By Tyler Fleming, CTV Ottawa
Indoor concerts can now be performed for a full house in Ontario and for the many venues that host events, Ontario’s move to relax the regulations means it’s a chance to recover from nearly two years of cancelled performances.
The show was nearly over for the Rainbow Bistro in downtown Ottawa. Owner Danny Sivyer closed the doors to his intimate concert hall at the onset of the pandemic. Capacity restrictions made the margins too low.
“We were closed for 18 months we weren’t open at all,” says Sivyer. “Fifty people didn’t pay for the band, or the sound man, or the bartenders, and the door man.”
But just as the doors were about to close for good on one of the city’s last longstanding music halls, Kevin Ford, CEO for Calian Group, caught wind of what was about to happen and made a call to meet Sivyer to see how he could help.