A 26-year-old Ottawa man has been released on bail after allegedly uttering a threat to cause death to the musical
artist Morrissey
ahead of his appearance at
CityFolk last week
.
Court documents allege Noah Castellano made the threat against the English singer-songwriter via the Bluesky social media service on Sept. 4.
A Bluesky post dated Sept. 4 under the account name “guy who gets shot in the head one hundred thousand times a day” matches the description of the post included in the court documents. Referring to the performer by his birth name, it reads: “Steven Patrick Morrissey when you perform at TD Place here in Ottawa next week on the evening of September 12th, 2025 at about 9pm, I will be present at the venue in the audience and I will attempt to shoot you many times and kill you with a very large gun that I own illegally.”
The Morrissey concert went ahead as planned.
CityFolk
declined to comment about the alleged threat against the singer, or about whether organizers of the event considered cancelling due to the police investigation.
Other recent festivals have fared less well. Earlier this month, another Lansdowne Park-based event,
YOWFest, cancelled its two days
of musical shows following reports of gunshots in the area of the venue on opening night. There were no reports of injuries in connection with the incident.
The two disturbances underscore the challenges of organizing or insuring mid-sized or large music festivals in Canada today.
In August, Montreal-based Festivals and Major Events Canada (FAME) listed upwards of 25 music festivals and events across the country forced to cancel or shutter entirely in 2025, part of a brief submitted to the federal government during its annual pre-budget consultations process.
FAME, which represents more than 500 events and festivals nationally, estimates that the sector in general is responsible for $1 billion in GDP across Canada. It also warns it is a sector in “crisis,” driven largely by a rise in inflation and operating costs since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Martin Roy, the organization’s president and director general, lays an important part of the blame on the ballooning costs of getting festivals insured and arranging security. As recently as 2010, Roy said, security remained relatively cheap, with staff recruitment for major events in Montreal, for example, often relying on students out on summer break.
Over recent years, however, a spate of violent incidents at music venues and street festivals worldwide has helped change the calculus.
“Each year there’s an attack somewhere in the world or in Canada and we try to adapt — and to increase — security on our sites according to the threats,” Roy said.
He makes particular mention of the Route 91 Harvest Festival mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, when more than 50 people died, and the Lapu-Lapu Day car-ramming attack in Vancouver in April, when 11 people died.
The Vancouver tragedy later triggered the cancellation in this city of the Fun Philippines Ottawa Food and Music Street Festival, a two-day event that had been scheduled to take place on Wellington Street in front of Parliament Hill in May. Organizers spoke of the need to double the security at the event in the wake of what happened in Vancouver.
At CityFolk’s 2024 music festival,
Ottawa Police deployed the use of drones
to “ensure public safety,” “assess crowd dynamics” and determine “the appropriate operational deployment of officers,” according to a police spokesperson.
Last week’s Morrissey show at CityFolk was able to go on despite the alleged threat. A hero to outsiders and misfits during the 1980s, when he was the frontman of the Smiths, Morrissey has in more recent years pivoted to the right, becoming especially well known for controversial remarks about race. In the days ahead of his appearance in Ottawa, the local chatter centred around his request that meat be banned at CityFolk on the night of his show. Organizers warned that security personnel would search arriving concertgoers for animal products.
Charged in the matter with uttering threats to cause death or bodily harm is Noah Castellano, who Ottawa police arrested on Friday, according to court documents. Reached by phone in the Washington, D.C.-area home of his father, where he must reside as per the terms of his $5,000 bail, Castellano declined to comment on the charge, saying: “I’m not interested.”
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