Sadly, the CN Tower won't become a giant goal light
It's been a nine years since the Maple Leafs hit the ice for a playoff game, so you'll forgive fans of the Buds for getting a little overexcited. One plan to celebrate this little taste of success is to turn the CN Tower into a giant goal light every time the team scores during the post season.
The concept stems from a petition by George Brown student Scott Booth, but it also ties in nicely with a hokey Budweiser promotion that involves the distribution of wireless goal lights to rabid hockey fans across the country.
There's some precedent for this: the CN Tower colours have changed to celebrate winning Grey Cup teams and the 553-metre beacon glowed orange during Jack Layton's funeral at Roy Thompson Hall.
It's certainly a cool idea, and the technology is there to make it happen, but Irene Knight, the tower's PR manager, says the idea is unlikely to happen exactly as Booth imagined.
"We're not planning to light for every goal ... we've planned a fitting tribute - to light blue when they play," she said in an email.
The complex LED lighting system, capable of being managed by a single remote computer, comprises 1,330 different fixtures and is capable of producing "infinite effects" in 16.7 million colours, according to the promotional material. Unfortunately, existing commitments stand in the way.
"We have to take a fair approach to all the other causes we light for," Knight says. The CN Tower doesn't permit lighting for "commercial" or "personal" events like birthdays and anniversaries, so support from Budweiser or other corporations won't be much help.
Migratory birds could be another snag. The tower is usually dimmed at night to limit fatalities among the 200 species of birds returning to their northern breeding grounds in Spring.
As it stands right now the CN Tower will go blue on game nights when there are no scheduling clashes. When there is a conflict, the hourly flashing light show will be replaced with a solid blue light display for 12 minutes.
Go, Leafs, Go?
Chris Bateman is a staff writer at blogTO. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisbateman.
