Sunday was Canada Day, and as the old joke goes there’s no better way to celebrate your country’s independence than by blowing up a small part of it. Since the Small Girl is almost two now and old enough to appreciate cool things I decided to go get some fireworks and set them off.
The reputable stores like Wal Mart and Canadian Tire, as it turned out, did not sell fireworks, presumably because their corporate lawyers were opposed to lawsuits from maimed and burned customers. The less reputable stores, however, such as the 24-hour off brand convenience store on Upper Middle Road, were quite happy to sell prospective amputees any number of gaily packaged products with gunpowder in them.
Truly, the selection of fireworks at the Quik-Stop (its outside adorned with a twelve-foot banner reading FIREWORKS!) was amazing. Much of the front of the store had been given over to bins of rockets, sparklers, Roman candles and my personal favourite, the burning schoolhouse, which is just a little cardboard schoolhouse you set on fire. One particularly impressive set retailed for $139.99, which sounds like a lot but I’m telling you, you got value for your money; it must have had 40 different weapons in it, some of them a couple of feet long. Fireworks could be bought individually or in any number of combinations. I settled on a $13.99 set that had just four or five things in it plus some sparklers. My purchasing decision was based on three criteria:
- I didn’t want to spend a lot of money,
- I didn’t want to kill myself, and
- I didn’t want to have to leave my back yard.
The set I bought seemed quite modest. Two tube things that were supposed to shoot pretty fireworks into the air, each about six inches long; two things that shot rockets into the air that were supposed to make a loud bang, and a cone-shaped thing that was supposed to emit a shower of sparks.
We came home and got ready in the back yard. Our home backs onto an alley, and across the alley from us is a small conservation area, so if I aimed the fireworks slightly out of our back yard I had what I thought was a pretty clear path. I set up the first firework, one of the tube shooty things, and Mrs. RickJay and the Small Girl retreated to the patio door. I figured this was going to be a pretty unimpressive sight, inasmuch as the firework looked pathetic. It was half the size of a large cup of coffee. But the 21-month-old had never seen anything like it and is impressed by anything and is frightened by loud noises, so I figured something modest would fit the bill.
I lit the fuse and backed off about eight feet, which I assumed would be a safe distance.
KABOOM!!!
The fucking thing EXPLODED in a tremendous crack and a blinding flash of light. Red balls of fire, two dozen or more, shot eighty feet into the air, arcing equally far across the alley, over the conservation area, and terrifyingly close to the leaves and branches of a fifty-foot tree. The back yard was filled with thick, grey smoke and the stench of cordite. It was like being shelled in a First World War trench, except more festive. Sparks shot everywhere, bouncing off my wood fence and into our gardens. I was struck absolutely frozen in horror. People around the townhouse complex who were standing a hundred feet away shrieked in terror and ran away. I watched the tree in absolute terror, praying it would not catch fire, then turned to look at my wife and daughter. My wife had exactly the same look of shock and horror on her face that I knew I had.
My little girl clapped her hands and said, “Again?”
