EXPERIENCE THE CALGARY STAMPEDE
It may be many things to many people, but there’s no denying the Calgary Stampede—that ten-day Cowtown spectacle—is something to experience before you die. For those who have been, or locals who live it, I don’t need to explain why. For the rest of you, take it from a city slicker who came to love his inner yahoo, and to wear his white hat, buckle and boots with pride. Here’s why:
The festival attracts millions of people, from western Canada and beyond. Among them are party animals, herded through gates into wild nights at Cowboys, Nashville North and other venues around town. They see the Stampede as an excuse to drink beer, dance on sticky floors, flirt with the opposite sex (in boots), perhaps go home with them, wake up, hate themselves and repeat it all the following day. Strangely enough, older celebrants don’t stray too far from the above, perhaps preferring smaller venues such as Ranchmans or bigger concerts like the Round Up. It’s one of the world’s biggest parties, if you’re into that sort of thing, which the Stampede is more than willing to provide you an excuse to be.
Tips for a Stampede
Next, the Stampede is the World’s Richest Rodeo. Before I understood exactly what the rodeo is, how it works and who’s behind it, I always rooted for bulls and horses. I’d yell at my TV set: Throw that bastard off you and trample him in the mud! I’m sure I’m not alone, but that changed when I decided to actually see what was going on for myself. Interviewing riders, judges, farmers and vets, I found myself busting one rodeo myth after the next. No, the testicles of the animals are not strung up to make them buck. No, rodeo animals seldom get hurt and receive the best possible medical attention when they do. Yes, riders have the utmost respect for the animals, and bear the brunt of the injuries. No, the animals are never overworked, but are bred for their bucking ability, and live out their days like champions in the pasture. And yes, it’s dangerous, as even a mechanical bull will snap your wrist. It’s always difficult to lift a veil of assumptions, but having finally learned more about the rodeo, I see a timeless confrontation between man and beast, in fierce but relatively harmless battle, catering to and supported by the very people who work with animals in their daily lives. Animal rights activists may still want to string me up by my testicles, but I’ll say this: go check out the rodeo, meet the people, see the animals, and form an educated opinion.
Finally, there’s Cowtown itself: Calgary. Over the years I’ve visited the city during Stampede, I’m always impressed with the community spirit behind the event. The free pancake breakfasts. The parades. The exhibitions. The Young Canadians. The performances. The volunteers who make the event tick, taking unpaid leave from work in order to do so. “Any time you can give back to the community, and help them out a little bit, you get something out of it,” TV’s Mantracker Terry Grant tells me. He’s been a volunteer at the Stampede for years.
During my second Stampede, I was hell bent on breaking in a pair of boots and never left the hotel without my white hat. Before that, the only time I’d ever dressed like a cowboy was at Halloween parties, but here I can slot right in. Boots make me stand taller, puffing out my chest. The cowboy myth (see Ranch Vacation, page 62) still holds power in our modern age.
Certainly there are those who avoid the Stampede like a warm pile of cow droppings, but there’s no denying the sheer energy that shakes up the city. Boots and hats are everywhere, kids have cotton-candy grins, the midway is buzzing. Like many items on the Great Canadian Bucket List, the Stampede is likely a saddle that fits some better than others. But as a true Canadian celebration of Western roots and community spirit, you can’t miss it.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/stampede
SKI IN A UNESCO WORLD HERITAGE SITE
Canada has sixteen UNESCO World Heritage Sites, and it’s safe to say that visiting them all should be on the National Bucket List. After all, these are places of unique physical and cultural significance worldwide. Still, a bucket list should transcend the thoughts of a committee, even if they get it right, and especially when they get it wrong. Some World Heritage Sites I’ve visited around the world consist of little more than historical rubble. Some sites are miss-them-if-you-blink-really-that-was-it? And some, like Banff National Park, are just so staggeringly gorgeous they belong in another category altogether.
In any season, the Canadian Rockies is the picture postcard of Canada. Vast carpets of forest, gemstone lakes and mountains with views waiting to kick you in the plexus. It took genius, and considerable Canadian elbow grease, to set up three different ski resorts in the park: Lake Louise, Sunshine and Norquay. Come winter, you can literally slide down the wilderness that surrounds you.
Lake Louise, the third-biggest ski resort in Canada, is View Central. Enjoying the resort’s runs, I often had to stop and plop my butt in the snow simply to admire the vista. I was determined to hit every lift in one day, which I did, and was not disappointed. Thanks to its location inside a national park, respect for the environment takes precedence over the ambitions of a leisure corporation. Perhaps this is why Lake Louise is owned by one family, with patriarch Charlie Locke being the first guy to scale all ten peaks in the area. Here is a mountain for people who love mountains: million-dollar views, not million-dollar condos.
Closer to Banff town centre is Sunshine, a smaller resort famed for its champagne powder. Staying at the Sunshine Mountain Lodge, Banff’s only ski-in, ski-out boutique lodge, it’s easy to awake each morning to catch “first chair” and reap the rewards. For skiers and snowboarders, simply catching first chair is one for the bucket list, anywhere, especially with a dozen centimetres of fresh snow on the ground. Sunshine has the kind of snow that makes your skis smile. This from a guy who grew up in Africa, who first saw snow as a six-year-old during a freak storm in Johannesburg, and was told to hide under his school desk in case it was ash from nuclear fallout. True story.
Canada’s UNESCO World Heritage Sites
For all the snow in Canada, and the resorts that offer world-class conditions without even trying, what’s the big deal about the UNESCO designation? You probably won’t ski among moose and elk (although one instructor tells me his girlfriend once saw a wolverine). Sunshine, Norquay and Lake Louise—the Big Three, as they co-market themselves—look like typical resorts, with lifts and quads and young Australians sweeping chairs in exchange for a season pass. There are après-ski bars serving craft beer and knee-high plates of nachos. So how is this different, you may ask? It could be the views from the chairs at Lake Louise. It could be the snow at Sunshine. It could be the homeyness of Norquay. It could even be the proximity of iconic and grand Canadian hotels: Fairmont’s Banff Springs and Château Lake Louise. On investigation, I can confirm it’s all of the above, wrapped in a shell of deep respect for its surroundings—safe, protected, but available to be enjoyed.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/skibig3
HUNT FOR DINOSAURS
Oh, what irony that the fiercest creatures ever to roam the planet have been unearthed, literally, in Canada. Here, in the land where the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex roared, we now honour the beaver. T. rex would use beavers as tennis balls—assuming dinosaurs played tennis or coexisted with beavers. Regardless, their old bones, discovered in southern Alberta’s badlands, have been found in the world’s richest fossil bed.
Like most young boys, I was fascinated by dinosaurs, reciting their long-winded -saurus names and taking extra time to look at today’s tiny lizards, wondering where it all went wrong. Or, given the rise of mammals, right. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived at Dinosaur Provincial Park, I was just another jaded adult too consumed by maturity to appreciate the fact that I had just plucked a 70-million-year-old dinosaur bone directly from the ground. The kids around me, however, went berserk.
ON THE BUCKET LIST: Professor Philip J. Currie
The world’s foremost dinosaur expert (think Sam Neill in Jurassic Park, who was partially based on Dr. Currie) digs into the National Bucket List:
The Milk River Canyon north of the American border is Alberta’s deepest canyon and is also in the most sparsely populated region in the southern half of the province. The unhindered view of prairie grasslands is augmented by a great bowl-like depression that slopes down toward the canyon, offering a spectacular view of the mysterious Sweetgrass Hills on the south side of the border. The badlands have produced some of the most interesting fossils from the province, including embryonic duckbilled dinosaurs within eggs and a superbly preserved skeleton of the ancestor of Tyrannosaurus rex!
Professor Philip J. Currie,
World-renowned Palaeontologist
Founder, Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology
All it takes is a little imagination. Seventy-five million years ago, the Red Deer River valley was as lush and tropical as Central America. Huge beasts roamed about, looking very much like giant lizards, or birds, or museum skeletons, depending on which theory you choose to believe in. When the dinosaurs woke up to the Worst Day Ever, and promptly died, their bones settled on the riverbed, were covered up by soft sandstone and mudstone, and were all but forgotten until the 1800s, when the fiercest creatures on earth, humans, now wore funny hats. During the last ice age, a glacier had removed the top level of dirt, exposing hundreds of bones from over forty dinosaurs, including Tyrannosauridae, Hypsilophodontidae and Ankylosauria (you know, the ones with thick ankles).
Today, this UNESCO World Heritage Site is more than just Dinosaur Central. Sure, the visitor centre and interpretation drives are interesting, and you can drive a couple of hours to the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Palaeontology in Drumheller to see what the fossils look like cleaned up and bolted together. But it’s the landscape itself that struck me, dare I say it, like a meteor.
The badlands are so called because the soil makes this land terrible for farming but wonderful for filming science fiction. Cracked grey earth resembling the skin of an elephant is tightly wrapped around phallic rocks called hoodoos. Rattlesnakes shake among the riverside cottonwoods, while the much smaller descendants of dinosaurs fly overhead or bask in the sun. Taking it all in, it’s hard not to appreciate the scale of our planet’s history, and the palaeontological riches of Alberta.
A couple of years later, I find myself extracting an articulated bone from a fossil bed cut into a steep cliff, an hour outside Grande Prairie. I am almost one thousand kilometres north of the badlands, at the site of yet another remarkable discovery. Here, among oil and gas platforms, lies one of the world’s next-richest fossil beds, as palaeontologists from around the world work each summer in sun and rain to extract one fossil after another. The world’s most famous dinosaur guy, Canada’s own Professor Phil Currie, is spearheading the charge, complete with a $26-million namesake museum to house new-found treasures unearthed from the area.
Oil and gas beneath the earth have made Alberta Canada’s richest province. Yet its earth continues to yield riches that give us profound insight into the past. Whether you’re into history, museums or just unusual scenery, join the hunt for dinosaurs in Alberta. At least before a meteor comes out of nowhere, causes a deep impact, blocks out the sun, wipes out life and forces you, inconveniently, to wait another 70 million years for the opportunity.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/dinosaur
HELI-YOGA IN THE ROCKIES
If you place the prefix “heli” in front of any other word, the result can only sound impossibly and incredibly cool. Heli-shopping! Heli-badminton! Heli-dating! We’ve already covered heli-skiing in B.C., so let’s get creative as we climb aboard a whirlybird to witness one of the very best views one can possibly see: the peaks, spires, glaciers, lakes and valleys of the snow-capped Rocky Mountains.
I’m Lululemoning my way into the mountains for an afternoon of Icefields Helicopter’s “heli-yoga.” It’s the perfect blend of Canada’s Western provinces: the healthy lifestyle choices of British Columbia wrapped in the big ideas and money of Alberta. I meet my hatha yoga instructor, Martha McCallum, who is also a certified hiking guide, wildlife biologist and wellness coach. Like most yoga teachers I’ve encountered, she speaks with a voice as soothing as lip balm, edging me on to find my centre and connect with the earth, or in this case the mountains. She’s well aware of the irony of using jet fuel for an elevating mind-body exercise, but it does bring us closer to nature without having to build any roads or destroy any shrubs. It’s also a lot easier than hiking with a yoga mat.
Travel writers use the adjective breathtaking with far too much gusto (myself included). Breathtaking is when someone punches you in the stomach, or you’re about to bungee jump off a TV tower in Macao (trust me). The view of the Rockies from a helicopter is simply awful. As in “fills one with awe,” like the word was originally intended. Awesome is only some awe, but here we’re talking full, as in “to the brim.” Our pilot banks through the canyons, glides over shark-fin peaks, hovers over bighorn sheep and a lone wolf that should probably make the sheep nervous. From above, I feel like a kid who has skipped all his vegetables and gone straight to dessert. With no long hikes to the top, heli-touring is instant gratification.
We land on a site called the Wedding Knoll (what, you’ve never been to a heli-wedding?), where Martha safely ushers us out with mats and a picnic basket. The helicopter takes off just as smoothly as it landed, and we are all alone, 2,700 metres up, embedded in wilderness. She lays out the mats, using rocks to keep them grounded in the mountain breeze, and begins the first pose. The goal of yoga is to meditate to a point of perfect mind-body tranquility. Usually this is done in a room with polished hardwood floors, mirrors, New Age music and a dozen ladies wearing stretchy pants that flatter their buttocks. On the mountain, we still wear stretchy pants but have either far more or far fewer distractions, depending on your love for nature or for the behinds of yoga practitioners.
After the 45-minute class, we dine on Martha’s homemade organic sandwiches and follow that up with a short heli-hike along the spine of the mountain. I decide that all hikes in the mountains should start at the top and then just stay that way. Our helicopter returns, and the reward for this strenuous day of exercise is another fly-by through the mountains. Namaste!
It is certainly not essential to combine yoga with your heli-flightseeing experience in the Rockies. Not all of us are in pursuit of mind-soul nirvana, and not all of us want to stretch into a pretzel. Seeing the Rocky Mountains from above, on the other hand, is a must. Heli-hiking, heli-poker, heli-cooking—just add the prefix heli- and you’ve got a winner, flying high on the Great Canadian Bucket List.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/heliyoga
BE THE COWBOY ON A RANCH VACATION
Cowboys date back to the 1700s, the name being a direct translation of the Spanish vaquero, a person who managed cattle by horseback. Cattle drives, averaging around three thousand head, were managed by just ten men or fewer, each with several horses, battling the elements to literally drive the meat to market. The cowboy, often poorly paid, uneducated and low on the social ladder, had many tasks to perform. These included rounding up the cattle; sorting, securing and protecting herds from thieves and wild animals; breaking in horses; and birthing and nursing sick animals.
The hazardous and strenuous nature of the work created a breed of hardened men and terrific fodder for the romance novels eagerly snapped up by urban readers fascinated by the call of the Wild West. Despite Hollywood’s portrayal, there were relatively few violent confrontations with Native Americans. Instead, most Indian chiefs were paid in cattle or cash for permission to drive cattle through their lands. Another aspect glossed over in the folklore is that, according to the U.S. census of the time, 30 percent of all cowboys were of African or Mexican ancestry. Giddy-up amigo! When railways replaced cattle drives, modern cowboys began to work on ranches and show off their skills at competitive rodeos.
Our bucket list is now singing that old eighties song: “I Wanna Be a Cowboy.” Who am I to argue?
Bill Moynihan talks with a throat of gravel, as if he’s been chewing on the bones of Jack Palance and needs a can of oil to wash it down. He may be seventy-five years old, but the patriarch of the 120-acre Skyline Ranch is as tough and grizzled as any bootstrapping cowboy. Located in the Porcupine Hills, Skyline offers ranch vacations where guests can assist with daily chores, including feeding the three hundred head of cattle, roping up steers and patrolling for wild animals. The area, captured beautifully in Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain, sweeps up to the Rocky Mountains on the horizon. Bill’s kids and grandkids are all involved in the family operation, a working ranch where you can leave your hat on and get your hands dirty.
Bill’s moustache looks like an army guarding his upper lip. The former boxer, bush pilot, cop and rodeo cowboy sizes me up. I’m a regular cowpoke, as alien to life on a ranch as I am to life in the Himalayas. I select a white horse named Barry (ahem) and saddle up for my first roundup. Here’s what they don’t tell you about Angus cows: they’re big, and they can be rather belligerent. My cutting horse, bred for sudden stops and bucking cows, isn’t fazed. Bill lassos a young calf and I assist with tagging it on the ear, nervous about its 600-kilogram mom who seems endearingly protective. Next I feed heifers some grain and dispense hay from an industrial tractor. While I barely manage to heave a bale of hay to the shed, Bill walks past carrying two on each hand. When the zombies attack, I hope I’m around a guy like Bill.
Speak Like a Cowboy
Grab your bangtail from the picket line and hop in the rig, here’s some genuine cowboy slang to prove you’re not a city slicker (even if nobody will know what the heck you’re talking about).
bake: When you ride your horse too hard, you bake it.
bangtail: a mustang
burn the breeze: gallop at full speed
chewed gravel: got thrown from a horse
dusted: got thrown from a horse
grassed: got thrown from a horse (sense a theme?)
greenhorn: someone from the East who don’t know diddly-squat
hurricane deck: what you sit in when a horse starts bucking
outlaw: a horse that cannot be broken
owl head: a horse that won’t stop looking around
rig: a saddle
saddle bum: a drifter
slicker: a raincoat
widow maker: a misbehaving horse
Skyline guests can also go hiking, fishing, biking and horse riding in the hills, but ranch work is where the action is. Moving hay, shovelling shit, feeding the animals: farm life is physically tough and yet satisfyingly simple. You know what has to be done, and you do it.
That evening, over cold cans of Lucky Lager, I share stories with Bill and his son Reid, learning about the respect one has for the environment when one actually lives in it. “When the stars are out, you can see just about every one of them,” explains Reid, feeding the firepit. The chain bonding ranching and nature is thick, and the Moynihans have a deep appreciation and respect for the animals and the land that provide their livelihood.
They also have a deep appreciation for fun. When Bill teaches me how to lasso, the only thing I succeed in lassoing is my eyeball. City slickers are always good for a laugh around the fire.
The following day, I succeed in sticking my arm deep inside a pregnant cow’s vagina, verifying all is ripe for birthing. Yes, I’ve come a long way in a couple of days. We saddle up for a ride to the property fences, making sure nothing is damaged and looking for signs of predators. A strong, icy wind blows across the foothills.
“The biggest thing you can do in life is pass on the thing you love to somebody else,” Bill tells me. He is not a man of many words, but cowboys don’t have to be. I try to grunt, but it comes out like a squeak.
The word dude technically refers to someone who doesn’t know cowboy culture but pretends otherwise. You can also refer to a dude as being “all hat and no cattle.” A dude like, say, me. Yet the hospitality from these earthy folks was wonderfully warm and genuine, and the values of the modern-day cowboy seem to be alive and well. As it rides its way onto the Great Canadian Bucket List, ranch life remains as real and alluring as the cowboy myth that promotes it.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/ranch
RV THE ICEFIELDS PARKWAY
The first time I hauled a backpack around the world, I had a wonderful sensation of independence. Everything I needed was right there: clothes, toiletries, my iPod, books, cash, a sense of adventure. My daily challenge was deciding where to sleep and use the toilet. The first time I went on an RV adventure, I felt that familiar gush of independence, only the daily challenges were flushed away with the black water.
My dad, my brothers and I had rented a nine-metre Winnebago for a week’s Mancation to the Rockies. We would become just one of over a million RVs on Canadian roads that summer, the others hopefully driven by people with more experience than us. With a complete kitchen, two television sets, a bedroom and a bathroom, the RV rattled and rolled its way out of Vancouver, wobbling in the wind with the aerodynamics of a cement brick. I was driving, my brothers were yelling: “Too close to the side!” “Watch the lines!” “You almost hit that car!” Ah yes, just a few hours in and I could feel our Mancation easing my stress . . . right up behind my eyeballs and straight to the back of my throat.
My dad has always been in love with mountains, but since emigrating from South Africa he’d never had the opportunity to see the Rockies. For the full effect, I steered our roadworthy beast to Highway 93—a.k.a. the Icefields Parkway—a 232-kilometre stretch of road between Lake Louise and Jasper. It is, without a doubt, one of the world’s most spectacular drives, a gee-whiz postcard moment waiting for you at every turn. The visual impact of the mountains and glaciers that line the highway rivals that of the Himalayas, but boy, the Rockies are a lot easier to get to. Passing turquoise lakes and glacier-cut mountains, we craned our necks from side to side to capture the view out of the large windows, like we were watching a game of tennis. The overall effect, especially for someone who enjoys mountain beauty, can be as rich as overly cheesy fondue. “It’s too much,” I heard my dad reporting to my mom on his cellphone. “But in a good way.”
Canada’s Top RV Destinations
GO RVing is an organization representing RV dealers, manufacturers and campground operators that helps to promote the freedom, flexibility and fun of the RV lifestyle. Here’s a list from their Top Destinations to RV in Canada:
BC Ashnola River
Bella Coola
AB Banff National Park
Beauvais Lake Provincial Park/
Waterton Lakes National Park
SK Douglas Provincial Park
Duck Mountain Provincial Park
MB Spruce Woods Provincial Park
ON Algonquin Park
Bronte Creek Provincial Park
QC Bannick, Ville-Marie
Gaspésie
NS Aspy Bay, Cape Breton
Cabot Trail
NB Fundy National Park
Littoral Acadien
PEI Cavendish Sunset
Twin Shores, Darnley
NL Gros Morne
Twillingate
YK Kluane Lake
Tatchun Lake
Rock flour, crushed and carried by glaciers, makes mountain lakes glow in luminous shades of blue and green. We visit Moraine Lake on a postcard-perfect day, getting our group photo in front of one of Canada’s most popular and sought-after views. By the time we reach Peyto Lake, farther up the highway, our camera batteries need refuelling from the RV’s generator. The RV’s height, big windows and ease of movement made it the perfect vehicle from which to gawk at the mountains, if not always to park. Thank you, Parks Canada, for the extra-long parking bays at all the major sites. Parks Canada protects our wilderness, and they park Canada too!
We pop into the Athabasca Glacier, where monster customized four-by-four buses take us directly onto a six-kilometre-long ice floe in the Columbia Icefields. Out on the ice, I scoop up melted water, drinking the taste of nature at its purest.
Bookending the Parkway are two of Canada’s most iconic wilderness areas: Banff and Jasper national parks. No surprise that we came across a bear chewing berries alongside the road, or huge elk stopping traffic in its tracks. During the week, we take the Banff Gondola and the Jasper Tramway, barbecue steaks in an RV park, play a terrific round of golf at the Jasper Park Lodge, rent Harley-Davidsons to rocket up Mount Edith Cavell, and even swim in the ice-cold waters of a glacier lake. It is, in short, an epic Mancation, immersed in true Canadiana. We even manage to keep the RV in relatively good shape, although on the last night of our journey we realize that nobody had been paying too much attention to the instructions about how to empty the black water. Push a few buttons, pull a few knobs, and the next thing we know, the tube comes loose and drenches my brother and me. Truth be told, black water looks rather yellow. My dad would have wet himself laughing, but of course we’d already beaten him to it.
I’ve been on the Icefields Parkway several times since, yet the RV trip stands out. Travel magic is not about what you’re doing, it’s about whom you’re doing it with. Wise words to remember when crossing off any item on the Great Canadian Bucket List.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/icefields
HIT YOUR TARGET AT
THE WEST EDMONTON MALL
Yes, I’m fully aware how this looks. Here’s a book listing the ultimate things to do in Canada before you die, and you just read: visit a mall. It’s not even the biggest mall in the world. That honour belongs to— No, wait, someone else just built a bigger one. Yet Canadian malls are a little different. Take Montreal’s Underground City. Officially called RÉSO, it’s a warren of tunnels beneath twelve square kilometres of downtown Montreal, linking shops, hotels, residential buildings, schools, train and bus stations, offices and tourists searching for a glimpse of daylight. Accessed by half a million people every day in winter, RÉSO contains several malls and so cannot technically be called a solitary mall in its own right. Calgary has its four-storey CORE, beneath three city blocks and with 160 stores. “Big deal!” yawn our friends in Ontario, where Toronto’s Eaton Centre has 330 stores, Brampton’s Bramalea City has 342 and Mississauga’s Square One a whopping 360 places of commercial worship. In British Columbia, where people can actually step outside in winter, Burnaby’s Metropolis at Metrotown trumps them all, at 450 stores, including a massive Asian supermarket.
Yes, Canadians like to shop, and by the looks of it, they like to shop at the same chain stores you’ll find at just about every mall in the country. And then, suddenly, like an unexplained star burning across the retail sky, you get the phenomenon of the West Edmonton Mall. The largest mall in North America has over 800 stores, covering 570,000 square metres of retail, more than double the size of Metropolis. There’s parking for more than 20,000 cars, it employs over 20,000 people, receives 30 million visitors a year, and is Alberta’s busiest tourist attraction.
I hear you asking: “Robin, seriously, isn’t one mall just a carbon copy of the next? Stores, food court, gadget stores, teenagers in paint-on jeans, glass elevators, confusing maps?” I thought so too, until I found myself pulling the trigger of a .44 Magnum revolver, blasting a bottle-cap hole in my paper target—at the West Edmonton Mall.
How many malls are accredited as a zoo? How many malls boast the world’s second-largest indoor amusement park, complete with twenty-four feature rides and a thrilling roller coaster called the Mindbender? How many malls have the world’s largest indoor water park, with the world’s largest indoor wave pool, 25-metre-high slides and a bungee jump tower? At this mall, you can say hello to the sea lion that swims beneath a replica of Señor Columbus’s Santa Maria, skate on an Olympic-sized hockey rink and then transplant yourself to New Orleans, Paris or Beijing at one of three themed areas: Bourbon Street, Europa Boulevard and Chinatown. Should you get tired of walking around trying to make sense of the thoughtfully provided maps, take a nap in one of the mall’s two hotels.
You might expect to find such a mall in Vegas, or perhaps Dubai, which stole the Biggest Mall in the World title before relinquishing it to China, Malaysia and the Philippines. Asian malls dominate the list of biggest malls, but standing out like a proud beaver among the tigers is our very own West Edmonton Mall. To celebrate, I armed myself.
Canadians Are Shopaholics
According to a report by KPMG, nine of North America’s fifteen most productive malls are in Canada. Measured by their sales per square foot, these include:
Sherway Gardens, Toronto ($950/sq. ft.),
Chinook Centre, Calgary ($1,055/sq. ft.),
Oakridge Centre, Vancouver ($1,200/sq. ft.),
Yorkdale Shopping Centre, Toronto ($1,300/sq. ft.),
Toronto Eaton Centre ($1,320/sq. ft.) and, topping the list, beating out Caesars Palace in Vegas ($1,470/sq. ft.) as the most productive mall on the entire continent: Vancouver’s Pacific Centre, at a whopping $1,580/sq. ft.
Flora Kupsch owns the family-friendly Wild West Shooting Centre. Flora is a multidisciplinary champion in firearms competitions and ably hands me a nine-millimetre .357 and a .44 Magnum bazooka. The Wild West sells a range of ammunition and guns, and offers various packages to clients who visit from all over the province. Where else can you pick up a bikini, do the groceries and let off a few rounds? Increasingly, many of Flora’s customers are young girls, strung out on Twilight, aiming for Team whoever they’re not into that month.
I surprised Flora, and myself, by turning out to be a pretty good shot. Is there another mall where you can walk out with lingerie for your wife and used target sheets? Exactly.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/wem
HIKE OR SKI INTO SKOKI LODGE
In 1931, Swiss mountain guides and members of the Banff Ski Club decided to build western Canada’s first commercial ski lodge. With thousands of kilometres to choose from, they settled on a place called Skoki, selected for its scenic beauty, quality of snow, proximity to a creek and safety from avalanches. Today, one of the oldest and highest backcountry lodges in Canada is an eleven-kilometre hike from the groomed ski slopes of the Lake Louise Resort, and I’m feeling every step of it.
It’s my first time on cross-country skis, slipping and sliding forth with surprising ease. A strip of material under each ski, called the skin, grips the snow as I edge my way through pine forest, over frozen lakes and across windy mountain passes. Every guest must ski, hike or snowshoe in, unless you’re the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, in which case Parks Canada will organize a helicopter. Skoki made headlines for attracting the newly wed William and Kate on their Canadian honeymoon. No electricity, no cellphone or Internet coverage, no running water, no paparazzi—Skoki provided a rustic royal break from the media frenzy. It wasn’t the first royal connection either: one of the lodge’s first guests was one Lady Jean, a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria, who visited Skoki with her travel-writer husband, Niall Rankin. While the Rankins used the outhouse like regular guests, William and Kate had a specially built bathroom constructed for their visit, which was hastily destroyed afterwards, lest regular guests get any ideas.
The Royal Throne
When the newly married Duke and Duchess of Cambridge needed time alone on their first royal visit to Canada, Skoki Lodge was the perfect fit: miles away from the paparazzi, relaxing, and in the bosom of the Rockies. Skoki’s staff worked with royal handlers to keep the destination mum and prepare it for the future King and Queen of England (and Canada). This meant the no-running-water, no-electricity charm of Skoki would need a little polish. A helicopter brought in a modern bathroom, complete with flush toilet, bathtub and sink, painstakingly installed to the bemusement of long-time staff, who have always found other ways to make do. Everything went off splendidly, even if the royal stay was less than twenty-four hours. As for the bathroom, it was hastily demolished and cleared away. Since Skoki is a wonderful slice of rustic history, guests are directed to the outhouses, as perfectly serviceable a throne as any.
Skoki strives to be as authentic a backcountry experience today as it was in the 1930s. That means candles, blankets and late night stumbles to the outhouse during blizzards. It’s one of the best winter adventures in North America, with an emphasis on adventure. You’ll know this as you make your way up Deception Pass, a steep uphill that keeps going, and going, and going. By the time I arrive, covered in sweat and snow from too many downhill tumbles, the fireplace is surrounded by guests enjoying hot homemade soup. The lodge accommodates up to twenty-two guests, and we each feel we deserve our place on one of the sink-in couches. Among the guests are two Norwegians, a ski club from Manitoba, a couple returning for the ninth time from the Northwest Territories, a birthday party and a couple on their second honeymoon (staying in the Honeymoon Cabin, of course). Will and Kate, who signed the guest book like everyone else, preferred the Riverside Cabin, close to the creek. I offload my gear in a cabin called Wolverine, named for the wolverine that got stuck in it and almost tore it to shreds. Although Skoki’s original builders took refuge in a special bear tree, the bears, cougars and wolves that roam Banff National Park nowadays keep their distance. The most bothersome creatures appear to be pine martens, porcupines and exhausted travel writers.
Skoki itself is the launch pad for hiking and skiing trails, which most guests explore on their second day. Two-night stays are typical, giving you just about enough time to recover from the eleven-kilometre trek in order to do it all over again. Nobody can expect to lose much weight, however. The chef and staff somehow prepare gourmet meals, such as coconut-crusted Alaskan halibut, and marinated tenderloin served with candied yams, avocado Caesar salad and fresh homemade bread. That everything is packed in by snowmobile (horses in summer) and prepared using propane stoves makes it all the more impressive, and appreciated.
The discussion around the fire revolves mostly around Skoki’s beauty, history and legacy. One couple sifts through the guest books until they find the last time they signed it, in 1974. Another guest plays the piano, helicoptered in sometime in the early 1980s. I read an old book about western Canadian outlaws, play with Lucy and Bill (Skokie’s resident Jack Russells) and let the fresh air and exercise sink into my pores. On my final night, the moon is so full I can read without a headlamp. Miles away from anything, protected by a world of mountains, forest and snow, Skoki is the perfect escape, for royals and the rest of us.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/skoki
BOARD THE ROCKY MOUNTAINEER
All aboard for one of the world’s great train experiences. I’m not talking about the time I spent thirty-eight hours in a cabin with slaughtered chickens in Zambia, with deafening music blasting through the cobwebbed, distorted speakers. No, the Rocky Mountaineer is an altogether more genteel affair, smothered in five-star service, tasty libations and views of the Rockies in all their splendour. Running on four routes going both east and west, the Rocky Mountaineer is North America’s largest private rail service. National Geographic called it one of the World’s Greatest Trips, and Condé Nast Traveler listed it among the Top 5 Trains in the World. I hopped on board at the station in Vancouver for a two-day journey up to Banff.
You don’t sleep on the Rocky Mountaineer. The thousand-kilometre journey takes place during daylight so you can enjoy the views, with passengers staying overnight at the company’s hotel in Kamloops. Guests are seated in a two-level, glass-domed coach with panoramic views, drinks service and a helpful, unnervingly cheery attendant pointing out places of interest along the way. On the way out of B.C. we pass over Hells Gate, the narrowest point of the Fraser River, and spot a bear walking across the tracks behind us. We enter the engineering marvel of the Spiral Tunnels and are halfway through a game of cards when Mount Robson, the highest mountain in the Rockies, comes into view. That deserves another Caesar.
There’s an excellent gourmet meal service and optional activities such as wine tasting, to put you nicely in the groove of the rocking train. Of course, like many of life’s great luxuries, the comfort comes with a price tag. The trip is ideal for Vancouver cruise shippers extending their journey, seniors or anyone looking for a little bit of romance. Recalling the time I paid ten dollars for an attendant’s Snickers bar in Croatia, the only food I had in eighteen hours, I relax knowing that the Rocky Mountaineer is all about the journey, not the destination. If only all journeys were quite as civilized.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/rockymountaineer
SWALLOW A PRAIRIE OYSTER
Chef Aaron Scherr invites me into the restaurant kitchen and pulls out his balls. He asks me if I want to hold them, and I can’t deny I’m a little curious. They are grey and slimy, acorn shaped, with the texture of sponge. They could be the brains of a chipmunk, or perhaps a forgotten, desiccated plum. But no, there’s simply no getting around it. These are testicles.
Buzzards Restaurant has had its famous prairie oysters on the menu for two decades, a special addition to the menu during the Calgary Stampede. Now, a cowboy, even one fresh off the ranch, would have to look long and far to find the sea in the Prairies. The fact is, these oysters are as removed from seafood as catnip from a banjo. They do, however, bear some relation to Rocky Mountain Oysters, which you can find south of the border.
A Ballsy Recipe
Chef Aaron Scherr prepares his famous Prairie Oysters
The Crown Jewels
Ingredients:
1 pair (2) prairie oysters, scrotum removed
2 oz. (60 mL) Crown Royal Canadian rye whisky
3–4 fresh strawberries, quartered or sliced,
depending on desired presentation
1 4-oz. (125 g) portion of fresh-baked corn bread
1 oz. (30 g) gently crushed walnuts
1 tsp. (5 mL) real maple syrup
1 tbsp. (15 mL) salted butter
salt and pepper—6-to-1 ratio, to taste
Method:
In order for cattle farmers to control their stock, male calves must be castrated. Typically, this is done when they are branded. Alternatively, testicles are tied with elastic, and eventually fall to the ground to be eaten by coyotes (ah, the circle of life!). Some of the balls roll their way to Buzzards, which has thought of creative means to cook, grill and sauté them for the adventurously hungry. Each year they are given a new name and recipe. I was lucky enough to receive the Crown Jewels, to which Scherr adds Crown Royal whisky for flavour.
He hands me a testicle and a sharp knife. I make a cut right at the top and ask him if this makes it kosher. Oh, he’s heard them all before, with nigh a sentence passing without a pun. “Sprinkle on nuts, will you?” I ask him if he’s lost his marbles. He warns me I might get the sack, and . . . you get the idea.
I slice the organ, rich in protein, into thin coin-sized medallions. Over the stove, Aaron adds maple butter over high heat, some whisky, salt, fresh-cut strawberries and gooseberries. For all their novelty on Buzzard’s otherwise terrific menu, prairie oysters receive a lot of attention. Buses of Japanese tourists might arrive specifically to sample them. During the ten-day Stampede festival, the chef cooks up over one hundred kilograms of cajones.
Lately, sourcing bull balls has become a bit of a problem. Few large meat packers will tackle this soft market, but Aaron has found some farms in his native Saskatchewan to come to the rescue. He even prepared some bison nuts recently, which were bigger than baseballs. Apparently they were a home run with the customers.
He serves up the Crown Jewels at the table. In my travels I have been fortunate to sample crickets (legs get stuck in the teeth), termites (taste nutty), deep-fried guinea pig (stringy chicken), fermented horse milk (acidic) and crocodile (less-stringy chicken). The bucket list demands I eat the testicles of a bull, because this is something to do in Canada. Organ meat tastes like organ meat, and since I grew up on chopped liver, it’s not a taste that’s unfamiliar to me. Still, I’m not ordering seconds.
I ask for two bottles of beer and pull out my favourite souvenir of all time: a genuine, 100-percent-authentic, hairy kangaroo-scrotum bottle opener, picked up in Australia. The chef thinks I might be yanking his chain, but if you’re going to have a themed meal, you might as well go balls to the wall. In the end, culture determines what we find acceptable to consume and what we don’t. Eating the gonads of a raging bull, which carry flavour rather well, is deemed unacceptable by the same society that will happily nosh on pig’s feet, liver, rump and halibut cheeks. The bulls get the snip either way, which keeps coyotes, Japanese tourists and national bucket lists satiated.
START HERE: canadianbucketlist.com/balls