Mainstreeter Staff
Newspapers report the news, they don’t make the news. But on the evening of December 22nd, that old chestnut of the newspaper business got turned on its head – and so did The Mainstreeter’s Flora Footbridge newspaper box, hand-painted by our resident sketch artist Tim Hunt.
Photo by Tim Hunt
That evening, just three days before Christmas, vandals, for reasons known only to them, uprooted our familiar newsbox from its accustomed resting spot near the corner of Clegg Street and Colonel By Drive (see photo to the left), carted it to the middle of the Flora Footbridge and proceeded to dump it over the footbridge’s top railing. It plummeted far below to the frozen Canal and crashed on its belly, spilling newly placed copies of the December issue of the newspaper (see photo to the left below) onto the pock-marked ice surface.
Photo by Alicia Beazley
By-passers noticed the desolate little newsbox the next morning in the cold light of day. As can be seen from the photo to the right, our beloved newsbox sustained considerable damage – a crumpled side panel, a dislodged front panel, a smashed plexiglass window and, worst of all, some serious paint flaking and cracking, marring Tim Hunt’s wonderful artistic handiwork.
Photo by Tim Hunt
Armed with a ladder, our intrepid news reporter, John Dance, scaled the Canal railings and began dragging the newsbox off the ice, whereupon three other residents, Alicia Beazley, Andrew Valencik, and Tim Jordan thankfully joined in to help. Together, they raised the damaged box from the Canal and returned it to its home by the big oak tree near the foot of Flora’s staircase.
That’s when artist Tim Hunt stepped in. He had noticed that the newsbox had gone missing from its normal perch and reached out to The Mainstreeter to learn of its fate. Once informed, he offered to transport the damaged newsbox back to his home and vowed to return it to its former glory.
The goal he set was to return the newsbox back to its rightful home, fully repaired and freshly repainted, by no later than February 9th, the date on which the new issue of The Mainstreeter that you are now reading was scheduled to be published.
Brilliant sunshine on February 6th marked the fitting finale of Tim Hunt’s loving restoration of The Mainstreeter’s familiar newsbox which vandals dumped off the Flora Footbridge in late December. Photo by Lorne Abugov
Check out this short video that Tim has put together showing the restoration of our newspaper box https://youtu.be/rONyrcWvD6E
Also the CBC did a story on Tim Hunt’s restoration of our Mainstreeter newspaper box at the Flora Bridge location.
Ottawa artist refurbishes newspaper box flung from bridge onto frozen canal https://bit.ly/3IAJWBq.
