Jaywalking Ad Gripping But Tasteful

It’s not what city public works GM Alain Gonthier did, it’s how he did it.

By his own admission, Gonthier didn’t give council a heads up on his graphic road safety campaign. That’s become a very bad habit at Ottawa City Hall and it needs to stop. It partially (very partially) explains some of the problems with light rail and Lansdowne and the like.

City staff regularly withholds information, spins it and downright lies. It also lies by omission.

So Gonthier didn’t inform council which is a sacred democratic duty for a public servant.

He was wrong. He admitted he was wrong. He apologized.

Case closed. It takes a big man to admit he was wrong and apologize. Gonthier is a big man in this. Good on him.

Let’s go from ‘how’ he created this campaign to the ‘what’ question.

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The images are graphic if you are so sensitive that you think that warm milk is harsher than pablum. This is pretty tame stuff. Wild stuff at city hall perhaps, where colour is wearing your hat at a jaunty angle.

But in advertising, the road-safety campaign is gripping but not obscene. If you want obscene, check out the continuing noversight by council on light rail.

What Gonthier’s campaign is guilty of is being gripping. Much better than the dancing credit cards given to us by OC Transpo. Gonthier’s campaign matters and treats the subject in a harsh but acceptable way.

The message is: “If you decide to jaywalk, you could end up like this guy. We don’t want you to end up like this guy so, please, don’t jaywalk. It’s for your own good and it matters.”

Nothing wrong with that as long as it is done in a tasteful manner. The Gonthier ad is concerning in a good way but tasteful. What is distasteful is the way that woke politicians are cashing in on the real or imagined public furour over the ad. Anything for publicity these politicians. Anything to reinforce the siloed thinking of these pols and their woke cultist followers.

The real world is much more harsh than this ad. As someone who has made a small but significant part of his career chasing ambulances, this is nothing compared to the horrid blood and guts you see at real crashes. It makes you sick to your stomach and also gives you the utmost respect for the people who deal with the aftermath of such incidents.

And what kind of effect can that have on you. Not good. A colleague of your agent attended accidents in his job at a media outlet very regularly. I would see him outside smoking a cigarette to the very end. I’d ask him how it was going? He’d reply, “This job … this job” and look down shaking his head.

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One day he didn’t show up for work. Then another day. And another day. In fact, he never came back to work again. He had a breakdown. The job made him very seriously ill. Poor man. Terrible.

So Gonthier’s ad does not remotely approach the level of improper.

But there is another discussion for another day. Should the city be spending its money on noble, but hopeless, causes? Will this ad or campaign or other publicity efforts stop this plague of jaywalking. Unlikely.

In fact, some pedestrians might be looking at the ad on their phone as they jaywalk across city streets, for all the good the ad will do.

That’s not nice, but it’s reality and that was what Gonthier was trying to illustrate.

Ken Gray

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