There was a soapy situation at a downtown Hamilton park Monday morning. Some time before 9 a.m., the Gore Park fountain overflowed with bubbles.
Like a dish-washing exercise gone wrong, suds spilled over the fountain’s shallow concrete basin and onto the ground nearby.
On Monday afternoon, Kara Bunn, Hamilton’s manager of parks and cemeteries, told CBC Hamilton parks staff learned today that someone “vandalized” the fountain by adding bottles of soap.
At this point, city officials say they do not know who the slippery culprits were. Since staff don’t continually monitor the fountain, Bunn said in an email, it’s unclear when exactly the soap was added.
“Typically when this type of vandalism occurs, we usually find either a box of detergent or one container of dish soap,” Bunn said. “In this case, there were two containers of soap, suggesting that one container was added on Friday and then another over the weekend.”
By 9:45 a.m. on Monday, the fountain was empty as a worker with a broom and squeegee cleaned things up. The last remaining bubbles at the fountain’s base slowly receded like melting snow.
An open one-litre bottle of green apple dish soap sat on the ground nearby, about four-fifths full.
The soap is “mild on hands,” the label says, but to onlooker Guy Bourassa, the bubble bounty is indicative of larger, serious issues.
“This is just disgusting,” he told CBC Hamilton.
The retiree, who lives downtown, said this is the second time he’s seen the fountain spewing soap in recent months. He thinks it’s a waste of public money to clean.
Bunn confirmed this is the second such incident the city is aware of this calendar year.
In this case, Bunn said, the fountain was due for its regularly scheduled bi-weekly maintenance anyway, so it was cleaned without an additional cost. However, she said, a cleanup like that can cost between $1,000 and $2,000.
“To complete this type of clean up, a de-foaming product will be added to reduce the soap bubbles enough for the fountain to function normally,” Bunn said.
Bourassa didn’t see what happened, but said he wants more action on crime in the core generally.
The Gore Park fountain is not unique in its foamy fate. In 2017, someone spiked a fountain in downtown Leamington, Ont., with soap, and in 2016, bubbles emitting from Calgary’s Century Gardens fountain filled the surrounding area.
As CBC Hamilton previously reported, the first fountain at Gore Park was built in 1860 to celebrate Hamilton’s water system. There have been several since then.
Last summer, it was stink — not soap, that drew onlookers’ ire. Residents told CBC, the water was discoloured and smelled like “rotten fish.”
At the time, Bunn encouraged residents to contact the city with complaints about the smell and colour of the water so staff could direct cleanings be done sooner.