Grandinite

My Dad and I went fishing this weekend out in the west country where some of the more ‘interesting’ Albertans live. We stopped in Rocky Mountain House to get a bite to eat at the Subway, and I headed into the store to get the sandwiches. When I came out of the Subway store, my Dad has this peculiar look when he’s thinking “WTMF?”, sort of a combination of disbelief and disgust. Always a keen observer of the human condition, he was sitting in his SUV, having a cigarette when I came out of the store.

He had ‘the look’ on his face as if he had stumbled across a group of backwoods bear-raping sasquatches from Mars.

Outside there were 1 ton diesel trucks with trailers full of quads and dirtbikes, dogs barking, kids fighting and people in various states of sobriety yelling incomprehensibly.

Then it came to him: “I don’t know which is a scuzzier town, Rocky Mountain House, or Drayton Valley”.

Nothing against anyone from these towns, but I chose Drayton Valley, due to the proximity of the pulp mill to the ‘downtown core’ which is pretty much one big oilfield/forestry industrial park.

After disussing the relative probabilities of various social ills in each town, we decided that Rocky Mountain House, with its billboard for “Jimbob’s Oilfield service” or whatever, should call itself the “Spousal abuse capital of Alberta”. And then the fun began.

Here are some of the new hometown mottos we came up with.

Calgary: “Hey Toronto! Hey Ottawa! - Fuck You!” Runner up: “Houston, North”.

Red Deer: “We’re 95% white, and don’t you forget it.”

Lethbridge: “If the howling wind doesn’t kill you, you will”. (Wind and suicide are interlinked, and Lethbridge has a high level of suicides).

Drayton Valley: “Yew sure got a purty mouth”.

Lacombe: “Home of the newly wed and nearly dead”.

Fort McMurray: “The second-largest city in Newfoundland”. Runner up: “Mother nature’s gang-bang”.

Mundare: “We’re uncut”. (Home of the world’s largest sausage).

Banff: “How Alberta got HIV”.

Jasper: “Banff’s poor cousin”.

Edmonton: “Calgary’s poor cousin”.

Olds: “North Calgary or South Red Deer, which is it?”.

Lloydminster: “Welcome to Saskberta”.

Hobbema: “We built the Wetaskiwin Auto mile”.

Leduc: “Nope! No oil left here!”

Stettler: “Progress: We have a Timmy-Ho’s, Walmart and soon, a Boston Pizza”.

Wetaskiwin: “Trading treaty cheques for Bingo and trucks since 1952″.

Grand Prairie: “Yew sure got a purty face”.

Medicine Hat: “Alberta’s forgotten city”.

Camrose: “All lutefisk, no Lefse”. (Scandinavian joke there).

Well, that’s about it I guess. Hope I insulted everyone equally.