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Photo by Endlisnis

My girlfriend and I traveled recently to New York City, absorbing as much culture and ambience as we could for a one-week stay. Needless to say we were thoroughly impressed, but what really struck me was just how polite New Yorkers were, whether it was giving us needed directions to a particular subway station or serving us memorable meals (oh the heaping portions!) with class and courtesy^[1]. As we landed back in Calgary, I was immediately depressed to be back on the Prairies (I always am after a trip), but I associated it with the usual feelings a traveller has after a fantastic vacation. On our way home, we stopped at a Tim Hortons^[2] and were promptly given rude service from a snotty teen drive-thru attendant. And I had an epiphany (one of many): I was back in Calgary.

I can still remember the culture shock of moving from Saskatoon to Alberta way back in the winter of 1986: seven day shopping, multiple local TV stations and two-litre pop bottles (!). Alberta was a foreign land to explore and the excitement of living in a big Canadian city was nearly overwhelming. Of course we had moved to Edmonton, AKA “The City of Champions”^[3], home to the (then) largest mall in the world and Wayne Gretzky. After the tornado, roller coaster collapse and sale of the Great One, we moved to Winnipeg (a story in itself) for a brief stint, and then we landed in Calgary in the 90s, beginning a tumultuous affair with a city that’s been home longer than anywhere else in my life.

Calgary, a city of over one million people, likes to boast that it’s a world-class cosmopolitan city; as an outsider, despite these many years, I find there are cracks in that worldview. Part of the problem is that Calgary, despite its size, has a very provincial attitude. The stereotype of the Alberta Redneck is not new to Canadians, but nowhere is it more prevalent than in Calgary. Calgary celebrates cowboy culture, from advocating reckless public drunkenness during the Calgary Stampede (where everybody, from suit to biker to student, joins, hand in hand, in drunken buffoonery) to doling out cowboy hats to every bemused celebrity who gets off an airplane. Woe is the individual who creates dissent by criticizing such rural culture, immediately branded by some locals as a “goddamn Easterner” (true story).

Calgary’s folksy charm is the result of it being the heartbeat of conservatism in Canada. Calgary is the centre of a conservative vacuum that exists within a liberal social state. Former prime minister Pierre Trudeau is still vilified by a majority of the populace for his unpopular National Energy Program of the early 80s, where the federal government collected tax revenues from oil production, siphoning away much profit from Alberta.

Despite Trudeau’s many accomplishments, Calgarians remain a bitter lot, as evidenced by the constant verbal haranguing I receive whenever I wear my Trudeau T-shirt. “That’s fucking great,” said one perturbed twentysomething Calgarian, “wearing a shirt of the man who destroyed Canada.” Such passionate hatred for one man has made it next to impossible for a federal Liberal candidate to win a seat in Calgary for decades. It has also created a level of distrust between Alberta and Eastern Canada, so much so that Preston Manning formed the ultra-conservative Reform Party in the late 80s to represent the frustrations of conservative Albertans. Calgary has been the home to many conservative political leaders, from Manning to Stockwell Day of the Reform-turned-Canadian Alliance party to Stephen Harper, the current prime minister.

And who can forget Ralph Klein? A former news anchor, Klein was mayor of Calgary for most of the 80s, particularly during the NEP controversy and the 1988 Winter Olympics^[4]. Best known for spending an inordinate amount of time swilling cheap beer with the boys at the infamous Cecil Hotel, Klein (or “Ralph”, as he liked to be called by the electorate) is best known to Canadians as the mayor who replied to Trudeau’s NEP with the elegant riposte, “Let the Eastern bums freeze!”

Ever the diplomat, Ralph eventually got elected Premier of Alberta and continued to drink (now the good stuff!), cripple the health care and education systems and harass homeless people^[5]. But perhaps his greatest legacy is his privatization of liquor stores in 1995, creating flexible hours and competitive prices for Calgarians, statistically the heaviest drinkers per capita in Canada (sorry, St. John’s). Whenever I crack open a supercan of Pil, I always remind myself to thank King Ralph for his contributions to democracy.

Photo by Unity Gain

To be continued…

1. We will be forever grateful to the amazing server at a Jersey City pub who recommended the Park Slope area in Brooklyn [↩]
2. How I’d missed it in New York—Dunkin’ Donuts doesn’t cut it [↩]
3. Named for the heroics following the 1987 tornado, not the [erroneous] assumption that it boasted of its sports teams’ success [↩]
4. Trivia question: How many Calgarians does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer: two, one to screw in the light bulb and one to drone on about how wonderful the ’88 Olympics were [↩]
5. Is flung change considered a tax-deductible donation? [↩]

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