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7 fireworks permits issued for Halloween season this year in Port Hardy

Why exactly are so few people in town following the district’s bylaw?
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Black Press Media file photo

The District of Port Hardy issued just seven permits for fireworks this Halloween season, which was the exact same amount as the previous year.

District staff also confirmed that the various businesses in town that sell fireworks were provided permit applications to give out to potential customers, yet the number of people who followed the bylaw still remained low (in 2019 there were nine permits issued, and in 2020 the number of permits issued jumped a little bit higher to 13).

RELATED: 13 fireworks permits issued for Halloween 2020

RELATED: District of Port Hardy tightens up fireworks bylaw

The district’s fireworks bylaw states that any person 19 years of age or older, before discharging consumer fireworks, must apply for and receive a permit, and that permit applications for consumer fireworks events must be submitted to the district no later than 12:00 noon on Oct. 31 and, if Oct. 31 falls on a day other than a business day, no later than 12:00 noon of the last business day prior to Oct. 31.

So why exactly are so few people in town following the district’s bylaw?

When asked to comment, Ross Blackwell, the district’s director of corporate and development services, confirmed that there’s always “a cohort of people who don’t get permits, and the amount of people can change every year,” he said. “They might not even know there’s a permitting process.”

Mayor Pat Corbett-Labatt agreed, stating she’s not sure if all the residents in town actually realize they need to get a permit to use fireworks on Halloween, “and if they don’t get a permit they could be charged.”


@NIGazette
editor@northislandgazette.com

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Tyson Whitney

About the Author: Tyson Whitney

I have been working in the community newspaper business for nearly a decade, all of those years with Black Press Media.
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