Town of Oakville, Tyler Brown
Miles of deadly sharp kite string has become a summer hazard for Vanessa Warren, her animals and her staff.
Warren owns The Ranch, a horse-riding property on Burnhamthorpe Road between Hwy. 407 and the Sixteen Mile Creek.
Over the last three years, the residue from the hobby of kite-fighting has landed on her property, ensnaring horses and riders, becoming entangled in farm machinery and endangering people and wildlife.
This is not typical kite string, but rather, the super-sharp string used in kite fighting – a sport popularized in Kahled Hosseini's best-selling book The Kite Runner.
Fighters fly kites with sharp string made of metal, piano wire, fishing line or line coated with glass fragments, seeking to cut their opponent's kites out of the sky by severing their lines.
The last kite in the air is the winner of the fight.
The runaway kites plummet to the ground, often trailing many metres of super-sharp line that snarls in trees, stretches across trails and lands atop crops.
Warren has had horses and riders tangled in the lines, which sometimes spread across acres of her property.
"I don't think people, unless they've done the research or held the line, understand how dangerous it can be," she says. "It's really difficult to see until you're in it."
As the problem has worsened, she's headed to nearby Glenorchy Conservation Area and the lands north of Oakville's hospital to try and reason with kite-fighters, who sometimes gather by the dozens to battle.
They are always polite, typically reassuring her that they send people out to pick up downed kites.
Warren, whose property is on the other side of the 407 from where the fights take place, says that's obviously not the case, nor is it even possible.
"There's no way they can cover all that ground, and they can't watch where (the kites) are going."
She's thankful that the kite lines have caused only minor injuries on her property so far but is particularly worried that kites floating across the highway will clothesline a passing motorcyclist.
"I would absolutely like to see an outright ban on this sport," says Warren. "I just don't see how there's a safe way to do it."
Strings can slit your neck
Ward 4 councillor Allan Elgar agrees. He would also like to see the potentially lethal sport banned.
Elgar's request for town staff to investigate the problem resulted in a tepid report that landed before the June 19 meeting of town council.
The report recommended discussion of budgeting for a public education campaign, along with a bylaw amendment that would make it an offence to "throw, place or deposit kite fighting string" on a property.
Jim Barry, the town's director of municipal enforcement, told councillors it would be better to meet with enthusiasts and discourage the activity, as the town "doesn't necessarily have the tools" to enforce an outright ban at this time.
Elgar made it clear he wasn't satisfied with that response.
"These strings can slit your neck – and they do slit necks," he said, referring to the deaths of three people in India earlier this year when they were entangled in glass-coated kite strings.
"Why would we allow a sport like this that will cause somebody's death in Oakville – and probably it will be somebody on a motorcycle, I would guess."
In late 2021, resident Elise Box discovered just how dangerous the kite line could be.
She was on the Dundas Street bridge above Lions Valley Park when a kite careened into the power towers.
In a letter to council, she described how its dangling coarse black string hooked on a passing car ran across the pedestrian walkway where she stood and cut through her hand like a razor, resulting in the near loss of her finger.
"Can council conscientiously believe a public education campaign will result in better safety from dangerous and hazardous materials?" she asked.
The staff report also earned a skeptical response from resident Tyler Brown, whose September 2021 video recording is attached in an appendix to the staff report.
He notes that the video starts with footage of a kite that has been cut loose and goes "careening into the wilds with hundreds of feet of glass shard razor line attached to it."
"Then I show a dozen individuals with a dozen vehicles, each with at least ten fighter kites in its trunk and tens of thousands of feet of glass shard razor line," Brown writes. "You can also see the practice of using power drills to reel the kites out hundreds of feet."
Town of Oakville, Tyler Brown
"It is not only the game that is dangerous but the scale of damage that can be done," he adds. "12 individuals x 10 kites x 400 ft of glass shard razor line = 48,000 ft of glass shard razor line potentially scattered in an afternoon.
"There is no way for these individuals to collect all of their trashed kites and glass shard razor line; the scale is too immense."
Bylaws can be for education, says councillor
Other town councillors also expressed their disappointment with the staff recommendation.
Toronto has passed a bylaw banning kite string made of hazardous materials from public parks, noted Ward 5 councillor Jeff Knoll.
He added that town staff also initially rejected the idea of a bylaw to ban pesticides because it wasn't enforceable.
"Bylaws have multiple purposes," said Knoll. "They have the purpose of being enforced, but they also have the purpose of educating."
Town councillors eventually directed staff to develop additional options for controlling kite-fighting in time for council's August meeting.
