Harbour Grace airhorn draws council’s attention

By Olivia Bradbury / Local Journalism Initiative Reporter

The new chairman of Harbour Grace council’s parks and recreation committee said his group is looking at the accessibility of all the town’s public spaces and parks.

Deputy Mayor Gary Baker, who is a medical doctor by profession, said accessibility concerns have been raised in the past. He noted that, this past summer, a resident raised a concern that S.W. Moores Memorial Park, which is located across the street from the Town Hall, is difficult for disabled people to enter.

“In light of all of that, we’re going to assess all the parks and public spaces to determine which ones need accessibility (infrastructure),” said Baker. “We’ll have a meeting, and obviously have it brought to council, and we’ll deal with that at that point in time.”

In other committee news, Baker said a resident has raised concerns about the use of the air horn at the Danny Cleary Harbour Grace Community Centre and its impact on people’s hearing.

“It’s a very valid letter,” said Baker. “The points he brings up are extremely valid. Hearing health is extremely important, particularly when you’re dealing with things like an airhorn, which would be a commercial type airhorn connected to a commercial air compressor in a building that size. The acoustics are not very good in that type of building.”

Baker explained that the number of decibels —the unit of measurement for noise —generated by an instrument such as the airhorn would be extremely high. He said he will look into health and safety issues and get parameters and criteria that can guide the Town and the arena in deciding whether the airhorn can continue to be used or should be banned from the building.

“I know that that machine is used on an impulse basis,” Baker said. “It’s done when a goal is scored and so on. But the actual decibels that it generates, the sound, noise of that particular item would be far exceeding what would be a normal noise level.”

Baker said the committee will eventually bring back its recommendations on the matter for council.