The West Edmonton Mall is the largest indoor shopping mall in North America. That’s not weird, but plenty of odd stuff has gone on there.
• The Mall’s amusement park, Galaxyland, was originally called Fantasyland. It was changed after a lawsuit from Disney.
• Among the mall’s other attractions: an indoor shooting range, an aquarium, a water park, an interfaith chapel, and a boating lake centered around a large-scale replica of Christopher Columbus’ Santa Maria.
• Specimens of an invasive cockroach species, native to Asia and not found anywhere else in Edmonton, have been spotted in the water park. The creatures most likely arrived via the park’s imported plants.
• The Mall’s 18-hole miniature golf course is a scale replica of the famous links at Pebble Beach in California.
• Big retailers can leave big vacancies. When the Mall’s IKEA store closed in the mid-1990s, the location stood empty for years, until a recreation complex took over the space in 2002.
• Urban legend: a subway station, ready-built and waiting, sits beneath the Mall in case the city of Edmonton ever expands its light rail system.
• Tragedy struck the Mall in 1986, when several cars from the Mindbender—the 14-story, triple-loop roller coaster—derailed, killing three passengers.
• In 2010, a toddler climbed on a bench on the mall’s second story and went toppling over a railing. He miraculously survived when he landed in an ornamental fountain below.
• The Mall houses a 13-screen cinema…complete with an animatronic, fire-breathing dragon in the lobby.
• The Gehrmezian family, who developed the Mall, had mezuzahs installed at every entrance. These small cases, containing rolled-up scrolls bearing verses from Deuteronomy, are commonly found on the doorways of Orthodox Jewish homes.
Some of the oldest rocks on Earth make up the Canadian Shield, which covers most of Quebec.