Michael Niagara Falls, the magnificent natural spectacle where three million liters of water rush down a 54-meter-high wall every second, should not be missed. However, twelve million visitors think similarly each year, and the touristy surroundings in the town of "Niagara Falls" in the Canadian province of Ontario are quite bizarre. Fortunately, by the end of October, it was already the off-season, and the hustle and bustle had subsided, but many stalls and restaurants were also closed.
"Niagara" is pronounced "Nigh-Aah-Gra" in American English, with the emphasis on "Aah". The word originates from Native Americans, in whose language it means "thundering water." The Native Americans regarded Niagara Falls as a sacred site, and it wasn't until 1678 that a European Jesuit priest saw them. In 1801, the first honeymoon tourists arrived, and nowadays, casinos, an amusement park with a Ferris wheel, a tower with a restaurant, golf courses, and various organized attractions offer the perfect day trip for the American family.
Everything is geared towards profit maximization. To get from the small town down to the falls, you can either explore a deliberately elongated maze of streets with barriers and no proper signposts or pay 2 dollars to take a small funicular about 50 meters down a slope. Naturally, there are no stairs next to it. If you buy a ticket for the elevator that goes down to the blasted tunnels right next to the waterfall, you can get a discount by purchasing it as a package with a film screening. Once back at the top, a business-savvy photography team offers previously taken and now enlarged 18x24cm photos for 20 dollars, showing participants in funny yellow raincoats with a digitally inserted waterfall (one by day, one by night). At the end of October, there were only a handful of visitors at each attraction, but in the peak season, the area is probably some kind of antechamber to hell.
Between 1901 and 2003, there were 16 documented cases of "Dare Devils" who plunged down the falls for fun. About two-thirds survived. It all began in 1901 with a 64-year-old schoolteacher who had a 1.60-meter-high barrel made, padded it with a mattress, climbed inside with her cat, and let the current pull her over the falls. Amazingly, the barrel remained intact; the teacher survived and was subsequently pulled from the river and then out of the barrel by hired helpers.
The attempt of an Englishman in the year 1920 failed because the overconfident man attached a 50kg anvil to his legs for balance purposes in his barrel. The barrel survived the fall, but the anvil plummeted into the depths with the Englishman. Only his right arm remained in the barrel.
Jumping down Niagara Falls is, of course, prohibited, but Canadian John Munday managed to do it twice. A video in a small local exhibition shows how his friends drove a large moving truck backwards to the iron railing on the riverbank about 150 meters before the falls, right in the tourist zone. They placed a wooden plank over the barrier and rolled an armored orange diving capsule with a 2-meter diameter, with the stuntman inside, directly from the truck into the water! The Canadian park rangers on site can, in an emergency, shut off the water via a dam located before the falls and have indeed done so to strand daredevils before the falls. But John Munday's team was apparently a bit too quick, as the diving capsule sped down the waterfall as planned, to the cheers of the tourists. In 2003, an American even survived the plunge without any aids, wearing only his regular clothes. He had to pay a fine of $4,500 and was banned from ever entering Canada again.