Size Matters

Giant turtles and skewered perogies and other large objects

Will Ferguson

MY FATHER WAS A CONNOISSEUR of roadside kitsch, and whenever I visited him in Manitoba we inevitably ended up driving for hours across prairie landscapes to see a Large Object Beside the Highway.

"It's folk art," he liked to say. "On a Canadian scale."

Not all of it was silly. I remember, vividly, the sight of a towering white horse beside the highway west of Winnipeg. It was dark by the time we arrived, and the steed was lit up like a spectre in the night -- which was apt. The White Horse honours a Plains legend of a ghost horse, a tale of love and loss.

"History becomes myth, and myth becomes a roadside attraction," my dad would say. "Now, wasn't that worth the drive?"

On a later visit we drove southwest, to the town of Boissevain to see its Giant Turtle, and on another trip we went north to the village of Glenboro to see its Giant Camel.

And several times we drove into the gentle valley of Minnedosa to admire the military tank that was parked in the middle of town.

There was often a playful logic to these attractions. The Boissevain Turtle commemorated the town's "turtle derby," and the Glenboro Camel (named "Sara" as in Sahara, get it?) was a reference to nearby sand dunes.

"Generals on horseback, kings and queens, pah!" My dad had absolute disdain for European affectations. "Those are a top-down approach to history; greatness descending from on high. But giant objects by the side of the road? That's democracy."

Monuments erected by the common folk, for the common folk, they are at once knowingly ironic and guilelessly sincere.

My father also had a weakness for bad puns (the town of Minnedosa, he insisted, was "named in honour of a minor Italian venereal disease") and just a few years before he died, we made the trek to Gladstone to see its newly unveiled mascot, a 15-foot fibreglass character named Happy Rock.

"Get it?" said my dad. But of course I didn't.

Dad sighed. "Gladstone, Happy Rock. Get it? Now, if only we could have made it to Gimli," he said. "Big Scandinavian community up there. They have a giant Viking. Your grandmother was Norwegian; you should make the effort."

As with Gladstone's Happy Rock, Canada's roadside attractions are often elaborate visual puns, and some of them are downright clever. In Elm Creek, Man., the town water tank has been transformed into the World's Largest Fire Hydrant -- and there are plans afoot to paint a giant dog beside it. Seriously.

The puns abound. In Alberta, the town of Pincher Creek has a giant pair of pincers, Castor has a giant beaver (making it a bilingual visual roadside pun), and Black Diamond has, naturally, a giant black diamond (though the paint was peeling and the aluminum had a couple of dents in it when I went by).

In Saskatchewan, Turtleford has the World's Largest Turtle, Moose Jaw has a giant cement moose, and Indian Head has a sculpture of, well, you can probably guess. Dildo, in Newfoundland, has a giant . . . whale.

Last year on Vancouver Island, I jumped off a Nanaimo-bound train in Duncan simply because the conductor happened to mention, just in passing, that Duncan was home to the World's Largest Hockey Stick. How can you not go to see something like that? Even better, it came with -- are you ready for it? -- the World's Largest Hockey Puck. They were lit up at night in the sort of glittering outline usually reserved for parliament buildings and divas' dressing room mirrors.

The Hockey Stick of Duncan rises like a ceremonial sword above the town's rec centre, but throughout the downtown area a veritable forest of totem poles has also been erected.

The giant hockey stick pales in comparison to the artistry of Duncan's totem poles, and yet the two are not as different as you might think. Totem poles, after all, are as Canadian an icon as any hockey gear. And raising a giant stick to appease the gods of shinny is, in itself, a totemistic act.

Surely it is no coincidence that the vast majority of Large Roadside Attractions are animal effigies. In Ontario, Kenora's Husky the Muskie and the Wawa Goose are but two examples. Enormous ducks, leaping trout, spawning salmon, mighty buffalo and many a giant moose: the highways of Canada are teeming with wildlife totems.

And lest anyone in the big city dismiss this sort of thing as a rural phenomenon, I would remind you of Toronto's Giant Moose Fiasco, evidence that, even in the Centre of the Known Universe, we're still just a bunch of hosers.

Large objects have a definite, tongue-in-cheek cachet, and there is a surprising amount of local pride invested in them. I hope I haven't blown her cover or anything, but assistant editor Denise Wild of Flare magazine actually grew up in Vermilion, Alta., an area rich in Big Stuff.

"It was great," she says. "There's the Giant Ukrainian Easter Egg in Vegreville, the Giant Perogy-on-a-Fork in Glendon and over in St. Paul, the UFO landing pad."

A UFO landing pad? Why not? From outer space, Canada must look like one big suburban lawn, cluttered with pink flamingos and other such ornaments.

High ideals of democratic folk art and totemistic effigies aside, Canada's roadside attractions are the national equivalent of garden gnomes. Big garden gnomes. (Memo to any communities that may still be without a large object of their own: how about the World's Biggest Garden Gnome?)

I have, alas, inherited my father's strange fascination with roadside kitsch, as my unsuspecting wife Terumi soon found out. When Terumi and I moved from Japan to New Brunswick, one of the first things we did was drive up to Nackawic to see the World's Largest Axe.

This was followed with a trip east, to Shediac, the self-anointed "Lobster Capital of The World." The love of big objects crosses language barriers, and the Acadians of Shediac have built themselves the World's Largest Lobster. It is a very realistic-looking crustacean, weighing in at 55 tons with an unsuspecting fishermen caught in its embrace, and my wife was duly impressed.

"Canadians are . . . interesting," she said.

On a journey through northern New Brunswick, I made a detour to the village of Plaster Rock solely to see its Giant Fiddleheads, a chainsaw sculpture depicting edible ferns.

"What?" Terumi quipped. "No dulse?"

"Don't worry," I said. "I'm sure that someone, somewhere, is working on it." (Memo to Maritimers: the title of World's Largest Dulse is still up for grabs.)

After a year in New Brunswick, Terumi and I moved to Prince Edward Island and we made a special point of driving out to the village of O'Leary to visit the Potato Museum.

"So," I joked to the woman at the entrance. "When are you putting up the big giant potato?" She was startled by my comment and, once she had regained her composure, she lowered her voice and said, "Who told you? It's suppose to be a secret."

Sure enough, and not long after, it was announced that O'Leary would get a Giant Spud. And there it stands today, rising up proudly, 14 feet high and looking just like -- well, like a 14-foot-high potato. (Note to purists: the potato depicted is a Russet Burbank. In P.E.I. they take their potatoes seriously.)

Having children didn't slow down my cross-Canada Large Object Pilgrimage. On the highway from Edmonton to Regina, I endeared myself to my three-year-old son by stopping at every single roadside attraction we passed, from the crumbling cement Tomahawk and Teepee in Cut Knife to the World's Largest Coffee Pot in Davidson (where the pot in question was decorated with beautiful folk art murals).

Saskatchewan's many roadside oddities helped break up what was a very long trip. My son relished every pit stop, especially Kenaston, which boasted the giant Snowman, an 18-foot-high fibreglass and steel chap in a top hat and earmuffs plopped down in front of the village's grain elevators. Why a snowman? To promote Kenaston's claim to being the Blizzard Capital of Saskatchewan.

Blizzards, mind you. Is this really something you want your town to be known for? I was caught in a full-scale Saskatchewan blizzard just outside of Neilburg once and let me tell you, as I drove through blinding winds at a dreadful crawl, the last thing I wanted to do was frolic in a winter wonderland building snowmen.

Given that these objects are meant to be tourist draws, you have to wonder about some of the choices.

Komarno, Man., promotes itself as a travel destination with a gigantic, evil-looking mosquito that has a 15-foot wingspan and turns on the wind like a weather vane. (Komarno being the Ukrainian word for mosquito, this too qualifies as a bilingual roadside pun.)

In the community of Inwood, also in Manitoba, a creepy reptilian statue celebrates the fact that the town is simply crawling with snakes.

"Gee, honey, I don't know. For our vacation this year, do you want blizzards or snakes or mosquitoes? I can't decide. It all sounds so good."

In 1984, when I was 19 years old, I worked as a youth volunteer at a nursing home in St. Thomas, Ont. At that time, there was talk in St. Thomas about building a giant statue of . . . an elephant.

Not just any elephant, but Jumbo himself. Now, Jumbo the Elephant was not born in St. Thomas, and Jumbo the Elephant did not live in St. Thomas. Nor did Jumbo ever perform in St. Thomas. But Jumbo was killed in St. Thomas, and for that, the townsfolk are eternally grateful.

In 1885, Jumbo the Elephant, star of the P.T. Barnum Circus, was being led across rail tracks in the dead of night when he was hit by a train and killed. Here is an actual passage from a St. Thomas souvenir booklet marking this joyous event:

"The hide of Jumbo alone weighed over 1,600 pounds and when removed from the beast, was transported to Griffin's Pork Factory, where it was pickled . . . Jumbo's heart weighed 46 pounds."

Oddly enough, when I was living in St. Thomas not everyone was in favour of commemorating the violent death of a beloved circus animal as a point of civic pride. The community had once been a thriving rail hub, so why not honour the railway instead?

As the "rail vs. elephant" debate raged, I sent a letter to the paper suggesting that the two sides compromise and build a giant replica of a train hitting Jumbo -- but noooo. The statue went ahead as planned and was unveiled the following year amid a festive Jumbo Days celebration. St. Thomas, Ont. Not only did we kill Jumbo, but we skinned him and pickled his hide and cut out his heart!

By then, I had moved on. As luck would have it, I ended up in New Liskeard, Ont., working at the agricultural research college (where my contribution to the scientific field of animal husbandry consisted mainly of shovelling sheep dung, cow patties, pig poop and horse flops. Oh, the joys of youth.)

New Liskeard is in Ontario's clay belt and to commemorate this, the township had recently commissioned a Giant Belt Made Entirely Out of Clay!! Not really. They missed the obvious pun and instead built a huge Holstein cow, 12 feet high, to honour the area's dairy farmers.

Other giant cows roam the Canadian landscape (there's one in La Broquerie, Man., and two in Sussex, N.B.), but what made the New Liskeard cow truly memorable, was (a) its name and (b) its location.

The town's Giant Cow Committee, acutely attuned to modern feminist sensitivities, had named the giant bovine statue "Ms. Claybelt." That's right, Ms.

Even better, they built the cow at the edge of town, right across from a McDonald's restaurant. Is that sick, or what? Sort of like boiling a giant pot of water next to the Shediac lobster.

During my sojourn in New Liskeard, I helped deliver a calf that got stuck halfway and had to be yanked out with a chain. I ended up with both my hands inside, covered in slime, trying to -- I'll spare you the details. It was exhausting and messy, and it cured me forever of any illusions I had about the miracle of childbirth. (When my own sons were born, I was just grateful no one asked me to roll up my sleeves and take off my wristwatch.)

With the calf safely out, and me having scrubbed the afterbirth from my hands -- scrubbed until my knuckles were raw -- my supervisor, partly to make amends, decided to take me out for lunch. At McDonald's. And as I sat there, chewing my Quarter Pounder thoughtfully, I knew that I would never look at Ms. Claybelt the same way again.

Just up the road from New Liskeard was a massive metal bison standing guard outside the Earlton Zoo, and in the interests of science, I would often propose that the New Liskeard Cow be mated with the Earlton Bison. Mmmm. Giant beefalo.

Someone should build a statue of that . . .

SIDEBAR: BATTLE OF THE BIG OBJECTS

With hundreds of giant objects vying for attention along the roadsides of Canada, and with the awe-inspiring prestige that accompanies the title of "biggest," it is inevitable that conflicts will arise.

In the interests of journalistic integrity, I have decided to settle five of these competing claims once and for all.

1. World's Largest Snowman

The Kenaston snowman is 18 feet tall. The Beardmore snowman is 35 feet high.

Winner: Beardmore.

2. World's Largest Bee

The Falher bee is 22 feet, eight inches long. The Tisdale bee is 16 feet long.

Winner: Falher.

3. World's Largest Muskoka Chair

These wooden cottage chairs are the product of competing craftsmen as well: the Gravenhurst Home Hardware vs. Peacock Woodcraft outside of Varney. The Gravenhurst chair is 12 feet, 10 inches high. The Varney chair is 22 feet high.

Winner: Varney

4. World's Largest Fiddle

The Harvey fiddle is 14 feet high. The Cavendish fiddle is 24 feet high.

Winner: Cavendish -- but the Harvey fiddle is prettier, and Harvey was fiddle master Don Messer's hometown.

5. Canada's Largest Turtle

Measured tail to nose, Ernie is 28 feet long. Tommy is . . . also 28 feet long.

Result: A tie! (Or at least until one of the towns mentioned thinks to add a hat to their mascot.)

Maclean's Magazine
July 22, 2002