I think it may finally be over.
After more than a week of random crackles, pops, screeches and, in some cases, window-rattling concussive explosions, all culminating in the cacophonous mayhem of Halloween night itself, then continuing for three nights afterward, the neighbourhood is finally quiet.
Such is the ushering-in of November in Vancouver – one of the diminishing number of B.C. municipalities that still allows fireworks on Halloween night.
While the city has restricted the sale of consumer fireworks and now requires permits to set the things off and has limited their use to a single night – nothing has really changed. If anything, it's only become worse. Halloween falling on a Saturday night didn't help.
Yes, there is a bylaw – the use of fireworks is restricted to Halloween night only. Fireworks that make noise with no corresponding "light display" (firecrackers, bottle rockets and the ridiculously powerful and loud M-80s) are banned, and the use of fireworks of any kind is prohibited on public property.
Which means that in the two weeks leading up to Halloween, the explosions coming from the playground across the street must have been a complete figment of my imagination. I mean, there's a bylaw.
But this about more than noise. Fireworks are stupid and dangerous and there's no need for them.
Two days before Halloween, a house a few blocks away from where I live was gutted by a fire that the Vancouver Fire Department says was the result of fireworks. "I haven't spoken to investigators, but I think it's safe to say we're looking at fireworks as the definite cause," Captain Jonathan Gormick told me in an interview on Monday.
Neighbours reported an increasing use of fireworks throughout the week leading up to the fire and Roman candles being fired up the street just before the fire began.
A friend who lives across the street from the scene of the fire was terrified on Halloween night that the same thing might happen to her home as people set off fireworks in the lane behind her house.
The bylaw is designed for law-abiding citizens who enjoy the colour and sparkle of a DIY fireworks display. I know such families who year after year purchase legal fireworks and get a permit to fire them off. They gather a crowd after dark, keep the kids at a safe distance and handle their fireworks with care. They're usually done by 9 p.m., they clean up after themselves and they go home. But in order to be safe, they head to the gravel field of the nearby school – which means that they're breaking the law.
They're not the problem. The problem is people setting off illegal fireworks weeks before and days after Halloween.
Two weeks before Halloween, I confronted a group of teens setting them off on the sidewalk half a block from a fire hall. They ran away. Two nights after Halloween, I confronted a young man in the park across the street. "Are you the [expletive deleted] moron setting off fireworks?" I asked. "There were three others," came his reply. I had to admire his honesty.
So why not ban them? City Councillor Heather Deal says Vancouver is trying strike a balance between allowing people to have fun with legal fireworks and cracking down on the illegal ones. She says that banning them doesn't mean that the illegal ones will go away.
Capt. Gormick agrees: "I don't know if there is a need for fireworks. It's something that is culturally ingrained in the West Coast around Halloween and what we're doing is recognizing that there's an appetite for them and by banning them, people will find other sources to acquire fireworks and probably from unsafe sources," he said.
The problem is that it's hard to tell the difference between what's legal and what's illegal. After that loud bang, was there a corresponding light display? Was it adequately delightful?
An outright ban would unmuddy the waters. An explosion, a pop or a bang would mean someone was breaking the law.
I know, I know. Get off my lawn. Suck it up. It's a minor annoyance that we trade for the delight on the faces of children, lit by the magical glow of a ball of fire ascending into the sky.
But after three weeks of listening to it, it goes from being an annoyance to being a quality-of-life issue. At 2 o'clock in the morning, it wakes up the kids. It keeps me up worrying about whether my son's school is on fire.
More than that, it makes me wonder why the city keeps passing bylaws that it has zero intention of enforcing.
Stephen Quinn is the host of On the Coast on CBC Radio One, 690 AM and 88.1 FM in Vancouver.