Weird Canada
10 unusual tourist attractions around the country
Canada has a reputation as a sane kind of place, filled with moose and people whose favorite word is “sorry” and the occasional prime minister who lands on the pages of Esquire magazine.
Yet this country, which celebrates its 150th anniversary this year, has more than its share of strange and unusual places and people. Here’s a look at a few of them.
Whiskey with a chaser
In Dawson City, Yukon, there’s a bar called The Downtown Hotel where the specialty is the “Sour Toe Cocktail.” You go to the bar and order your choice of alcohol, then take it to a guy sitting at a table in the corner wearing a sailor’s cap, who proceeds to drop a real, preserved-in-salt human toe into your drink. (They’ve gone through several toes over the years. One came from someone after an unfortunate accident while using a power mower. Someone swallowed the toe a few years ago, forcing the bar to come with a firm no-ingestion rule.) If you drink your drink and let the toe touch your lips you get a certificate and are sworn into the Sour Toe Cocktail Club.
Royal undies
They’re kept hidden away in an upstairs drawer, and you might need a private tour to see them, but for some reason Queen Victoria donated some of her undergarments to her butler before she passed. Somehow they ended up in the possession of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary, which is filled with a great deal of cool art that doesn’t involve women’s panties. Lest anyone have visions of something off a runway in shades of pink or devilish red, let the record state that Victoria’s undies are a pale, nondescript shade of beige and contain enough billowing material to fashion a sail for one of Her Majesty’s ships.
Local hero
Some say Canada’s capital city of Ottawa is a sleepy government town. I disagree. One of my favorite things to do is catch the Lucky Ron Show at a bar called Chateau Lafayette in the trendy Byward Market shopping area. Ron Burke, aka Lucky Ron, has been performing every Saturday afternoon for 30 years now, and his music-comedy mashup is a hoot and a holler. The crowd knows every tune, and they shout encouragement (or rude things) at Burke as he goes through his set. He’s something of a folk hero in these parts, a bit of a Johnny Cash meets cowboy populist.
Bottle houses
Near the village of Cap-Egmont on Prince Edward Island you’ll find a series of small buildings fashioned out of old wine bottles held together with cement. More than 25,000 bottles, to be precise. The project began some 40 years ago and has now spread to the point where there’s a small bottle-built village, including a tavern (naturally) and a lovely chapel. The play of light inside the buildings on a sunny day is quite stunning. There’s also a lovely pond and luscious gardens to enjoy. I found a second collection of bottle houses near the Point Prim Lighthouse in southeastern Prince Edward Island a few years ago. Not quite as fancy, but still fun.
Football freaks
Followers of the Saskatchewan Roughriders are known as “Green Nation” and go so far as to carve watermelons into hats to wear at games; spooning out the pink fruit and leaving the green shell with white around it to match team colors. When the Riders played in the Canadian Football League championship game (known as The Grey Cup) in Calgary a few years ago, a local grocery store put in a special order for hundreds of extra watermelons so Saskatchewan fans could don their special hats. In Ottawa, at Ottawa Redblacks games, the stadium crowd waits until a certain time in the third quarter and then begins to shout “shoe beer.” This is the cue for a die-hard fan to pour beer into a shoe and chug.
A nip, a shmoo and a goog
One of the most popular dining spots in Winnipeg is the Salisbury House, which serves something called a “nip.” It’s actually just a hamburger, with a name the place’s owner preferred back in the day. (Think of a nip, or bite, of a Salisbury steak.) You also can find a deli in town that makes a “shmoo” — a wonderful angel food cake topped with nuts and caramel. The city’s Bridge Drive-In sells a blueberry ice cream concoction called a “goog.”
Eyebrows, heads and arms
The wild and wonderful province of Newfoundland has some highly unusual names for towns and villages, such as Cupids, Heart’s Delight and Heart’s Content. There’s also Joe Batt’s Arm, Witless Bay, Spread Eagle Bay, Conception Bay and Come by Chance. This year, the tourism board put a special alert inviting folks to spend Valentine’s Day in Dildo, Newfoundland. (I am not making this up.) In Alberta, there’s a town called Vulcan, complete with a model of the Starship Enterprise. The towns of Ecum Secum and Mushaboom are in Nova Scotia. On Prince Edward Island, don’t forget to get a photo of the sign outside of the town of Crapaud. In Ontario, can’t miss Punkeydoodles Corners or Crotch Lake. There’s also Swastika, Ontario, which got its name well before Adolf Hitler came around. In Saskatchewan, there’s Eyebrow and Moose Jaw, as well as Climax. In Alberta, you’ll find Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump. In British Columbia: Spuzzum or Skookumchuk.
Iona, Nova Scotia
Iona is a tiny town on Cape Breton Island. There’s a pretty bay with high, chalky cliffs and pretty homes on hills overlooking enormous Bras d’Or Lake. There’s also a small model of a beautiful white church someone has built on a grassy knoll on the edge of the bay. It’s got a perfect little white picket fence and even tiny crosses off to one side of the church. Maintaining something like this, given the long Cape Breton winter, can’t be easy, but they do it. The little church isn’t really weird, but it’s quirky.
Honorable mentions
• Not one but two Canadian provinces — New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island — have potato museums. The town of O’Leary, on Prince Edward Island, hosts an annual Miss Potato Blossom contest.
• There’s a burial ground in New Brunswick called the Ha Ha Cemetery and a town in Quebec called Saint-Louis-du-Ha!-Ha! (No wonder Canada exports so many comedians to the U.S.) Meanwhile, Vancouver has a small green space called Dude Chilling Park. California is said to be suing for copyright infringement.