There’s nothing quite like the sight of thousands of zombies marauding through the tunnel between Ottawa U and the canal, dripping blood and screaming for braaaaaiiiins! That was the sight on Saturday as the Ottawa Zombie Walk doubled last year’s numbers, unleashing 4,000 zombies on a (mostly) unsuspecting Ottawa.
The costumes ranged from the half-assed (Eric getting zombie makeup applied seconds before the walk began) to the extensively planned (for example, the zombie killer in full battle gear marching with four zombies in chains before him). CHEZ was there playing some music before the event, as the zombies congregated at McDonald Gardens Park. A mini-van set up to take Ottawa Food Bank donations left crammed to the roof, and lots of money was raise as well.
Then the procession was off – through the downtown core, with confused motorists and frightened motorists and amused motorists being stopped by police so that zombies could crawl over their cars. The zombie kids had the best time, howling at tourists and generally being as creepy as possible. It may be that a 7-year-old in a zombie costume is actually scarier than a full-grown zombie.
Then it was on through Ottawa U, up Elgin and down Sparks street to Parliament Hill with a CHEZ 106 soundtrack – Enter Sandman, it should be noted, makes excellent zombie entrance music. Don’t Stop Believing, not so much. At 6:00, a flash-mob formed on Sparks Street to perform the Thriller dance – which would have worked much better had we been prepared with the music. In the end, the music was found, played off Eric’s iPhone with a microphone held next to it. This all worked very well, until Doc and Woody started re-tweeting Eric’s Zombie Walk pictures in the middle of the song. Michael Jackson was interrupted several times by re-tweet bings. Much fun, nonetheless – here’s to an even bigger and better zombie walk next year!
