Having spent most of my time in Canada around crowded cities like
Montréal and Toronto, my first visit to Calgary was a nice
change. The city reminds me a bit of Denver, which I'm told is partly
the result of the same firms doing a lot of the construction. It's a
pleasant place to walk around, with well ordered streets, attractive
modern buildings (with a lot of mirrored glass reflecting still other
attractive modern buildings) and, best of all, a system of
above-ground walkways you can use when the mercury drops too far below
freezing. The walkways are called +15. The name
relates their height of 15 feet above ground. Funny, I thought Canada
was on the metric system...
If you look real hard you can even see some remains of an
architectural period before the chrome and glass took over. Like the
building with the tower that's now home to Budget Car Rental. (The
basketball players in the foreground are part of a sculpture called
The Family of Man.) Or the
building on the right, which I assumed was a restaurant but turned out
to house a menswear store. But it does make me wonder: what kind of
world is it where such a neat place can be almost entirely unoccupied?
With some time on my hands on the weekend, I decided to see the sights beyond the bright lights of Calgary. Noticing that Edmonton was a short distance away on the map (close to 300 kilometers; hey, it's a big country!) I decided it was worth a visit just to see that famous landmark: the world's largest shopping mall. In typical guy style, I didn't bother with directions; just head north and assume that I can find my way. (This technique has served me surprisingly well over the years. But be assured that I can ask for directions when necessary. It's just hardly ever necessary...)
Sure enough, the moment
I reached the outskirts of the city there were signs to lead me to
West Edmonton Mall, surely one of the wonders of the world. (As in:
I wonder why they decided to build the thing way out here!)
Nondescript from the outside, the mall has a hotel (inscribed with the
generic sign: Hotel), a casino, an ice rink, a miniature golf course,
dolphin shows, a Disneyland-like submarine ride, an amusement park
with some truly frightening-looking rides and a water park with slides
and an enormous pool. Oh yes, and there are even a few shops and
restaurants.
You could spend a
week's vacation in the place without ever going outside. (Why you
would want to is a different question.) Which made me think of
Logan's Run and its image of life totally within a closed community.
(Part of it was filmed in a mall in Texas.) Now that
is a frightening image of the future. (The living inside a mall, not
Texas. Although, come to think of it...) Although at least I
wouldn't have to suffer for long; in that society they got rid of
anybody who reached his thirtieth birthday!
Having devoted Saturday to worship at the altar of Mammon, I decided
to spend Sunday enjoying the great outdoors. Calgary lies a hundred
or so kilometers from the eastern entrance to Banff National Park,
thousands of square kilometers of unspoiled land in the Canadian Rocky
Mountains. (Yes, they have Rocky Mountains in Canada. And I thought
we had the trademark for that one. Somebody call the lawyers.) The
city of Banff lies inside the park, which has kept it from being
overdeveloped.
And the views are spectacular in every direction.
I arrived in Banff at 9:30 in the morning. The temperature was around
-15C, which was a little too much for my thin California blood. So I
took a few pictures and then drove on to Lake Louise, hoping that
things would warm up by the time I arrived and planning to return to
Banff later in the day. (They did; -5 is a whole
lot more pleasant than -15. And I did; return to Banff, that is.)
When I arrived at Lake Louise I found myself surrounded
by skiers, many of whom had come for a race being held on a course on
the lake. You can't actually see the lake in winter; it's
all covered in snow, aside from a small space they cleared to bare ice
as a skating rink. There's a magnificent old hotel in front of the
lake that's part of the Canadian Pacific chain. You have to give
those railroad guys credit: they certainly knew how to choose nice
locations for their properties.
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