1. On arrival at Calgary airport, you will be taken into a small room and frisked for rats. Some of the guys from Alberta's fabled "rat patrol" don't smell that good, crawling around as they do in grain bins out on the Saskatchewan border. But, as a bona fide cowboy once told me at the Calgary Stampede Ranch at Hanna: "A woman likes a man with a bit of odor to him."
2. Things you need to know:
a) That swanky building you see coming into the downtown is not the Petroleum Club, it's the Calgary Homeless Shelter;
b) Always get your tent poles and stove in the back of your chuck wagon and if your outrider is late, it's a one -second penalty;
c) When driving downtown, follow this simple rule: 4th, 5th, 6th, 9th,11th, and 12th are one-ways east and west. Macleod, 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th, 7th, and 9th are one-ways north-south. Allow yourself several days to find the front entrance of TD Centre for the first time. The phrase "can't get there from here" was invented in Calgary.
3. After a week or so, we will need to "de-snob" you. You will be taken to Buzzards and force-fed a plate of prairie oysters. After that, you will be locked in a padded room and forced to listen to Calgary radio, where you will hear a constant diet of Iron Butterfly, Led Zeppelin and other classic rock, including Layla by Derek and the Dominoes, not just Eric Clapton, and never the unplugged version.
4. Lies people will tell you:
a) "I can be downtown from Shawnessy in 20 minutes;"b) "It's a dry cold."
5. There is no need in Calgary to worry about raccoons going through your garbage, banging around and waking you up at night. However, there is that pesky mountain lion in Fish Creek Park.
6. Roy Thomson Hall, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum = Heritage Park, Zoolights and Frank Sisson's Silver Dollar Casino.
7. Unlike the long, languid days of dappled sunlight filtering through red maple leaves, autumn in Calgary lasts three days. You're not in Tillsonburg anymore, Toto.
8. Local celebrity you have to love, or risk getting your a-- kicked in this town: Joe Carbury, the voice of the Calgary Stampede.
9. Local celebrity you can love, but still make fun of: Darr Maqbool.
10. A good place to choose an outfit for the annual Imperial Oil Ltd. S&M Ball is Barbie's Shop, a fetish store on 4th Street.
11. They make a great wor wonton at King's Restaurant on Barlow and Centre Avenue, of all places.
12. Ginger beef and the "red eye" (beer with Clamato) were invented in Calgary. Really.
13. To get rid of those awful Great Lakes-style pollution problems in Alberta, we simply did away with lakes.
14. You'll know you are a true Calgarian when you know the meaning of these: Bronco, Iggy, The Dungeon, Kipper and "a-ring-a-ding-dong-dandy."
15. Now that you have sold your cottage in Muskoka (average waterfront price, $349,483, according to Royal LePage) you will need to purchase a new weekend getaway. Unfortunately, the average house price in Canmore in the second quarter of this year was $393,834, leaving you $44,351 poorer. One real estate agent in Canmore, Bob Warwick, is a bagpiper, bringing new meaning to "pay the piper."
16. Unlike the boring grid system of Toronto, Calgary streets are laid out in a quaint quadrant system. One sign on 16th Avenue North (West) reads: "14th Street West South." Don't worry. It will all be clear in about four years.
17. Things they don't tell you: a chinook warms us up in winter, but brings its own form of barometric hell -- the famous "chinook headache." Chinooks also have been known to topple semi-trailers on the highway.
18. To keep life uncomplicated, we don't have hundreds of Greek restaurants like the Danforth, but you can go to the Broken Plate in Kensington.
19. Good news: we have no stifling humidity. Bad news: the moisture content in our air has been scientifically proven to be equal to that of Corn Flakes.
20. Shaganappi is not a dirty word. It's yahoo, not yeehaw. And there hasn't been an exposed breast on the Red Mile since June.
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