Calgary man decides to advertise his business by flying over the city in a lawn chair with balloons

(Image credit: Twitter.com/CTVVancouver)

last updated 7 July 2015

It would have been cheaper to just put up a billboard: A Calgary man is facing criminal charges after he attached 110 balloons to a lawn chair and sailed over the city on Sunday to bring attention to his cleaning products company.

Daniel Boria, 26, says he wanted to advertise his business in a non-conventional way, and that's how he came up with the plan to fly above Calgary, then parachute down into the Calgary Stampede. "We did make it as safe as possible for everybody else," he told CBC News. "Our end goal was to only put myself in danger." After he took flight, he was amazed by what he saw. "At one point I was looking up at the balloons, they were popping, the chair was shaking and I was looking down at my feet dangling through the clouds at a 747 flight taking off and a few landing," he said. "It was incredible. It was the most surreal experience you can ever imagine. I was just by myself on a $20 lawn chair up in the sky above the clouds."

Due to bad weather, Boria missed the Calgary Stampede by a few kilometers, landing in an industrial field and breaking his ankle. Police were waiting for him, and after being detained, he was released Monday. Boria was charged with one count of mischief causing danger to life, and Insp. Kyle Grant with the Calgary Police Department said he expects to see more charges filed. Boria — who estimates it cost him $20,000 for materials and to rent an airplane carrying a banner with his company’s name — said he had a feeling he would be arrested, "but I didn't think they would pursue it as heavily as they did. I've never done anything wrong before and this was with good intentions."

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.