Can a 'night mayor' restore fun to a city?

Big day for the country: the City of Ottawa has introduced its Night Mayor. The man who will bring fun — at night! — back to Ottawa!

- BRUCE ARTHUR

This week Ottawa introduced its first-ever nightlife commissioner, Night Mayor Mathieu Grondin.

He will unroll the sidewalks, shake up the town, maybe even bring back the Rideau Street McDonald’s, home of the nation’s most famous fight involving a baby raccoon. The Night Mayor will transform the nation’s capital into a place where anything can happen after 6 p.m., within the reasonable context of local noise and nuisance laws.

It is a weighty responsibility, in a country where making fun of Ottawa’s lack of fun is a part of our national vocabulary. Maybe that’s why if you meet Ottawa’s Night Mayor, he may even deny he is the Night Mayor at all.

“I am not the night mayor, but I am beyond humbled and excited to stand before you as Ottawa’s first-ever nightlife commissioner,” said the Night Mayor, Mathieu Grondin, when he was introduced Monday. He’s from Montreal, naturally.

And of course, there is doubt. It’s not just that Ottawa is known as the town that fun forgot — it’s that it is so well known that Grondin said, “I think Ottawa is going to be the city that fun remembers!” in his introductory press conference, and the mayor of Ottawa, Mark Sutcliffe, is already grousing that anyone is even referencing this at all. Also, the day mayor seems irked by people calling Grondin the Night Mayor.