Canada day

Canada day fell on a Sunday this year, meaning that the public holiday was scheduled for the Monday 2 July 2007. On Sunday Laura and I went to a traditional pancake breakfast to kick off our day. The pancake makers had tried to colour the mix a patrotic red, which resulted in pink pancakes. They tasted the same so maybe that will be an idea for future girls' birthday parties.

The West Edmonton Mall is the 2nd or 3rd largest mall in North America. I have never packed both my swimsuit and my iceskates for the same day's outing but I did that day. The mall has an open ice skating rink and the world's largest indoor waterpark. My idea that we could wear our swimmers whilst iceskating for a lark was not well-received by Laura. I think I need to get a grip that there are some silly things I am getting too old to do.

The Mall was pretty impressive, I immediately fell in love with H&M, the British clothing store that we don't have in Australia, where I picked up some nice deals. Then it was off to Boston Pizza for lunch, located unbelievably near Hooters (the survival of this franchise I still find offensive).

Off to the waterpark for the afternoon- a sub-tropical atmosphere, with a wave pool, a baby pool and about 13 different waterslides. I didn't know that Laura had never been to a waterpark of any sort and some of the slides were massive. Texans are odd. The idea of people carrying guns or climbing up a mountain did not faze her but going down a waterslide initially did. My summer childhood days at the Wagga Wagga Olympic pool served me well. By the end of the day we were both going down the 2nd-hardest tandem slide- neither of us were about to go down the giant red vertical slide. The waterpark is hideously expensive- approximately $40 entry each and then exorbitant locker charges. However the kids of Edmonton can pretend they are at the beach when it is minus 30 degrees outside in winter and there is snow on the clear glass ceiling. That is marketing gold.

At the end of the day it was time for our cultural adventure- Shakespeare in the Park to see A Winter's Tale. I had spotted a good-looking Thai restaurant on Whyte Ave the day before so we bought some take away and took it with us for dinner. We were the only people who took a picnic dinner that night and the organisers were fine with it, though we would forbidden to crack open our bottle of wine we'd brought with us. The drinkers were corraled by wire fence in another part of the grassed audience area near the licensed bar away from the families, like criminals. In silent protest against the injustice, we didn't join them.

The set was great for this outdoor performance, good use of space, the weather was lovely and the performances variable. A Winter's Tale to me is one of Shakespeare's practice works and needs strong acting. Overall, I was disappointed with the quality of the performances, especially those most highly-rated in the program.

After the performance we knew that the Canada Day fireworks would be shot over the river and the parliamentary buildings so we headed down to the river to watch them from the Whyte Ave side. Cars and people were lined up everywhere, so we found ourselves on a bluff on the banks of the river, peering between the gap in the thick brush with a few Muslim families waiting for the fireworks. The women were so heavily covered up, it was hard to spot them and not bump into them in the dark but everyone was nice about it.

The fireworks were worth waiting for. Edmonton put on it's national pride and then we went back to our digs for a good night's sleep.

Stopping for gophers on the road to Edmonton

Canada Day is a public holiday Monday in early July. It also coincided with the Shakespeare Festival in Edmonton. At home in Calgary, I had my hand-tooled Alberta Boot Company cowboy boots and straw hat ready with my Sheriff's badge for the upcoming Stampede. I wanted to go uber-English with Shakespeare before launching myself into the Wild West for 10 days.

Edmonton is the provincial capital of Alberta. It is also a big university town. My friend Fran did a university exchange there from Canberra several years ago and had a terrific time (including meeting her now-husband Chris, a friendly Canadian and a good touch-footy player to boot).

Laura and I drove up on a Saturday morning and stopped in the village of Torrington, one of the most unusual places I have ever been. Torrington is home to the world famous gopher museum. Gophers are small animals who breed like rabbits, dig up holes in pastures, create havoc for farmers and cause broken legs in animals who tread into their holes. When given a government grant for putting together a town attraction for tourism they decided no one would stop in a little village for an ordinary museum. They set the local boys the task of trapping and killing a lot of gophers, and after they were preserved and stuffed, they were then arranged into the dioramas pictured in the web album attached.

They were hilarious. The townpeople have had the last laugh and it has brought a huge amount of tourism to the town. The museum even has it's own song (I settled for buying a fridge magnet and a bookmark). Also about the town, every fire hydrant had been repainted into a cartoon gopher. Fantastic stuff.

Onwards to Edmonton, we checked into our digs, only a few blocks from Whyte Ave, the cool and artsy street of Edmonton, with pubs, cafes, boutiques and nightspots. We had lunch on Whyte Ave and then it was off to the Provincial Legislature buildings to check out our adopted Provincial Capital.

I seem to have made a habit of taking the "political/legal" tour of wherever I land. I have now visited provincial legislatures in British Columbia (Victoria), Quebec (Quebec city- only saw the outside, which I regret now), Manitoba (Winnipeg), Saskatchewan (Regina) and Alberta (Edmonton). I also spent half a day at the National Parliament in Ottawa and went to "Question Time" in English and French. It's more than I have seen in my own country.

The Edmonton Parliament was a standout. It was the third time I'd been to a parliament building on a Saturday afternoon and yet again, there were wedding parties having their photos taken in and outside the buildings. Given the beautiful Victorian or Georgian archiecture of most of these buildings and the lack of good weather in Canada, they make a much more romantic setting than the bride shivering with cold and the groom red-nosed and runny.

There was a cool fountain and pool outside the Edmonton parliament buildings and families in the summer take their children to play in the shallow pool and the gardens nearby, which I thought was great symbol of being in a free country. Flat petalled pink roses were the showpiece of the gardens and I am convinced that I had found the elusive "Wild Alberta Rose" that features on the Alberta licence plate with the slogan "Wild Rose Country".

With my well-travelled plush Moose hidden in my daypack, Laura and I joined a group of Asian tourists on the legislative building tour. The history of the building is fascinating, one of the first great buildings in the early electricity period. As a result, the building had thousands of lights and all the original wiring. The portraits of Queen Mary and (mad) King George were supposed to be hung over the grand staircase but when we arrived, Mary's portrait was the only one there. We supposed that George had taken himself off out of his painting to the pub, if not to be cleaned.

Our tour group was lead by a young Quebecqois lady, who had only a trace of a Quebecer accent. When the Asian tourists found out her background, they congratulated her on her English. To her credit, she accepted it gracefully.

The legislative floor was much the same as the others from around the country, but the Edmonton building had a curious quirk of archiecture that was unimagined even by the archietects.