Oh, Canada, eh!

Canada Day falls on July 1st so it was a bit like the Fourth of July without excessive drunkenness and multitudinous fireworks. 

Here in Canmore we were treated to an annual parade which is quite large and well attended for such a small town. The Calgary Stampede is the week after and several bands, floats, and participants of that debaucherous week of hats and boots start out by participating in the Canmore Canada Day Parade to get in some practice and get their horses used to crowds. 

They don't have a one dollar bill here. It's a gold coin with a bird that looks like a duck on it. The bird is a loon and the coin is know as the "Loony" which is as family friendly and totally dorky as the rest of Canada but it TOTALLY eclipsed by the two dollar coin which has Polar Bears on it. Is it called the "Polary" or the "Bear coin" you might ask and I would say no. It's called a "Twonie." RETARDED. So, anyway, about  a week ago I had ventured into the Dollar Store (not called the Loonie Store as it should be) where few things are a dollar/Loonie but where one can find lots of irresistible crap. I personally fell in love with their large collection of temporary tattoos of the Canadian Flag which I purchased while telling myself they were for my goddaughter Braxton who LOVES temporary tattoos. 

Thank goodness I did buy those lovely little flag tattoos because Canada Day nearly demanded that I get a little festive. I met up with Elizabeth and Alicia, my sexy neighbors down the lane,and we promptly applied maple leaf flags to our selves and were off (sorry Braxton.)  We rode our bikes into town and met up with the ever-amazing Pinta/Snakebite/Dr. Cynthia Lane Ph.D/International Plant Guru. Owen 

closed the museum for an hour during the parade (shhh. that's a secret) and come to meet up with us.

Snakebite and I were pretending it was an unofficial Gay Pride. My b

ubble was burst however when a blue Volkswagen  Beetle full of drag queens drove by and it was full of 

actual women! Gross. Later I 

was complaining about the absence of fags in the Bow Valley and Snakebite offered

 some advice to me. All the women here are broad shouldered, athletic, and slightly masculine. She said if I was trying to tell if they were gay or not then I just had to remember one thing: "They aren't gay. They are straight. They are all straight straight straight." The entire valley is full of decoys! (It reminds me of the Karney, NB ladies basketball team when my sister was in college.) 

After the sunny and warm parade we adjourned to the Century Park where the marching bands were giving an exposition/recital. My favorite band was the Calgary Stampede Marching band. They sounded great, had killer red capes, and we all agreed they had the hottest conductor. They did let me down a little when they played in the park by standing instead of marching in tight little choreographed  patters like the other bands but their sound was extraordinary and they had a timpani. 

All in all Canada day was a success. Yeah there were friends, sunshine, Shriners in little airplanes, marching bands and the smell of barbeque, but truth be known, it's hard to have a bad day when you're wearing temporary tattoos that look like maple leaf flags.