HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2009-04-16, Page 5THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, APRIL 16, 2009. PAGE 5.
Bonnie
Gropp
TThhee sshhoorrtt ooff iitt
Dress it up
Did you see the news story about Serbia
on CNN? It was a feature report about
how Serbians have taken to erecting
huge, reverential statues of cultural heroes
along roadsides, in parks and on public
squares.
Which isn’t all that weird on the face of it.
Most societies erect public statuary
commemorating notable historical figures.
What’s a little different about Serbia’s
approach is the subject matter. The village of
Banatski Sokolac for instance, has statues of
Tarzan. And Rocky Balboa. And the character
portrayed by martial-arts film star Bruce Lee.
These people aren’t Serbian. They aren’t
even real people. What’s the deal?
“My generation can’t find role models at
home,” one Serbian artist explained.
The article got my attention not so much
because of the goofy statues, but because CNN
thought it was newsworthy. You want whacky
roadside attractions, CNN? Don’t waste your
money sending a film crew to Serbia. Point
‘em north.
When it comes to whacky roadside
attractions Canada is Tarzan and Rocky and
Bruce Lee combined.
Let’s take a coast-to-coast tour, cherry-
picking just a few Canadian roadside
attractions. There’s…well, cherries, for
starters. The town of Lancer, Saskatchewan
has a 20-foot steel chokecherry sculpture on
the main street.
Animals? How about Huskie the Muskie – a
giant leaping muskellunge on the outskirts of
Kenora, Ontario.
There’s also the Wawa goose, Creston’s
Bigfoot, and who could overlook Ralph, the
giant green grasshopper which looms over
Ogema, Saskatchewan?
Well, maybe the folks of Edson, Alberta
could. Those poor wretches are forced to dwell
in the shadow of a gargantuan concrete
squirrel that stands poised over their town,
ready to crack it like a walnut. Squirrel’s name
is Eddie. (Eddie. Edson. Geddit?)
Lots of towns – Boissevain, Manitoba,
Kitimat, British Columbia, Plaster Rock, New
Brunswick and Niagara Falls, Ontario to name
but four – have erected outsized bear statues
but not too many towns have a beluga whale
monument (Tadoussac, Quebec makes the
cut).
Jasper has a big horn sheep and Victoria has
a big pink fish. Citizens of South Dildo,
Newfoundland can point with pride to the
huge whale head breaching out of the gravel
on the shoulder of the main road into town.
A giant whale? South Dildo? You’d
think…never mind.
Sometimes the statuary erected by
Canadians invites the question ‘what the hell
were they thinking?’ The town of Vonda,
Saskatchewan for example, has replicated a
two-storey whiskey still by the town’s
approach. Who paid for that – the Vonda
Bootleggers Cartel?
Some Canadian monuments look like they
might have been inspired by chaps who spent
rather too much time sampling the output of
the Vonda still. Edmonton has a statue of a
blue buffalo wearing a kilt. The town of South
River, Ontario displays a sculpture that looks
like a mess of lobster claws impaling two
spears of asparagus.
That one baffles even the South River elders.
The plaque identifies the sculpture as “THE
??”
I don’t know if it’s the fecundity of the
Canadian imagination or just the long winters
but Canadian Roadside Attractions range from
the profound (Brotherhood of Mankind,
Calgary) to the prosaic (Eugene the
Prospector, Bodo, Alberta); from the ethereal
(Flying Saucer, Moonbeam, Ontario) to the
mundane (Bracebridge’s giant pencil).
Some towns exhibit memorials that could
only be Canadian. Beardmore, Ontario boasts
a statue of the World’s Largest Snowman
while the town of Duncan, British Columbia
spent its advertising budget on a giant hockey
stick, 205 feet long and 31 tons in weight.
My all-time favourite Canadian roadside
monument? I lean towards the structure that
graces the outskirts of the town of Macklin
whick is about a hundred klicks south of
Lloydminster, Saskatchewan. It stands 30 feet
high, pure white and looks…vaguely
sexy…something like an hourglass, although
if you tilt your head and squint your eyes you
might think you’re looking at a lithe and
limbless nude torso.
Don’t get excited. It depicts a bunnock –
which is to say, it’s a statue dedicated to a
horse’s anklebone. Bunnock is a big deal in
Macklin. It’s not only a bone, it’s the name of
a game that has European roots going back
400 years.
Early Russian and German settlers brought
the game to Saskatchewan back in the 1800s.
Bunnock is kind of a cross between bowling
and curling, except less exciting. Basically, a
team lines up to throw horse anklebones at the
other team’s horse anklebones. The winning
team is the one that knocks over the most
horse knucklebones.
Remember what I said about long winters?
Sounds dopey, but each August, visiting
teams from as far away as Japan and Australia
travel to Macklin to compete for prizes in the
World Bunnock Championships. It pumps an
estimated $500,000 into the Macklin
economy.
Just another whacky roadside attraction? If
anybody’s having a horse laugh, it’s the folks
in Macklin.
Arthur
Black
Other Views Take in those whacky roadside attractions
Cooler heads among Ontario’s
Progressive Conservatives have asked
candidates in their race for leader not
to get so nasty with each other that they hurt
their party’s chances of winning the 2011
election, which shows despite setbacks they
still have some optimism.
Interim leader Bob Runciman said the
candidates should avoid insults and name-
calling that open wounds that will be difficult
to heal and that will hinder the party working
together.
The Conservatives have become notorious
for fighting each other with few holds barred –
they are the mixed martial arts brawlers of
leadership contests. This hurt them after their
last two leadership races and there are signs it
could happen again.
Parties prefer candidates to explain their
own attributes, rather than pull down rivals.
The Conservatives became noted for the latter
first in a race in 2002, which picked Ernie
Eves to succeed the retiring, extreme right-
wing premier Mike Harris.
Other candidates resented Eves having left
the cabinet and legislature for a lucrative job in
the financial world, but hurrying back when
the leadership became open.
Jim Flaherty, then deputy premier and
finance minister, who would have had the
inside track if Eves had not come back, said
Eves had not stayed when the going was tough
and was not fully committed to politics.
Flaherty also called Eves, who was slightly
more moderate than Harris, a pale pink
imitation of a Liberal, about the most scathing
comment one Conservative could make about
another.
Then Health Minister Tony Clement said
Eves in his mid-50s was too old to be running
for premier and Eves cautioned him icily to
mind his manners, which was taken as a
warning if he won he might not keep any who
slighted him in cabinet.
In a second race in 2004, after Eves became
premier but lost an election, Flaherty, running
again, complained the winning candidate,
John Tory, who had been chief aide to the
former moderate premier, William Davis,
“sounds like a Liberal.”
Flaherty also complained Tory was not there
when the party had its toughest fight to regain
government in the 1990s and another
candidate, Frank Klees, said Tory, who had
never been elected anywhere, lacked
experience needed to be leader and premier.
The acrimony lingered after the races were
over and handicapped the Conservatives. As
examples, Eves demoted Flaherty from deputy
premier and assigned him a less prestigious
cabinet post and Clement also felt his future in
Ontario politics was not as bright.
Both left eventually for senior posts in the
federal government, so the provincial
Conservatives lost talent.
Some voters also felt if some in Eves’s party
thought he was a dilettante uncommitted to
politics, they knew him best and must be right.
And when some Conservatives judged that
Tory lacked experience to be leader and
premier, who could know better?
Tory went to some effort to appeal to
extreme right Conservatives who opposed him
for leader to help in the 2007 election. But its
unelected activists particularly, more than
MPPs, sat on their hands.
Conservative leadership races may be
contested more fiercely partly because they
offer a bigger prize. Being Conservative leader
has been almost an automatic passport to
premier since 1943 and only two of the party’s
leaders since, Tory and Larry Grossman, failed
to become premier.
A bigger influence may be extreme-right
Conservatives who have dominated the party
most of the last two decades are rigid ideolo-
gists, who know only they are right and are
unwilling to bend and compromise to others.
The signs the current race may become
bitter include the furthest-right candidate, Tim
Hudak, reminding he slogged away for the
party when times were tough, a jab at his
likely closest challenger, Christine Elliott, an
MPP for only three years.
Hudak also ran Flaherty’s 2004 campaign
for leader and would have hoped Flaherty
would return the favour. But Flaherty is
Elliott’s husband and master-minding her
campaign.
Such ingredients would set pulses racing in
any party.
Eric
Dowd
FFrroomm
QQuueeeenn’’ss PPaarrkk
Come on, admit it. Don’t you miss
playing dressup? Aren’t there times
when you want to be the princess or
dashing hero?
Once upon a time, women got fancy and men
were debonair. Good clothes, and these were
worn often, meant suits and ties, dresses and
heels.
Look back at pictures from a few decades
ago and you will see the flouncy and fine
adorned for everything from dances to Sunday
supper at Grandma’s. My mother , who worked
in retail, was never on the job in anything other
than a dress and spikes. Pants, shorts and
comfy blouses were reserved for around the
house.
Not so today. We have become a society
where denim rules, where a clean t-shirt and
comfort are generally the best effort we’re
going to make for most day-to-day occasions.
They’re even seen these days at weddings and
funerals, once considered the epitome of
formality.
A couple of weeks ago, I took my grandson
on a shopping spree to get him clothes for an
upcoming wedding. While there I decided to
pick him up something for spring, an Easter
outfit, which turned out to be a nice pair of
shorts and some ‘dressier’ t-shirts. I couldn’t
helping comparing it to my Easter clothes as a
child.
I remember the excitement I felt each spring
when I would see my new outfit. It was
inevitably a dress. And for some years, the
ensemble was completed, with the same level
of predictability, by patent leather shoes,
usually white or some nice pastel shade, and a
matching coat and hat.
The interesting thing is that this wouldn’t
have been my only ‘good’ outfit. Regular
attendance at church ensured there were many
options in the closet to step it up a notch when
it came to what to wear. And there were many
opportunities to wear them besides church.
But then things began to change. Comfort
and practicality began to work their way into
wardrobes. When I was in Grade 11 it was
announced that girls could begin wearing
(Imagine this!) slacks to school. Provided, that
is, they were not denim.
That we broke out for the dances on the
weekends. And by the time I’d hit 16 it was
clear that the days of skirts and crinolines,
button-down shirts and ties were gone forever.
My mother cringed as I left the house draped in
poncho, bell-bottomed blue jeans, crocheted or
tie-dyed top and moccasins. “You’re not going
out looking like that?” she’d cry, as I wondered
what the heck her problem was. I thought I
looked terrific.
That said, I did still don dresses and shiny
shoes for festivities. But it seems my
generation had set off a decline where it wasn’t
long before we went from thinking stepping
out your door in hair curlers was declassé, to
considering sweatpants appropriate attire.
Thanks goodness there are fewer of those out
there now, but when it comes to clothes the
emphasis is still casual. Which I think is kind
of sad, really. Obviously we shouldn’t be
judged on the clothes we wear. After all, how
you dress for church for example, isn’t what
matters. And economically it makes sense to
fill a wardrobe with items that take you a
variety of places.
But, if anything goes, any time, anywhere
isn’t there a sameness to everything we do?
Dressing up gives an event a certain
importance, setting it apart from regular
activities. And it gives us a rare opportunity to
put some glamour into the mundane.
Some believe insults could hurt