Usually people are putting money into their hats but over the long weekend, several buskers in the ByWard Market say someone was lifting money out.
About five buskers were robbed; now they're asking for more police presence and better protection.
In his spot outside the Beavertails in the ByWard Market, J.-F. Lapierre gathers a crowd.
“He is so beautiful,” says a tourist, visiting from Brazil as she snaps his photo.
But this holiday Monday, someone else was watching Lapierre with other thoughts.
“Here the guy boldly came in the middle of the day with scissors,” he says, “trying to cut the string holding my pot. Hey, that's bold.”
Lapierre says the man, wielding scissors, tried to make off with his pot of money.
He wasn't the only busker robbed over the weekend. Ryoko Itabashi, who plays traditional Japanese music, says a different man grabbed the money out of her case and took off.
“The thief was in the crowds and put his right hand in my money box and grabbed a few $5 bills,” says Itabashi in an email.
Thomas Brawn, who plays the flute, says he stared down a man who was eyeing his hat full of the day's earnings.
“It keeps us from doing what we love to do,” says Brawn, “I can't play Frideric Handel if I'm looking over my shoulder for a crack head. And this is not my problem. We enhance the market and we pay a fee to do it.”
Brawn, who has been busking for 4 decades, says he's concerned about his safety but also the safety of other folks in the market.
“I'm a musician,” he adds, “The police need to do their job and learn how to do it better.”
No one from the Ottawa Markets was available for an on-camera interview but said in a telephone conversation that three buskers had filed incident reports over the weekend and that they are working with the buskers to come up with preventative measures, though what those entail, remain to be seen.
The market has hired security guards to patrol the area and Ottawa police plan to step up their patrols as well.
“The Ottawa police are proposing starting in June to dedicate about 16 to 18 officers to the area,” says Mathieu Fleury, the councilor for the area, “which is good but we need that to be expanded much earlier on and through to the fall.”
Brawn says that's only a short-term solution. He says helping desperate people get off drugs is the long term solution.
Until then, he is considering packing up and moving to Sparks Street.