Standing in the great banking hall in Toronto's ScotiaBank main branch I noticed the fine old clock in the middle of the hall.
I thought, gosh, that's something to photograph for my blog.
Oh dear, no sooner than I took the picture I was accosted by a (polite) security guard who insisted I delete the photograph. Which I did. He said the banking hall was private. He said it is forbidden to photograph the clock. (I assume they feared I was 'casing the joint')(with a Blackberry???).
Now, one might wonder how private such a hall, designed to impress the common mob wandering across it's wide floor, might be. One also might wonder what the guard could, would, do if I refused.
But then I thought, if there is a holy of holies in the bank and if I by accident photographed that sacred thing and if the notoriously superstitious tribe of bankers don't want it photographed, then who am I to upset them and their shy god ... .
I thought, gosh, that's something to photograph for my blog.
Oh dear, no sooner than I took the picture I was accosted by a (polite) security guard who insisted I delete the photograph. Which I did. He said the banking hall was private. He said it is forbidden to photograph the clock. (I assume they feared I was 'casing the joint')(with a Blackberry???).
Now, one might wonder how private such a hall, designed to impress the common mob wandering across it's wide floor, might be. One also might wonder what the guard could, would, do if I refused.
But then I thought, if there is a holy of holies in the bank and if I by accident photographed that sacred thing and if the notoriously superstitious tribe of bankers don't want it photographed, then who am I to upset them and their shy god ... .
1 comment:
A similar thing happened to me recently in London, England when I tried to photograph the inside of the beautifully renovated Paddington Railway Station. A short time later, an Austrian tourist was arrested just for photographing red London buses! Appparently the London police makes people believe that it is illegal to photograph anything to do with traffice, although, as a long discussion among bloggers in the Guardian newspaper revealed, there is no law on the books that says so in so many words. At about the same time, a cellphone video by a visitor from New York became a key piece of evidence in the death of a demonstrator after mistreatment by the London police. And of course we all remember what happened at Vancouver airport involving the RCMP. Are the police and security guards around the world out of control, and should we challenge them?
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