by Kathryn Hunt
You pass them every day: the aluminium cylinders fixed around utility poles and lampposts along the streets of Centretown. Usually, they carry at least a few posters, announcing everything from major festivals to political rallies to concerts to lost pets.
These collars are maintained by the City of Ottawa as a means of controlling postering. They are a legal postering space provided as an alternative to attaching posters to telephone poles, fences, walls, or any other unauthorized space.
Postering somewhere other than the collars, if there is a collar within 200 metres, is prohibited. While there was some backlash against the poster collars in the past, due to the limited space they provide, in general they have been accepted by the people most likely to use them: artists, community organizations, not-for-profit groups, and event promoters.
Specific bylaws govern the size of the posters and where they can be placed, and while the bylaw also states that those who put posters up are responsible for removing them after their event is over, the City also has workers remove all posters from the collars on the first and 15th of each month to avoid buildup.
However, event organizers and artists downtown have recently been noticing that the posters are being removed outside of those times.
Local musician Rolf Klausener, member of the bands Acorn and Silken Laumann, has started a campaign to stop what he calls “poster vigilantes,” people who are taking it upon themselves to remove the posters.
He has started a hashtag on Twitter, #postervigilante, to spread awareness of the issue, drawing comments like this one from Third Wall Theatre’s Twitter account: “#postervigilante has got to be stopped! This time #dumbwaiter posters lasted 2 days in the Glebe.”
Dusty Owl Reading Series coordinator Steven Zytveld remembers an earlier controversy over poster collars. Expressing surprise that the issue was resurfacing, he said, “I thought that the postering bylaw from 10 or so years ago—which I consider to be an effort by the pro-gentrification lobby to stifle independent culture—was supposed to settle all this.”
He stresses that the poster collars are legitimate spaces. “Because these vigilantes have begun attacking posters that are legitimate in the eyes of the law, this is a gross violation of free expression in public space, and even worse it is a direct assault on our neighbourhood’s cultural vitality and diversity.”
Most posterers assume that whoever is removing the posters is doing it because they believe them to be unsightly, although no one can be certain, since the individuals are acting on their own and have not stated their reasons.
“The recent reports that have reached me that people putting up posters have been threatened by one or more vigilantes disturbs me greatly,” Zytveld added. “That violence has been brought into the equation, even if it is merely threatened or implicit, makes me think that somebody has taken this all too far.”
Questions about postering bylaws can be addressed to the City by calling 311 or visiting the City website at ottawa.ca.