Last Saturday, before McCartney plays, a Source Security worker
tells me the papers will call the concert a disaster. He has dealt with
a crowd constantly complaining that concession booths were blocking
their view, and concertgoers were raging as they are pushed back and
forth in the disorganized middle ground.
The worker says that only the grandstands have a clear view.
Later, when McCartney begins to play, I realize he’s wrong about how
this concert will be viewed.
Camera phones are raised like lighters, the sky is filled with
rhythmically clapping hands, a reported 50,000 voices singing the same
words.
They will only remember the show of a lifetime when they wait in
line for tickets to KISS, a concert put on also by Power Promotions,
with the same operational plans and same problems.
On this blazing hot sunny day are 400 Source Security guards,
traveling on foot and by golf cart, roaming the grounds in yellow and
black t-shirt bumblebee bands.
The guards keep the chaos under control, staff the gates, stop
confrontations and deal with everything from fence jumpers to people
speaking in tongues.
The guards don’t fit the stereotype. Many are women, including
45-year-old KISS fan Nancy Singer. Chris Chapman, 17, is a lanky high
school student who is too young to know why his last name might scare a
Beatle.
The six-foot, two-inch, 250-pound team leader, sociology student
Niko Williams, speaks like a born diplomat and uses his mind rather
than his fists to solve problems.
From the gates opening in a tidal flood onto the green of the Common
fields to the exit following the third encore—where the grass looks
like an ashtray—the army of guards keeps the city safe.
This weekend they will try to do the same thing for KISS.
I’m guessing KISS fans may be a little less inclined to let it be.
This article appears in Jul 16-22, 2009.
I thought one had to be 19+ to legally do security work.
I’ve read this article four times and I can’t figure out why it was written.
Hmm…because…let me see. the…hmm…the … 17 year old bodyguard… works…in…Halifax… people….walking….grass….KISS….concerts….security…Halifax. yeh that’s why it was written.
according to law you have to be over the age of 21 and hold a bodyguard licence to class ones self as a bodyguard so what you meant to say was security at a concert there is a huge difference in croud control and bodyguard
Private Investigators and Private Guards Act
CHAPTER 356
OF THE
REVISED STATUTES, 1989
amended 1992, c. 28, s. 29
Age qualification
Section 7. No person shall act as a private investigator or private guard unless he is nineteen years of age or over. R.S., c.
356, s. 7.
Private Investigators and Private Guards Act
CHAPTER 356
OF THE
REVISED STATUTES, 1989
amended 1992, c. 28, s. 29
Age qualification
Under Section 7
“No person shall act as a private investigator or private guard unless he is nineteen years of age or over. R.S., c.
356, s. 7.”