She made her way down to the Moscow Tea Room, which had a speaker on its patio, and spoke to one of the waitresses.
Sally Dimachki recalls her encounter with a Moscow Tea Room waitress as the lounge was playing loud music late into the night. [Photo © Yasmine Ghania]
“I was like, ‘you just woke up all the buildings around you … I’m going to call the police right now if you don’t shut it down,’’’ Dimachki recalls.
But as the music went on for longer, Dimachki’s patience grew shorter.
She called the City of Ottawa bylaw and says an officer spoke to the owner of the establishment but isn’t sure if any tickets were issued. Moscow Tea Room was contacted to comment but didn’t provide a response.
Between May and August, there were 1,095 music complaints made in Ottawa wards in the downtown area, according to an analysis of the requests for service data reported by the city. The number has increased by 18 per cent compared to last year’s summer months.
A bar graph that visualizes the number of music complaints from May to August broken down by each of the wards in the downtown area. Rideau-Vanier has the highest number of music complaints. Visualization by Yasmine Ghania.
Rawlson King, city councillor for Rideau-Rockcliffe ward, which had the third-highest complaints among the downtown wards this past summer, says that while bars and private gatherings certainly contribute to the number of complaints, he believes the spike is largely due to the fact that people are spending more time at home.
“In a sense their universe has become more hyper-local and so they’re going to be much more attune to issues in neighbourhoods,” King explains. “To me that’s more of the flavour versus people complaining because they’re worried too many people are having parties.”
Rideau-Vanier and Somerset were the wards with the most music complaints in all of Ottawa, according to the city data. Notably, the number of music complaints in downtown wards this summer has been higher than any other summer since 2016.
A graph that illustrates the number of music complaints in the summer months of May to August from 2020 to 2016. Hover over each year to see the exact number of complaints. Visualization by Yasmine Ghania.
Frank Russo, a psychology professor at Ryerson University who specializes in auditory cognitive neuroscience, says he believes people have become more “hypersensitive” to loud music and other sounds since the pandemic began.
People can perceive noises to be louder than they actually are when they’re stressed, emotionally exhausted or facing challenging times, according to Russo.
He refers to a 2016 study conducted by the University Medical Center at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, which examined noise annoyance and found that the people most irritated by noise were also the ones who reported more mental health issues.
But Russo explains music can also help people cope.
As the founding director of the SMART Lab, a research team at Ryerson University which studies music’s relationship with the human brain, Russo says music allows the brain to release dopamine, leading to an increased feeling of happiness and lower stress levels.
“It can allow people to feel emotions they’re already feeling more deeply or even completely change people’s emotions,” Russo says.
While King notes the increase in music complaints isn’t alarming since he doesn’t think it’s dominantly related to private gatherings and COVID rule-breaking, he still has some worries for the coming months.
“The key thing that we’re always concerned about is vigilance,” King says, urging Ottawa residents to continue physical distancing and wearing masks in order to contain the spread of infection.
“When it’s a nice day or the holidays, for example, people want to slip in their old ways in a sense because of course we’re human beings,” King says. “That is the challenge; to continue reminding people that we’re not out of the woods yet.”
A video taken in early November showing people enjoying the last few sunny days of the year in Ottawa’s Byward Market. Rideau-Rockcliffe councillor Rawlson King is concerned that people might not follow COVID-19 protocols under special circumstances such as the holidays. [Video © Yasmine Ghania]