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Mono kite fighting bylaw gets first reading

March 28, 2024   ·   0 Comments

By JAMES MATTHEWS, LOCAL JOURNALISM INITIATIVE

Mono council has given its proposed kite fighting bylaw a first reading.

Fred Simpson, the town’s clerk, said during council’s March 26 meeting that the draft bylaw to prohibit kite fighting will be open for public comments following the first reading.

The proposed fines for a person contravening the bylaw are $5,000 for a first offence and $10,000 for any subsequence offence. These increase to $50,000 for a first offence if committed by a corporation and $100,000 for subsequent offences.

“These fines are great,” said Councillor Melinda Davie.

She said about 7,000 people attended a kite fighting festival held in Mono last year, so somebody made money off the gathering.

A South Asian festival that involved flying kites in July 2023 resulted in the creation of the bylaw banning kite fighting.

Basant Mela is the spring festival of kites to many people in northern India and Pakistan’s Punjab province. It traditionally welcomes the spring season. But was a little more than watching a few kites take flight in the sky above the Orangeville Agricultural Society’s Fairgrounds.

“We were sandbagged over the kite-flying, combative kite-flying,” Mayor John Creelman said in July 2023.

Based on the fallout from the event, council discussed the need to ban flying kites in the municipality. Property owners complained about the debris that fell from the kites that battled in the sky. Island Lake Conservation Area was also littered with material from the kites, much of them being pulled from trees and waterways.

But such a wide-sweeping ban would cause problems for a child who wants to fly a kite in his backyard. So council determined a ban on kite fighting instead of kite flying would be more appropriate.

Mono council’s next meeting is April 9.

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