Anonymous CNHI News Service The Effingham Daily News Mon Oct 31, 2011, 08:09 AM CDT
NIAGARA FALLS, N.Y. — Death-defying stunts over the world-renowned waterfalls here have a rich, colorful history dating to the early 1800s.
Yet for the past 50 years, officials on both the Canadian and U.S. sides of the falls have banned daredevil attempts.
Now there's talk of a one-time exception for a Discovery Channel show featuring a seventh-generation offspring of the famous "Flying Wallendas" walking a high wire across the 2,200-foot gorge that rises above the Niagara River's Horseshoe Falls.
The New York Legislature and Gov. Andrew Cuomo have cleared the way to allow Nik Wallenda to perform his high wire act. But Canadian and New York park officials must also give their approval and so far they have not. New York officials talked about it Thursday but took no action.
Wallenda, 32, says he is eager to perform as soon as possible for the "Life on a High Wire" show planned by the Discovery channel for later this year.
"This is a dream of mine that I've always wanted to do," Wallenda said on his website. "I get chills thinking about it."
Both New York State and Ontario, Canada, park commissions have refused to authorize daredevil stunts on the ground they detract from the natural beauty of the falls, which draw honeymooners and tourists from around the world.
But a long-struggling Niagara Falls, N.Y., once a booming factory town, and the soft economy on both sides of the border have given hope to Wallenda's supporters.
They estimate his high-wire act over the falls would attract thousands of on-site visitors and millions more on television.
Wallenda's walk would feature a two-inch diameter steel cable attached to construction cranes on both sides of the gorge. He would walk from the American side to the Canadian side and back -- 170 feet above the turbulent waters of Horseshoe Falls.
It would be a return to the stunt history of Niagara Falls, drama that featured tightrope walks across the gorge, airplane fly-unders at the suspension bridge, people inside barrels and giant rubber balls going over the falls.
There have been a few unauthorized daredevil acts over the falls since the ban on stunts. In 1990, a man from Tennessee attempted to ride over the falls in kayak but didn't survive. In 2003, a Michigan man became the first person to go over the falls wearing only the clothes on his back, and lived to tell about it.
Details for this story were provided by the Niagara Falls, N.Y., Gazette.
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