We have all had the experience, at one time or another, of being asked by our American neighbours if we find it difficult to party in an igloo, if we will demonstrate our tragic mispronunciation of “oot and a-boot,” or if we are personally acquainted with Ookpik the owl (which, in poet Dennis Lee's cloying words, “is nothing but hair.”) And most of us take polite umbrage, wondering how Canada came to be characterized as the subject of Led Zeppelin's wail about the mythical “land of the ice and snow.”
In fairness, we are home to the midnight sun — and quite a few hot springs that blow — but lately, no one south of the border seems to care: It was recently reported that U.S. tourism to Canada is at a new and startling low, owing to a heftier dollar (that was once regarded as Monopoly money), increased border vigilance and rising gas prices. Same-day car visits have almost halved over the past six years, Statistics Canada says, while overall trips have plunged 30 per cent.
In other words, thousands of the folks who once used our country as an enormous outlet mall, pausing only to glance at “that space needle!” and collect such souvenirs as tiny leaf-shaped bottles of maple syrup and minuscule moccasins, have decided that the 51st state is better left a freezing-cold, igloo-littered mystery.
While I'm not unduly upset at the loss of so many Hippo Bus passengers, tourism is no small potatoes in Canada and relies, like an anxious beautician, on a constant wave of so-called ugly Americans. How, then, do we seduce these people back?
Advertisements for a Canada pried from the lyrics of a Travellers song appear regularly on TV, accompanied by singing about Bonavista and the Great Lakes. But they miss the heart of the matter: Should someone finally break down and write: “This Land Is Your land, This Land is Your Land?”
Fact is, America has worked longer and harder than Canada at carving out not only a national identity, but also a state-to-state series of puzzle pieces. Even the most knuckle-dragging among us would never confuse a trip to San Clemente with one to Salt Lake City — we have seen enough movies and TV shows, read enough books and magazines to put the puzzle together blindfolded.
A map of Canada, however, lives in most Americans' imaginations as a benign blob, a kind of slush-filled eavestrough on their roof. Considering my country's genuine allure, I decided to look up “Canada” on Wikipedia.com, the alt-encyclopedia that has a way of making even Newton's generalized binomial theorem sound exciting. Poring over the “Canadian culture” entry, I began to feel like a depressed Buffalo housewife making travel plans on a strict budget: Amid tawdry photographs of native art and that very space needle are multiple references to hockey, the RCMP and the common loon. Cited also is the fact that “many forms of American media and entertainment are popular, if not dominant, in Canada.” What would the average traveller anticipate, after executing this sort of cursory research? Dreary tours of Alf-faced totem poles? Hockey games called by Tony Danza impersonators?
The following travel tips, guidelines and suggestions aim to attract at least one visitor to our land by disabusing him or her, at the very least, of the idea that my sled dog tapped out this article with his rimed snout.
Catch a scooting star
The Canadian Tourism Commission, criticized for failing to win back American visitors, should create a Map to the Stars (Who Have Moved to the United States). Travellers could thereby visit Timmins, Ont., and snowmobile past where Shania Twain first had the inclination to “Man! Feel Like a Woman;” trudge past Newfoundland lingerie stores where Playboy vixen Shannon Tweed surely shopped; cruise the Labatt's Brewery in Vancouver that heralded Pamela Anderson as its Blue Girl; or visit any number of cafés in Quebec where Leonard Cohen once begged women, “Won't you let me see your naked body?”
We have a Pants-Down Pig
America is well known for its odd attractions, including L.A.'s enormous neon “Circus Liquor” sign, the many and varied cornfield labyrinths, and the site of Chattanooga's Canine Freestyle Dance Competition. Canada is also bursting with similar, largely roadside markers, including Hamilton's close-to-scale model of Planet Earth; the unforgettable (unforgivable?) Pants-Down Pig statue in Cambridge Narrows, N.B.; and Duncan, B.C.'s World's Largest Hockey Stick and Puck. Photograph these wonders, and amaze your friends with how many sky-sized snowmen, tire and hay people you've also seen while winding across a land mass that, logically, should regard the States as its basement crawl space.
Embrace your inner Castro
Canadians — and visiting Americans — are allowed to buy and smoke Cuban cigars. We don't need to be connected to a friend of a posh friend to do so. We merely stroll to a tobacconist, and with a fistful of dollars and the obligatory “Viva Che!” we are in like Flynn.
Kick-ass animals and museums
Homesick Arizonans can visit Alberta's very own Badlands and stand in the baking barrenness. They can stay at Drumheller's Best Western Jurassic Inn, and imagine predatory monsters capering around, millions of years ago. As one tourist website puts it, “Because big animals once lived in the area, maybe the Badlands weren't always so bad!”
Then they can drive immediately to Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. Forget its status as one of the largest and best-preserved prehistoric abattoirs — the name alone will give you cocktail chatter for months.
If New Yorkers are homesick for their big fat bustling city, it should be noted that Canada is home to several, with purloined slogans to spare: “What Happens in Winnipeg Stays in Winnipeg,” and “Toronto: The City That Never Sleeps Unless It's Really Late and You Have a Brutal Day Tomorrow.”
Canada according to O Coconut
Visitors should read Al Purdy's poetry like a guidebook, and upon returning home, remember:
That grand summer in
Newfoundland
when we feasted on wild
raspberries
bakeapples Screech and salmon
walked four miles in the rain
(you blamed me for)
to L'Anse aux Meadows.
Alternatively, read Mondo Canuck for an A-to-Z compendium of Canada's idiosyncratic affections.
Read all the writers who Americans like to pretend don't really live in Canada (author Cynthia Ozick calls Alice Munro “Our Chekhov”).
And read David McGimpsey's anthem-poem O Coconut:
We boast about the politeness
And it's all very true
whenever I return videos
the clerks always take the time to say “thank you, pervert.”
Chill in the hyperactive North
Merely look at travelyukon.com, and watch the little polar bear icon stroll through image after image of albescent heaven, golden skies and almost frighteningly happy people scaling, leaping, trekking and canoeing.
But it's better to mentally delete these people and rest, like a maraschino cherry, on the milky surface of this territory.
Take my moose. . .
About six years ago, 141 “magnificent moose sculptures” filled the streets of Toronto, each decorated in the style of its station or patron — the Little Italy Macaroni Moose, the Mountie Moose, and so on. They were later put up for sale, and there are still a few unsold from this herd. Maybe you could buy one. Please? PLEASE!
From funhouse to big house
Finally, try to remember that if Canada is a refection of where you already live, it is a funhouse reflection that is variously warped, flattering, beautiful and hideous.
This is more than a metaphor: On the main drag of Niagara Falls's namesake town, there's Clifton Hill, a thrillingly tacky strip of seedy bars, genuinely terrifying haunted houses, honeymoon or tryst motels with heart-shaped vibrating beds, arcades, and perhaps the most poignant wax museum in the world, the Criminals Hall of Fame.
The latter features deformed likenesses of old gangsters, contemporary murderers (with accompanying texts that are shockingly error-riddled) and, insanely, fictional villains such as Hannibal Lecter and Darth Vader.
None of genuinely monstrous killers are on display — you need to visit Kingston, Ont., to see their big houses, and wave, from the sunny lakeside, at the rooftop snipers.
Canada: A Place So Nice, Even Our Killers Have a Room with a View. Imagine this bumper sticker on your Range Rover.
Special to The Globe and Mail
