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The festival included the duck in its grant application — the government said yes to it but it wasn’t the government’s idea.

As it turns out, other festivals are piggybacking on the duck’s visit to Toronto — since it’ll be here anyway, it’ll pop into other festivals this summer, including in Brockville. Duck spin-offs. They all imagine, as organizers of large public events, that the duck will be a draw. And you know it will be. Who doesn’t want to see a six-storey rubber duck? Its very ridiculousness is its appeal.

In this country we have a giant nickel, a giant Easter egg, a giant hockey stick, a giant goose, a giant beaver, a giant Muskoka chair. We like giant things. Toronto littered its streets with moose sculptures some years ago. Here in Ottawa, we do oversized tulips and we have a giant spider, too. This summer we’ll have a giant clockwork dragon. Why? Because it’s fun.

EGAN: A 150 party designed by 12 year olds: Red Bull, robots and rubber duckies

If the National Gallery had asked for our opinions on whether it should install the spider sculpture on Sussex Drive, what would we have said? Luckily it didn’t ask. It took the funding we give its management on the understanding that they know what they’re doing, it bought Maman and it put her in. Now she’s the subject of a million photographs and the cause of a lot of cricked necks — way more distinctive than the OTTAWA sign they just installed in the ByWard Market.

As of Thursday, there’s a whole new subplot involving a Dutch art studio. The studio claims that the duck coming to Canada is a rip-off of its own copyrighted giant duck. The question of whether this is a real or counterfeit giant duck need not detain us here.