Craziness in Canada
It’s not just in Spain where you find strange and curious customs. I have noticed we have a few in Canada too. Maybe it is the extreme weather or the large amounts of space and wilderness that we try to fill that lead to some original ideas.
Last weekend, which was a rather arbitrary long weekend for ‘Saskatchewan day’, a day created to have a long weekend in August; I drove my youngest sister to Edmonton to catch her flight to Mexico. One might say it is a short 550km or 5&1/2 hour drive away. On the trip we
made a short stop in Cutknife to see the world’s biggest tomahawk, one of the many ‘giant’ sized sculptures that dot the country. I now have a small series of photos from my travels, which include the giant Ukrainian Easter egg in Vegreville (Alta), the giant Moose in Moose Jaw (Sask) and the giant Canadian goose in Wa-wa.(Ont). http://www.roadsideattractions.ca/province.htm . In a similar theme we stopped at the ‘world’s largest entertainment and shopping centre’ or West Edmonton Mall to meet a couple of my sisters’ friends for supper.
We may not celebrate carnival, but people still like to dress-up. My middle sister was recently preparing a costume for a Harry Potter pub-crawl where she met up with a group of friends dressed up as characters from the book. They were shuttled from bar to bar in a little yellow school bus. I think usually pub-crawls are fundraisers, but this one was just for fun.
On a side note, while in Normandy I heard about the 7 km ‘Foulées des bistrots’ in Caen, which is a race that involves elaborate costumes, drinking and running. The friends who told me about it had entered dressed as Vikings and ran with a rather large cardboard boat, so if you like to run and would like an interesting trip to France, mark your calendars for the end of June.
Other fun things you’ll find in Canada are real, live and dangerous wildlife. (have I convinced anyone to visit yet?) Last week I went to visit Beaver Creek, a nature conservation area just outside of the city with a series of nature trails. As we started pushing the door to the nature center a cougar warning sign caught our attention. The next few minutes my friend and I spent memorizing the guidelines. Don’t run, talk to the cougar in a calm voice, carry a walking stick should you need to fight it,etc.…while inside there were some furry ponchos for dress-up and my friend put on one and pretended to be a cougar so we could ‘practice.’ Sadly we did not meet any cougars, and only heard a bit of rustling from small animals in the bushes from time to time. I would never really like to meet a cougar, bear, wolf, etc, however talking about the possibility of meeting them made the hike more exciting.
It’s not just in Spain where you find strange and curious customs. I have noticed we have a few in Canada too. Maybe it is the extreme weather or the large amounts of space and wilderness that we try to fill that lead to some original ideas.
Last weekend, which was a rather arbitrary long weekend for ‘Saskatchewan day’, a day created to have a long weekend in August; I drove my youngest sister to Edmonton to catch her flight to Mexico. One might say it is a short 550km or 5&1/2 hour drive away. On the trip we
made a short stop in Cutknife to see the world’s biggest tomahawk, one of the many ‘giant’ sized sculptures that dot the country. I now have a small series of photos from my travels, which include the giant Ukrainian Easter egg in Vegreville (Alta), the giant Moose in Moose Jaw (Sask) and the giant Canadian goose in Wa-wa.(Ont). http://www.roadsideattractions.ca/province.htm . In a similar theme we stopped at the ‘world’s largest entertainment and shopping centre’ or West Edmonton Mall to meet a couple of my sisters’ friends for supper.We may not celebrate carnival, but people still like to dress-up. My middle sister was recently preparing a costume for a Harry Potter pub-crawl where she met up with a group of friends dressed up as characters from the book. They were shuttled from bar to bar in a little yellow school bus. I think usually pub-crawls are fundraisers, but this one was just for fun.
On a side note, while in Normandy I heard about the 7 km ‘Foulées des bistrots’ in Caen, which is a race that involves elaborate costumes, drinking and running. The friends who told me about it had entered dressed as Vikings and ran with a rather large cardboard boat, so if you like to run and would like an interesting trip to France, mark your calendars for the end of June.
Other fun things you’ll find in Canada are real, live and dangerous wildlife. (have I convinced anyone to visit yet?) Last week I went to visit Beaver Creek, a nature conservation area just outside of the city with a series of nature trails. As we started pushing the door to the nature center a cougar warning sign caught our attention. The next few minutes my friend and I spent memorizing the guidelines. Don’t run, talk to the cougar in a calm voice, carry a walking stick should you need to fight it,etc.…while inside there were some furry ponchos for dress-up and my friend put on one and pretended to be a cougar so we could ‘practice.’ Sadly we did not meet any cougars, and only heard a bit of rustling from small animals in the bushes from time to time. I would never really like to meet a cougar, bear, wolf, etc, however talking about the possibility of meeting them made the hike more exciting.
1 comment:
Hi Katie:
Giant roadside attractions do just that, attract. There are lots of photographs of them out there; and lots of them, including a Starship Enterprise replica somewhere in Canada. Hard to say sometimes why people do these things.
I went hiking last week to the mountains around the Cypress ski development -- and around the base, saw endless warning signs and special garbage cans, all relating to bears. I found it unnerving, but my hiking buddies were unconcerned.
The saddest and most pointed sign was large, and on the road leading to Cypress' parking lot: " A fed bear is a dead bear".
Bears, it seems, become quickly accustomed to getting food from people, and will become aggessive and dangerous if things don't go right. This requires the bear to be put down. Very sad.
Oddly, there was nothing about cougars, even though cougars will stalk humans -- and attacks are far from rare.
Last week I saw a beaver at Jericho Beach park, where there is a large pond (or small lake). At least I think it was a beaver -- a medium-sized, furry, buck-toothed animal swimming in the water. A Parks Board employee once told me that beavers do live in the pond, and pointed to the wire mesh around many tree trunks, put there to foil gnawing.
Next week, I'm going on a hike to Mt. Baker in Washington State. This will be a new experience for me, because the group (now at 12) is staying in a big cabin -- sharing common spaces and bedrooms with bunkbeds. Potluck dinners.
Sylvia has just unloaded her kiln, and has had a nearly perfect firing, including a custom order that will need to be shipped to somewhere in the eastern US (friends of Sylvia's sister).
This afternoon, I'm getting on the trusty, rusty, two-wheeled Peugot to run a few errands. Also need to finish re-potting a bunch of back-porch planters.
Speaking of curious customs -- this weekend is the start of the venerable Pacific National Exhibition. It started as an agricultural fair, and still has that component, but long ago morphed into part carney, with sideshows, thrill rides, demolition derbies and people hawking improbably useful but inexpensive gadgets, with the smell of fried onions and doughnut cookers everywhere.
The parts I liked, last time we went about 5 years ago, were "Bob" the world's largest cow (and it was HUGE), and the baseball hitting cage.
Sylvia and I may go again this year.
And speaking of Canadian craziness (surely an oxymoron) -- I got trapped in the crowd at Gay Pride day about two weeks ago. I was on my bike, travelling along the Seaside Bicycle Route, on my way to find the Air India Memorial, newly commissioned in Stanley Park.
Just past the Burrard St. bridge, there was this crowd, that just got bigger and bigger as I travelled along the seawall. The costumes were a lot of fun, the BBQ's smelled like delicious food, there was lots of music and the atmosphere was like I imagine a carnival in Rio. People, thousands of them, were laughing, looking at each other and showing off their very strange costumes. I eventually just walked my bike for about a half-mile and took in the happy vibes.
The Encyclopedia of Energy Engineering was officially unveiled this week -- and my two articles are in there somewhere. Reaction has been subdued. Essentially comatose, in fact.
See ya.
Ken.
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