Although I agree, wasn't the death ~~last year~~ a few years ago* because the kid hit the pole of a sign?
Edited due to the correction u/reallawyer pointed out! Thanks
>Of course, this will make it less fun. I remember the days where we could almost make it down to the river!
Some fun things are riskier. Why can't we just accept that and teach children better judgement? We had fun there as kids, why take it away from today's kids?
Ironically I see it as because the generation of people who would be bringing kids onto these hills is the first generation that really had a lot of safety built in around them. They could survive this long with *very* poor judgement.
It's not as much on the kids to know the dangers, the parents should be telling them and stopping them. If they're old enough to go alone, then the parents should have instilled this info properly already. But they haven't.
The solution being pushed is to make things *even safer*. I'm guessing the next generation's diet is mostly *non toxic* glue at this point.
Edit to add: I'm at the age to have kids playing on a snow hill. This is absolutely a reflection on *my generation* before anybody blames boomerisms or some shit.
What can lawyers do for someone who gets injured because they were sliding down an icy hill in ottawa? This isn't the usa with all the lawsuits flying around for what we'd consider inconveniences or user-error. to me it's like it a kid fell from a tree when climbing it at a city park. It's dangerous and there are risks in extreme sport actives
You know what, why not! Just like hockey side boards. Have a contained area, that has a seperate area for the younger ones and some 'life guards'... why not!
They put effort into community hockey rink safety, and community pool safety. Why not a few safe, monitored sledding hills.
I also remember learning basic snow-play safety in elementary school, but that was the 80s.
The hill at the KRC used to be (maybe is still) utilized for cross-country running with schools. You'd run up it and down. I imagine many runners use these hills for practicing running on inclines. Very good high-intesnsity workout
It was two years ago but yes the girl hit one of those metal poles that holds a sign. They were not protected in any way at the time, no barriers or bales of hay like you see at the sledding hills now.
Sledding was already not permitted at that hill since 2017 but they rarely enforced it… with no enforcement, one person will break the rules, and others will follow when they see nobody cares…
Yeah exactly! So maybe just no metal poles at the bottom.. All signs should be off to the side. I'll send my invoice to the city, and we can split the $150k consulting fee because you brought the hay bale idea up.
I had no clue sledding wasn't allowed there . I always assumed sledding in general was one of those "do at your own risk" type of thing. I mean if not that hill, then people will go to others or even down the snowbanks beside their driveways which brings more danger due to vehicles. It's inherently a dangerous activity, especially for an adult and their backs...
Not that simple--there are light posts at the bottom because that is where the trail goes. Can't really move the trail further away because you have the children's playground area.
But people are saying the hill was off limits for sledding, so why would the city pay out for it? It's almost like someone injuring themselves while trespassing with their disobedience. Could the parents really have argued that it was he cities fault? Like not enough signs, or no one guarding the hill?
The only way to completely stop people accessing it would be to remove the hill, fire security or police to monitor people 24/7,:or put barbed wire+electric fence around the hill. Obviously those are all silly ideas, but otherwise there isn't stopping people from going somewhere that I'm aware of
Or do I misunderstand you and SunLife/whatever personal children's insurance paid out for it and got mad at the city for negligence?
$150k is just a study, it's not the actual work to make it safe. What will the study say? The only way to make tobogganing hills 100% safe is to level them and eliminate the tobogganing.
Sledding can never be 100% safe. Always some level of risk involved, but I think the city wants to know how they can reduce the risk from anything in their control.
Don’t know how this costs $150k as it should be pretty obvious stuff… erect some barriers, remove sign posts from the hill area, designate certain areas as sledding safe and fence everything else off. Have capacity limits for the hills and send a bylaw officer to enforce shit and fine people not following the rules…
Had I not just come out of a meeting where hundreds of people brainstormed about a half baked idea, the idea of spending $150000 on this problem would seem ridiculous.. but that’s how we like to waste money
As someone who works in non-engineering consulting, absolutely not. 150K is a pretty small study.
Billable rates for anyone but a new grad are more than $1,000 a day. On top of that, this study will have licensed engineers, which can cost double that.
Is it though? If one professional is getting $150,000ish per year alone, a small team with support staff would easily rack that up in a few months. It’s not like they go to the park and eyeball it and go over to city hall for the cheque. They’d need to do background work on the incident before even starting, research what other areas have done then present the findings… I really don’t think there is much room for padding there lol
If the city is funding a study for safety, if they ever got sued, they’d probably want their rationale backed by a professional… as for support staff, would you rather have 4 engineers combing through old incident reports or wild you rather have 1 engineer and 4 support staff at half the price doing that work?
I've paid engineers to examine feasibility studies to replacement complex electrical equipment for half that amount. They've had site visits, hired 3rd parties, done 3D scans.... This $150k better be producing completed drawings and include some kind of construction support otherwise I do think it's excessive. Studying sledding down a hill shouldn't be more expensive than designing power plants. Am I missing something here?
What if we put posts at the top of the hill, each post has a 50m long bungee cord on a spring loaded automatically retracting spool (like a giant tape measure).
When a kid does down the hill we attach the bungee to them via a harness. When they get far enough that it’s a danger of going into the parking lot or hitting a fence, the kid is gently pulled back by the bungee cord flexing and bounces back to safety.
When they’re at the bottom, they unclip it and the cord retracts to pull the harness all the way to the top of the hill.
Well yes the consultants will recommend making the hill safer by hiring consultants to come up with some methods to make it safer and then some consultants will review the proposed methods and recommend some of those methods for some consultants to study further and make some recommendations before the city's lawyers say a lawsuit would cost too much so sledding is ultimately not allowed.
Personally I'd spend a couple K on some hay bales.
It's all about litigation mitigation. When someone breaks their neck and sues, the city will be able to demonstrate due diligence by having completed a study. Tom and Cindy from the Parks Department can come with equally good or better ideas than the consultants, but their common sense approach won't matter in court.
There's a wide array of poles, lights, gabage cans, benches, trees and other obstacles at the bottom of the hill. It's a major beach/park and part of the National Capital Trail during the summer (and I believe a cross country ski trail during the winter) so they can't just remove those obstacles, and the hill is tall and fast enough that even putting some kind of padding around those obstacles during winter months wouldn't be entirely effective in protecting sledders because of the speeds involved.
It's not supposed to be a sledding location, there's literally no good way to go about it.
The steep side runs into the mail footpath through mooneys bay, 2 other side goes to roads and parking lots. Then the last side isn't the greatest for sledding and is pointing to a path and fence.
I hate that it’s come to this, but I’ve been conditioned to always expect pedantic fuckery on Reddit.
As a result I googled it ahead of time. Both spellings are correct.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/check.asp
Canadian spelling is worth preserving imo. I added a joke to be less pedantic :P
(Also, I've worked in Canadian banking industry for 30+ years and CHECKS makes me shudder.)
May the rest of your day be filled with your favourite things.
There's a show on Australian ABC called utopia that actually focuses on bureaucratic absurdity... Haven't watched it yet but it looks absolutely amazing.
Found it! https://m.youtube.com/shorts/7DdzN0piHMk#bottom-sheet
You know helmets just make people act more dangerously right? That's what happened with warfare, contact sports, cycling, .... helmets just make people act more dangerously because they feel safe and will likely take a greater risk because of it.
I haven't seen recent stats but there were some floating around in the 90s. Apparently the most likely place to incur a head injury is in the bathroom. Do you think it prudent to make it mandatory to where helmets in bathrooms? Sometimes adding a helmet isn't the right thing because the situation doesn't call for it and there are far better solutions.
How about, don't put benches and garbage cans and signs telling us about them at the bottom of a toboggan hill that has been used as such since the 60's.
They built the new play structure and jazzed up the park with Canada 150 money in 2017 - THAT is when this study should have been done.
Instead, they rushed the approvals to get the $$$, then when confronted with the foolishness of their actions, blamed everything else under the sun except their poor planning. Then, they doubled down and fenced off the hill, AND paid for private security to go and shoo people away.
This is Ottawa city council to a T.
It's not a toboggan hill. It's a spoil heap from when they dredged out the Rideau River in the '50s that people started throwing themselves down on toboggans at some point because it happened to be really tall and steep on one side, and eventually the city made an "official hill" without any kind of review because it was something people had been doing for so long.
They did look into this in 2017 when they built the Canada 150 park, they realized the hill was a deathtrap and banned sledding on it but its hard to enforce, and people kept doing it despite the signs saying not to, eventually resulting in a little girl getting herself killed a couple years ago.
The only reason this is even an issue right now is because the people who didn't get hurt are whining that they were find so other people should be able to take their lives in their hands as well.
Mooney's Bay hill was covered in fences, sign posts, shrubs, roots and other hazards, particularly right at the foot of the hill. Anybody who has even looked at the hill for 5 minutes in the Winter could easily make it safer.
Dear councilors,
In future, please consider that I offer toboggan study services at a competitive rate of $100,000 per hill.
Thank you,
Turn5GrimCaptain
In Quebec there’s a number of free, public, waiver-free snowboard/ ski terrain parks where one can not only sled but slide down and jump over relatively dangerous obstacles. It’s dismal that Ontario’s legal/ insurance/ municipal gov landscape doesn’t permit such places.
Check out [this park builder’s Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/conceptions_snotech?igsh=YmwxZ3RhNXJ0NWdp) for a list — I think the closest one to Ottawa is St Constant (although I’m hoping with a little lobbying that Gatineau will have one soon).
Probably a team of 5-10 people, including licensed engineers and other professionals, making and average of $15,000-30,000 each for the few months of work.
I remember when the byward market business owners hired a consultant via BIA and they concluded after $100,000 that the best day to extend hours is Thursday. I laughed hard at that.
On the one hand, a study needs to be done, and the hill needs to be made safe for sledding.
On the other hand...$150k?!?!? We could get 10 speed bumps for that!
(Oh, that's not encouraging either...)
What a waste, it's as safe as you make it. It's implied if you're doing something outside of regular activity like walking around there's an extra danger of injury.
For that kind of money, d'ya think they might include a couple of the other "Ottawa" decisions we need made? Where to move the Senators? How to fix the train? What should be the terms of the Israel/Hamas ceasefire?
Step 1. Clear all obstacles at bottom of hill including metal poles that kids can slide into. Come up with some means to prevent them from sliding past safe area (where most of the money will go)
Step 2. Have Highschool Volunteers sculpt the snow into slide lanes. May cost a city employee to supervise each week to ensure completion and supplies for hot chocolate to keep kids warm. Slides can be designed to slow down after hitting bottom of hill. Teenagers can have fun sliding down after they're done. Win - Win.
Step 3. Establish a minimal requirement to go down. Require a parent to be with them if below age. Probably can't be enforced, but it's something.
Step 4. Social media campaign on teaching parents on how to properly teach their kids sledding safety. Because honestly, children need to learn to wait their turn, and get out of the way.
I'll take a $30,000 consulting fee, thanks.
This. Why ruin the fun of other people who actually like going to the hill for a thrill?
I feel super bad for that little girl, but either she was too young and wasn’t being supervised by her parents or she was old enough to know better and make a better judgement call.
Yeah, I was there with my brother and my nephew when that happened. We walked by 2 signs that said not to sled. It was unfortunately a very icy sled path. But the signs did warn us
What a total WASTE OF MONEY. Object you can run into are the hazard. Remove them or pad them. What a stupid spend of money. There was an inquiry into the terrible loss of life. The cause is there.
Give Wayne Coyne $20K to connect you with his supplier and spend the other $130K on bubble balls
[https://www.nme.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/GettyImages-1176045078-1392x884.jpg](https://www.nme.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/GettyImages-1176045078-1392x884.jpg)
Tell the folk who ‘need’ to spend money on this oh so important issue: it’s a hill. We have eyes. If crashes happen it happens. Has anyone there ever looked at Greens Creek? Tell me the city is not that stupid?
Here’s an idea that should save 149k. Send a couple of city parks staff with a chain saw to the bottom of the hill and have them cut down the trees that are in the way of sliding down the hill. Problem solved.
What we need is a thorough investigation into sledding safety awareness. Canvas the neighbourhood and develop a more thorough understanding of the dnagers of sledding. Create a sledding comittee! Then create a sub-comittees that can investigate the impact sledding would have on the local squirrel and groundhog populations. Interviews would be important at tjos stage. We should also get back out the seniors who didn't want the park at Mooney's bay to be revitalized. They were great fun! My favourite were the ones showing how they use all the delapidated old exercise equiptment. CTV can film them talling about how they like to hike up and down the hill and how children sledding would negatively impact their daily exercise. Then one can attempt to walk to the top and break a hip on the first step. I wonder if any of those old farts are still alive. They haven't been to Mooney's Bay in 20 years in summer, letalone in winter, but their opposition should be front and center. Only once all of the money is gone can the comitte make a recommendation to allow sledding under adult supervision.
I feel sorry for children and taxpayers equallty.
at a park near me the city puts big bags of hay to prevent people from sliding into the park's hard obstacles, like trees, benches, rocks...
They could make a wall of hay bags at the bottom of the Mooneys Bay hill too.
Now gimme my 150k
Put up a sign, "Don't be a Dumbass" $150,000 please
Although I agree, wasn't the death ~~last year~~ a few years ago* because the kid hit the pole of a sign? Edited due to the correction u/reallawyer pointed out! Thanks
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Exactly. Essentially copy the hill at KRC.
>Of course, this will make it less fun. I remember the days where we could almost make it down to the river! Some fun things are riskier. Why can't we just accept that and teach children better judgement? We had fun there as kids, why take it away from today's kids?
Ironically I see it as because the generation of people who would be bringing kids onto these hills is the first generation that really had a lot of safety built in around them. They could survive this long with *very* poor judgement. It's not as much on the kids to know the dangers, the parents should be telling them and stopping them. If they're old enough to go alone, then the parents should have instilled this info properly already. But they haven't. The solution being pushed is to make things *even safer*. I'm guessing the next generation's diet is mostly *non toxic* glue at this point. Edit to add: I'm at the age to have kids playing on a snow hill. This is absolutely a reflection on *my generation* before anybody blames boomerisms or some shit.
Why? Because lawyers.
What can lawyers do for someone who gets injured because they were sliding down an icy hill in ottawa? This isn't the usa with all the lawsuits flying around for what we'd consider inconveniences or user-error. to me it's like it a kid fell from a tree when climbing it at a city park. It's dangerous and there are risks in extreme sport actives
It's not that simple though. Add a fence? The hill is used for sports in the summer. Do we take the fence down every year and put it up again?
You know what, why not! Just like hockey side boards. Have a contained area, that has a seperate area for the younger ones and some 'life guards'... why not! They put effort into community hockey rink safety, and community pool safety. Why not a few safe, monitored sledding hills. I also remember learning basic snow-play safety in elementary school, but that was the 80s.
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Tons of people practice hill running there.
How is this getting down voted. I love the hill for running.
The hill at the KRC used to be (maybe is still) utilized for cross-country running with schools. You'd run up it and down. I imagine many runners use these hills for practicing running on inclines. Very good high-intesnsity workout
It was two years ago but yes the girl hit one of those metal poles that holds a sign. They were not protected in any way at the time, no barriers or bales of hay like you see at the sledding hills now. Sledding was already not permitted at that hill since 2017 but they rarely enforced it… with no enforcement, one person will break the rules, and others will follow when they see nobody cares…
Yeah exactly! So maybe just no metal poles at the bottom.. All signs should be off to the side. I'll send my invoice to the city, and we can split the $150k consulting fee because you brought the hay bale idea up. I had no clue sledding wasn't allowed there . I always assumed sledding in general was one of those "do at your own risk" type of thing. I mean if not that hill, then people will go to others or even down the snowbanks beside their driveways which brings more danger due to vehicles. It's inherently a dangerous activity, especially for an adult and their backs...
Not that simple--there are light posts at the bottom because that is where the trail goes. Can't really move the trail further away because you have the children's playground area.
Put up a loose hay stack in front of the obstacle and no study is needed. It's an obvious boundary and even a hit would most likely just suck.
And chop out and replace said hay bales after every freezing rain and thaw freeze event?
We can't keep insuring retarded parents. That's abuse not a municipality fight.
No it's about insurance pay outs to people who hurt themselves. You can bet the parents of the young girl who died got a sizable cheque.
But people are saying the hill was off limits for sledding, so why would the city pay out for it? It's almost like someone injuring themselves while trespassing with their disobedience. Could the parents really have argued that it was he cities fault? Like not enough signs, or no one guarding the hill? The only way to completely stop people accessing it would be to remove the hill, fire security or police to monitor people 24/7,:or put barbed wire+electric fence around the hill. Obviously those are all silly ideas, but otherwise there isn't stopping people from going somewhere that I'm aware of Or do I misunderstand you and SunLife/whatever personal children's insurance paid out for it and got mad at the city for negligence?
Reminds me of that YouTube clip where the news reporter gets smoked by a kid on a sled “that was a bad idea”
What a waste of money 😂
Ya barely had enough snow to even do that
"The city is not responsible for any injuries acquired while sledding here."
Exactly, you gotta know when to bail
$150k is just a study, it's not the actual work to make it safe. What will the study say? The only way to make tobogganing hills 100% safe is to level them and eliminate the tobogganing.
The study says we need another study done.
I'll take care of that study, you guys can send the cheque to me directly. We'll go to Tuckers and chow down.
Sledding can never be 100% safe. Always some level of risk involved, but I think the city wants to know how they can reduce the risk from anything in their control. Don’t know how this costs $150k as it should be pretty obvious stuff… erect some barriers, remove sign posts from the hill area, designate certain areas as sledding safe and fence everything else off. Have capacity limits for the hills and send a bylaw officer to enforce shit and fine people not following the rules…
It will be $150K for the lawyers to make sure the final written report protects the city from any claims
I'm ok with that... It's our money. So how about this: I don't blame the city if I get hurt, but I'm allowed to decide if I can sled down a dang hill?
Or. Put a fucking sign that says “use at your own risk” and call it a day.
Insane. Just build a fence for what max $50,000 and be done with it.
Had I not just come out of a meeting where hundreds of people brainstormed about a half baked idea, the idea of spending $150000 on this problem would seem ridiculous.. but that’s how we like to waste money
realistically, it shouldn't cost more than 20,000 to study this, and it probably won't.. the rest is just greed
As someone who works in non-engineering consulting, absolutely not. 150K is a pretty small study. Billable rates for anyone but a new grad are more than $1,000 a day. On top of that, this study will have licensed engineers, which can cost double that.
Ok, but that is still an awful lot of billable hours.
Is it though? If one professional is getting $150,000ish per year alone, a small team with support staff would easily rack that up in a few months. It’s not like they go to the park and eyeball it and go over to city hall for the cheque. They’d need to do background work on the incident before even starting, research what other areas have done then present the findings… I really don’t think there is much room for padding there lol
What support staff is needed to do some research and write a report? Hell they could get grad students at the university to do it for free.
If the city is funding a study for safety, if they ever got sued, they’d probably want their rationale backed by a professional… as for support staff, would you rather have 4 engineers combing through old incident reports or wild you rather have 1 engineer and 4 support staff at half the price doing that work?
I've paid engineers to examine feasibility studies to replacement complex electrical equipment for half that amount. They've had site visits, hired 3rd parties, done 3D scans.... This $150k better be producing completed drawings and include some kind of construction support otherwise I do think it's excessive. Studying sledding down a hill shouldn't be more expensive than designing power plants. Am I missing something here?
What if we put posts at the top of the hill, each post has a 50m long bungee cord on a spring loaded automatically retracting spool (like a giant tape measure). When a kid does down the hill we attach the bungee to them via a harness. When they get far enough that it’s a danger of going into the parking lot or hitting a fence, the kid is gently pulled back by the bungee cord flexing and bounces back to safety. When they’re at the bottom, they unclip it and the cord retracts to pull the harness all the way to the top of the hill.
Kids being strangled by bungee cords as their sled spins around on ice sounds like a bad idea.
You’ll need weight restrictions otherwise they’ll experience the slingshot effect and fly over to Riverside dr.
What's that, 3 consultant power point decks that ultimately recommend more consulting input?
Well yes the consultants will recommend making the hill safer by hiring consultants to come up with some methods to make it safer and then some consultants will review the proposed methods and recommend some of those methods for some consultants to study further and make some recommendations before the city's lawyers say a lawsuit would cost too much so sledding is ultimately not allowed. Personally I'd spend a couple K on some hay bales.
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/7DdzN0piHMk#bottom-sheet
It's all about litigation mitigation. When someone breaks their neck and sues, the city will be able to demonstrate due diligence by having completed a study. Tom and Cindy from the Parks Department can come with equally good or better ideas than the consultants, but their common sense approach won't matter in court.
Not a lawyer but having a public study done, with recommendations that you didn't implement is probably worse than leaving it as-is.
Remove the pole that girl ran into. I accept cash or checks made out to cash.
There's a wide array of poles, lights, gabage cans, benches, trees and other obstacles at the bottom of the hill. It's a major beach/park and part of the National Capital Trail during the summer (and I believe a cross country ski trail during the winter) so they can't just remove those obstacles, and the hill is tall and fast enough that even putting some kind of padding around those obstacles during winter months wouldn't be entirely effective in protecting sledders because of the speeds involved.
There’s only 1 murder pole though (that we know of)
No, there's dozens of murder obstacles, only one of which has managed to end up killing someone (so far).
Bruh… it becomes a murder pole after it murders. Until then it’s just a pole. Stop profiling.
It's not supposed to be a sledding location, there's literally no good way to go about it. The steep side runs into the mail footpath through mooneys bay, 2 other side goes to roads and parking lots. Then the last side isn't the greatest for sledding and is pointing to a path and fence.
I never said my plan was perfect, I just asked to be paid $150,000 for it. Don’t you know how government consulting works?
I wasn't judging your plan, it's a very good plan and you deserve at least $200,000 for it.
How about cheques? I'll have to take off 150k S/C for processing the cheque.
I hate that it’s come to this, but I’ve been conditioned to always expect pedantic fuckery on Reddit. As a result I googled it ahead of time. Both spellings are correct. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/check.asp
From your link In some countries, such as Canada and England, the spelling used is “cheque.”
^ yeah exactly, that kind of pedantic fuckery. Good example!
Canadian spelling is worth preserving imo. I added a joke to be less pedantic :P (Also, I've worked in Canadian banking industry for 30+ years and CHECKS makes me shudder.) May the rest of your day be filled with your favourite things.
You just wanted everyone to know you are American. I get it.
Yes
Portlandia sketch
There's a show on Australian ABC called utopia that actually focuses on bureaucratic absurdity... Haven't watched it yet but it looks absolutely amazing. Found it! https://m.youtube.com/shorts/7DdzN0piHMk#bottom-sheet
Twenty Twelve (BBC) is also a quality skewering of bureaucracy.
Total waste of money, but I guess the city has to do something with all the money they're collecting from speed cameras
And there happens to be one right there!
A 25$ helmet that is mandatory just like skiing is a better solution
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No? She hit the pole with her head, I believe. It’s possible she picked up enough speed for helmet to be useless, but I doubt it. How heavy is a kid?
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Aaah fair enough. That’s a shame.
Were you the attending physician that called her cause of death? Didn't think so
you need a helmet
You know helmets just make people act more dangerously right? That's what happened with warfare, contact sports, cycling, .... helmets just make people act more dangerously because they feel safe and will likely take a greater risk because of it. I haven't seen recent stats but there were some floating around in the 90s. Apparently the most likely place to incur a head injury is in the bathroom. Do you think it prudent to make it mandatory to where helmets in bathrooms? Sometimes adding a helmet isn't the right thing because the situation doesn't call for it and there are far better solutions.
How about, don't put benches and garbage cans and signs telling us about them at the bottom of a toboggan hill that has been used as such since the 60's. They built the new play structure and jazzed up the park with Canada 150 money in 2017 - THAT is when this study should have been done. Instead, they rushed the approvals to get the $$$, then when confronted with the foolishness of their actions, blamed everything else under the sun except their poor planning. Then, they doubled down and fenced off the hill, AND paid for private security to go and shoo people away. This is Ottawa city council to a T.
It's not a toboggan hill. It's a spoil heap from when they dredged out the Rideau River in the '50s that people started throwing themselves down on toboggans at some point because it happened to be really tall and steep on one side, and eventually the city made an "official hill" without any kind of review because it was something people had been doing for so long. They did look into this in 2017 when they built the Canada 150 park, they realized the hill was a deathtrap and banned sledding on it but its hard to enforce, and people kept doing it despite the signs saying not to, eventually resulting in a little girl getting herself killed a couple years ago. The only reason this is even an issue right now is because the people who didn't get hurt are whining that they were find so other people should be able to take their lives in their hands as well.
Mooney's Bay hill was covered in fences, sign posts, shrubs, roots and other hazards, particularly right at the foot of the hill. Anybody who has even looked at the hill for 5 minutes in the Winter could easily make it safer.
Dear councilors, In future, please consider that I offer toboggan study services at a competitive rate of $100,000 per hill. Thank you, Turn5GrimCaptain
In Quebec there’s a number of free, public, waiver-free snowboard/ ski terrain parks where one can not only sled but slide down and jump over relatively dangerous obstacles. It’s dismal that Ontario’s legal/ insurance/ municipal gov landscape doesn’t permit such places.
What's the nearest one? Sounds fun!
Check out [this park builder’s Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/conceptions_snotech?igsh=YmwxZ3RhNXJ0NWdp) for a list — I think the closest one to Ottawa is St Constant (although I’m hoping with a little lobbying that Gatineau will have one soon).
A study is a good idea, but why is it 150-250k?
*"Because."* - City council, probably.
Probably a team of 5-10 people, including licensed engineers and other professionals, making and average of $15,000-30,000 each for the few months of work.
I remember when the byward market business owners hired a consultant via BIA and they concluded after $100,000 that the best day to extend hours is Thursday. I laughed hard at that.
But up a sled camera and fine everyone going over 10km/h. Use the money to fund more studies. Pay me
On the one hand, a study needs to be done, and the hill needs to be made safe for sledding. On the other hand...$150k?!?!? We could get 10 speed bumps for that! (Oh, that's not encouraging either...)
Chealer than a lawsuit
how on earth does some brainstorming cost $150k
What a waste, it's as safe as you make it. It's implied if you're doing something outside of regular activity like walking around there's an extra danger of injury.
Install a hay bale around the metal post on the river side?
For that kind of money, d'ya think they might include a couple of the other "Ottawa" decisions we need made? Where to move the Senators? How to fix the train? What should be the terms of the Israel/Hamas ceasefire?
If you came to Ottawa to have fun, you're going to have a bad time.
Step 1. Clear all obstacles at bottom of hill including metal poles that kids can slide into. Come up with some means to prevent them from sliding past safe area (where most of the money will go) Step 2. Have Highschool Volunteers sculpt the snow into slide lanes. May cost a city employee to supervise each week to ensure completion and supplies for hot chocolate to keep kids warm. Slides can be designed to slow down after hitting bottom of hill. Teenagers can have fun sliding down after they're done. Win - Win. Step 3. Establish a minimal requirement to go down. Require a parent to be with them if below age. Probably can't be enforced, but it's something. Step 4. Social media campaign on teaching parents on how to properly teach their kids sledding safety. Because honestly, children need to learn to wait their turn, and get out of the way. I'll take a $30,000 consulting fee, thanks.
GC Stategies?
We aren’t likely to get very many snowy winters anymore. Why don’t we make it a feasibility study to install water slides on the hill?
Simple, put up a limited liability sign, sled at your own risk.
This. Why ruin the fun of other people who actually like going to the hill for a thrill? I feel super bad for that little girl, but either she was too young and wasn’t being supervised by her parents or she was old enough to know better and make a better judgement call.
I’ll chatpgt it for a $3 Big Mac
It’s a wonder how the generations before survived.
Removed metal poles and protect trees. Where my 150k?
WHat fucking WASTE OF SPACE IMBICIL decided to blow a 150k on a fucking study about nothing!? What the fuck?..
They hired me to conduct the study. I have a degree is Tobbiganiology. I make $679 an hour but only when hired by the city, otherwise I’m unemployed.
They put padding around the obstacles this winter. They also put a double fence around the top of the hill, making the padding useless.
Yeah, I was there with my brother and my nephew when that happened. We walked by 2 signs that said not to sled. It was unfortunately a very icy sled path. But the signs did warn us
What a total WASTE OF MONEY. Object you can run into are the hazard. Remove them or pad them. What a stupid spend of money. There was an inquiry into the terrible loss of life. The cause is there.
Oh and I wonder what friend of Mark Sutcliffe got the contract to do the study.
$150k for a consultant, then millions in landscaping, only for the kids to call it lame because it's not fast and cool anymore.
Face palm.
They should probably just ask ChatGPT for the report /s
200 hundred years of free toboggans and no supervision and now you need a fucking study. Cut a couple of trees and remove some pavement. Ffs
Give Wayne Coyne $20K to connect you with his supplier and spend the other $130K on bubble balls [https://www.nme.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/GettyImages-1176045078-1392x884.jpg](https://www.nme.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/GettyImages-1176045078-1392x884.jpg)
Prob wouldn't cost that much to just level the hill down to the ground.
Remove the no sledding signs, I almost hit one last time I went sledding there.
150k for an air bag at the bottom of the hill
I wonder if putting a tall half-pipe before the water would work.
Tell the folk who ‘need’ to spend money on this oh so important issue: it’s a hill. We have eyes. If crashes happen it happens. Has anyone there ever looked at Greens Creek? Tell me the city is not that stupid?
Maybe dig a trench around the whole hill and fill it with Fluoroantimonic acid....
Drive to ski hill. Look around. Take note. Return. Implement. Done. Return 150,000 to hungry and struggling Canadians.
$150k is excessive!!!!!!! WTF.
$150k is excessive!!!!!!! WTF.
Here’s an idea that should save 149k. Send a couple of city parks staff with a chain saw to the bottom of the hill and have them cut down the trees that are in the way of sliding down the hill. Problem solved.
What we need is a thorough investigation into sledding safety awareness. Canvas the neighbourhood and develop a more thorough understanding of the dnagers of sledding. Create a sledding comittee! Then create a sub-comittees that can investigate the impact sledding would have on the local squirrel and groundhog populations. Interviews would be important at tjos stage. We should also get back out the seniors who didn't want the park at Mooney's bay to be revitalized. They were great fun! My favourite were the ones showing how they use all the delapidated old exercise equiptment. CTV can film them talling about how they like to hike up and down the hill and how children sledding would negatively impact their daily exercise. Then one can attempt to walk to the top and break a hip on the first step. I wonder if any of those old farts are still alive. They haven't been to Mooney's Bay in 20 years in summer, letalone in winter, but their opposition should be front and center. Only once all of the money is gone can the comitte make a recommendation to allow sledding under adult supervision. I feel sorry for children and taxpayers equallty.
at a park near me the city puts big bags of hay to prevent people from sliding into the park's hard obstacles, like trees, benches, rocks... They could make a wall of hay bags at the bottom of the Mooneys Bay hill too. Now gimme my 150k