I was watching a gymnastics competition one time. A very petite, very accomplished woman gymnast gave a dazzling performance on the uneven parallel bars, the balance beam, and performed as though the law of gravity didn’t apply to her during her floor program.
Heading back to the area where her coach and teammates were applauding her, she tripped and fell over a gym bag sitting on the floor. She stuck the landing, if by stuck you mean falling pretty much flat on her face.
I guess she didn’t notice the bag. It wasn’t clearly marked. There were no warning signs posted. No police tape around it. No flashing lights. Just a highly visible gym bag minding its own business right in the path she chose to walk.
Perhaps the teammate who left the bag there was at fault. For all I know, it was the gymnast’s own bag. Maybe the bag moved itself. Who knows?
The gymnast, embarrassed, got up, grinned, and twisted her face into a “duh” expression. End of story.
I saw an actor in a play make a dramatic entrance, trip over a small ottoman on the set, and take a pratfall. The audience laughed, as people are prone to do at what looks like slapstick. But it wasn’t a comedy, and the actor either had forgotten or didn’t notice the ottoman. Perhaps he was busy trying to remember his next line, or freaked out because he momentarily couldn’t. Maybe he was just flushed with the excitement of his big scene about to unspool.
He recovered his composure and continued the performance.
And in a quintessentially Canadian moment, I listened with rapt attention to an Inuit woman who was giving a talk about a long list of colonial injustices visited on her people in Labrador by various government bodies. As she spoke, she paced. At one point she backed into the lectern where she’d left her notes. Without thinking, she turned and said, “sorry.” To the wooden lectern. How very Canadian—apologizing to an inanimate object she’d just run into.
She laughed when I pointed it out to her later in the day. “I forgot it was there,” she said.
And so it goes. We’re all klutzes at some time in our lives. We trip over things we’d never imagine we might trip over. We run into things with our cars, bikes, strollers, shopping carts. We capsize a kayak we’ve successfully entered and exited hundreds of times before. We slip and fall on ice we’ve been walking on for the last hundred metres.
Most of the time, we only suffer an ego injury. Sometimes we suffer more than that. Sometimes, other people get hurt. Sometimes there is negligence involved. Other times, just our own momentary clumsiness.
Quite often, we’re doing something that isn’t as benign as, say, giving a talk. Often we sign a waiver of liability before we do those things. Like skiing and snowboarding. Or rafting. Or, or, or...
The waiver transfers the risk of injury to us and away from whomever is in charge of the cool thing we’re about to do, as well as others who have some greater or lesser tangential interest. The waiver used to exonerate the Queen, because we skied on Crown Land, and who better to sue than the Queen? Maybe the new waivers protect the King. I don’t know. I stopped reading them years ago.
I don’t read them, because if I don’t sign I don’t get to go. I know I’m waiving things I can’t believe I waive, like my right to sue in the event of gross negligence on the part of one of the company’s employees. I know that clause has held up in court. So it’s either accept or go home.
I’ve often thought a day without a waiver in Whistler is a day wasted. Just about everything we do here has a way to hurt us.
And I’ve argued in the past that Whistler should erect signs at each end of town, along the highway, advising people Whistler is an inherently dangerous resort community and visiting involves various risks, dangers and hazards. Telling them by entering the town’s borders they assume all risk of personal injury, death or property loss resulting from any cause whatsoever, including negligence, breach of contract or duty of care owed under the Occupiers’ Liability Act. And that by proceeding past the signs, they’ve agreed to the terms outlined.
Then again, I’m sure such a warning and implied waiver wouldn’t have mattered to whomever filed the current suit against Vail Resorts, the B.C. government, Arts Whistler, the Whistler Arts Council, the RMOW, WB, ABC Company, and John and Jane Doe for tripping over a well-camouflaged chairlift.
I object! I happen to know ABC Company and the Does are very responsible people who have never, ever hurt a fly.
The injured party tripped over an outrageously decorated chairlift sitting somewhere between the WB admin building and Merlin’s Bar on the Benchlands two years ago. Looking like nothing so much as an altar to Ullr, the chairlift snuck up on the tripee and/or quickly scooted over to place itself in her path, resulting in a fall causing life-changing injuries, not the least of which is enmeshing her in the cumbersome legal system.
Hey, I get it. The Benchlands are rife with hazards that make Kyiv look like Disneyland. There are stairs, curbs, benches, buildings, handrails, planters, and tourists all waiting to trip up someone exercising due care... like looking where they’re going instead of texting and eating ice cream at the same time. Not that anything like that was going on in this case, but I can attest from personal experience doing both of those things at the same time is enough to make a person trip over something as small as a garbage truck. Don’t ask how I know.
And let’s be honest. If you were walking along, rubbernecking at all the distractions the Benchlands have to offer, you might not notice something as tiny as a three-person chairlift decorated with a Viking helmet replete with twisty horns, tridents festooning the back and long skis serving as a base.
Sure, it may seem obvious to anyone not utilizing a seeing-eye dog—and, of course, a seeing-eye dog would certainly notice it—but really, that’s beside the point. It simply shouldn’t have been there. Or there should have been big signs warning everyone, by name, that they were about to encounter a tripping hazard. Or flashing lights. Or a moose to block peoples’ path and keep them far away from the dangerous, inanimate object.
A clear cut case if ever I saw one. Negligence? You bet. Whose? Duh.
