Lethbridge: Land Of Plenty

As noted previously, we we were in Alberta last week. After R flew back to Ottawa, I still had to go down to Lethbridge overnight. Before leaving town, I made sure to get some good pictures. Mainly, I took pictures of three things: a bridge, a boardgame, and a convenience store.

Since we had just played Settlers of Catan at the top of Calgary's best-known landmark, it seemed appropriate that we get a picture of Lethbridge's pride and joy, the Lethbridge Viaduct. If you look closely, you can see that my supervisor / travel companion El-Dubya is holding the game "Starship Catan", which we tested thoroughly on our trip. Perhaps he is too far away for people to really see.


How's that? Any better?

The bridge was built from 1907-1909 to allow for more efficient rail passage across the Oldman River. I originally thought that it was called "The Leth-Bridge", and that the city was named after the bridge. I was wrong. The place was actually a whiskey-soaked trading post called Fort Hamilton (aka Fort Whoop-Up) until the Mounties came and settled things down in 1874. Shortly thereafter, William Lethbridge brought his coal-mining operation to town and the place became much more respectable. The viaduct came 35 years afterwards. Thanks wikipedia.

According to wikipedia, Lethbridge is a very windy place. I know that from first-hand experience. Once when I was younger, we visited my brother and his wife, who lived there for a year or so. While they were off at work, we went up on the hill near the Lethoductibridge to look around. The wind whipping up from the river valley was so strong that we could almost lean into it without falling over. After some experimentation, we discovered that pulling your shirt up around your arms like a sail provided the extra lift you needed to lean into the wind.

The wind wasn't quite strong enough on the day we were there, but it still made a decent showing. I sailed it for old time's sake.

I never realized what a Slurpee caliphate Alberta really is until I moved away. It is a slushy, slushy province. In most places, if you are lucky enough to find a 7-Eleven or a Mac's, they usually only have two flavours of Slurpees/Frosters. Moreover, one of our Alberta friends noticed that Slurpees in Utah were markedly different from Alberta Slurpees in their taste and constitution (she much preferred the Alberta variety, but she's probably biased). She would be in heaven in Lethbridge. We wandered into a Mac's convenience store and discovered what is probably the largest Froster selection ever. They had SIXTEEN different flavours, stretching off into the distance. It was remarkable.

You will also notice the bags of Old Dutch brand Ketchup-flavoured chips -- another specialty of Western Canada. One of my coworkers from Alberta requested that we bring a few bags back to Ottawa. I'm glad he didn't ask for all 16 flavours of Froster. Potato chips are much safer than slushy drinks to smuggle across the country.

That's basically why Fort Whoop-Up got shut down in the first place.