.
The CNEA is a provincial creation, and airspace regulations are controlled by the federal government. That’s the same federal government recruiting tomorrow’s fighter pilots through the show, of course.
And the city doesn’t control the board of governors. “What we got out of [the CNE] this year is that they took away some of the noisiest acts,” says Perks.
“I’m not a fan of carbon orgies,” he continues. “But Toronto is a place for a wide array of entertainments, and the CNE grounds are the best place to hold many of them. I would love to find the moment when the Air Show became socially unacceptable. If there were sufficiently broad concern across Toronto, I think that debate could happen.”
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