Canadians pass on fireworks, go for kindness to animals instead

Instead of shocking animals, and people, with the loud booms of fireworks the city of Banff took a kinder and gentler path.

The Globe and Mail:

Canada Day fireworks in Banff this weekend went off without a bang.

The town switched to a pyrotechnics display like you might see at a rock concert over fireworks for its holiday celebrations going forward, so as not to terrify the thousands of animals, wild and domestic, that live in the area.

We wanted to minimize the impact on wildlife in the townsite and obviously the surrounding national park, as loud fireworks can be stressful to them, Deputy Mayor Corrie DiManno said. And for us, moving to special-effect pyrotechnics helps us to walk the talk, so to speak. We consider ourselves leaders in this area of environmental preservation so we wanted to make sure that we were doing all we can.