were cancelled by major afternoon thunderstorms<\/a> that brought flash floods and power outages. <\/p>\n“It was deemed by Canadian Heritage that it was safer to dispose of them that way rather than dismantle and move them, so they took this step in conjunction with Bluesfest,” he said.<\/p>\n
CBC News and Radio-Canada have asked Canadian Heritage for comment and have not yet heard back.<\/p>\n
WATCH | Some of the surprise display:![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783711450_927_default.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Fireworks light up Ottawa skies after Bluesfest concert<\/p>\n
Video captured from a neighbourhood west of downtown Ottawa shows the fireworks launched at Bluesfest at LeBreton Flats on Thursday minutes before 11 p.m.<\/p>\n
The city said its team handling special events decided not to tell people about the fireworks show to avoid a large number of people gathering outside of a major music festival, creating an “event surrounding an event.”<\/p>\n
“After considering the available options, [the team] determined that the public safety risks associated with encouraging additional attendance in the surrounding area outweighed the benefits of broader notification,” said Ryan Perrault, Ottawa’s emergency and protective services general manager.<\/p>\n
Leiper was angry at the decision and fundamentally disagreed with it, he wrote online.<\/p>\n
“A no-notice fireworks show of this scale is completely inappropriate and legitimately frightened Ottawa residents,” he wrote.<\/p>\n
The city told Bluesfest not to advise the public the fireworks would happen, a festival spokesperson told CBC News. <\/p>\n
The fireworks lasted roughly 11 to 12 minutes from about 10:53 p.m., the city said, and as of Friday morning it had received nearly 40 complaints.<\/p>\n
“City staff will consider feedback received as part of the post-event debrief process to ensure any lessons learned are incorporated into future planning,” the city’s Perrault said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":793417,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[49,48,44],"class_list":["post-793416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-canada","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=793416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/793416\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/793417"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=793416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=793416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=793416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"Text](\"https:\/\/www.cbc.ca\/a\/assets\/texttospeech.svg\")
<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/1783711449_172_default.jpg\")
Thursday’s fireworks show in downtown Ottawa surprised many people, based on the number of messages to CBC News and nearby city councillors. (CBC)<\/p>\n