I never cease to be amazed at what I see along the NCC Ottawa River bikepaths. At dusk the other evening, I watched a group of people with a large trebuchet (a seige engine of the catapult family) flinging objects several hundred metres across the lawns. In the picture above, the upper triangular object is the counterweight, the fulcum is in the centre of the tripod of posts, and the weight to be flung (in earlier days this could have been a stone to break fortification walls or a dead body to fling over the walls to spread terror or disease) is put in a sling suspended at the right end of the lever. The weight drops, the arm rises quickly, flinging the sling with great speed, and the projectile flies. In use as a war tool for over a thousand years, the trebuchet was very accurate and portable. No doubt City council will be meeting shortly to ban the construction, display, or keeping of such armaments in our peaceful city.
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