Ain't no party like a small-town party

You say you've never been to a small-town parade in Southern Alberta? Well, pull up your lawn chair, get the kids in the stroller, and prepare get nostalgic as 301NIB takes you on tour through a town that hasn't changed since the post-war era. Our photo-essay gives all the excitement of Magrath Days and doesn't try to hit you in the face with a lollipop.


At an A-list event like Magrath Days the security is extremely tight.


The Spirit of Magrath marching band helps keep the spirit of British imperialism alive.




The Strate Round-up carriage won a red-ribbon for best family float. (That's first-place to you and me.)



Each year the parade's major plot device involves whether or not some unfortunate child will end up under the wheels of a float as they reach for that elusive tootsie roll.

Underneath the glamour and gloss of Magrath Days lies a sinister purpose - free advertising for heartless corporate titans.


The Magrath Young Women demonstrate what a fantastic time our pioneer ancestors had pulling handcarts across the plains.


Just when you think the parade has plateaued, they take it up a notch - old people in power chairs!

Rocky Mountain Refreshment

No visit to Alberta is complete without a stop at Waterton National Park. If it's summertime, we always take visitors to see the Rocky peaks and cold mountain lakes of this protected refuge. In fact, I'm quite certain that if you try to return to the US without proof of having visited Waterton, Canadian customs will drag you out of your car and force you to attend a screening of Strange Brew before allowing you to cross the border. It's that important.

Some of the best memories of my youth involve trying to hike my way up Red Rock Canyon. As a kid it was always a contest to see who could get the farthest without getting your shoes wet. By the end, of course, everyone is completely drenched and ends up sitting on a towel in the car for the long ride home. Red Rock Canyong was also a great place to take a date, because the girl would always need to hold your hand as you crossed over the stream. You might even have to grab her around the waist one or twice to keep her from falling in the water.

This time, however, my constant companion was a little krabby patty strapped to my back. Chubber Chalong enjoyed hiking up the canyon, but with his added girth I didn't make it to 'the slide', which is generally the endpoint during these excursions. Aside from my dad offering my mom one hundred dollars to go down the slide, the highlight was watching cousins from Florida and New Mexico dip their feet into a glacial stream for the first time.

There's nothing like icy-numb extremities to let you know you're in Canada.

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Equestrian skills, Softball, and The One

So here we are now in Canada. We loaded up the van in California with as many of our possession as would fit and the kids sat like living corpses in their traveling coffins while we drove the 1295 miles from Sacramento to Magrath. The drive from Monida pass (Idaho-Montana border) to Helena still feels like traveling across the top of the world. A man feels small underneath that enormous sky.

The Strate-palooza has gone well despite my repeated attempts to disfigure myself. As soon as we arrived Meg was anxious to ride grandpa's horses, but unfortunately the riding equipment was not made for a man of my tremendous girth. (Mmmmm....girthy.) Only five minutes into the ride our horse made a unexpected turn, the saddle strap broke, and I ended up on my back with Meg on top of me. Conventional widsom says that when you fall off a horse, you need to get right back on it again. Well, screw conventional wisdom. The next time Meg rides I'll be walking in front of her with the reins in my hand. (Is it bad form to punch a horse in the face?)

The second day we were here was the opening day of the Magrath softball tournament. After scorching a double into left-center I got caught in a run-down between second and third. I somehow managed to fall on my face, tearing a hole in my sweats, and an even larger hole in my knee. The only thing that hurts more than the injury is the constant reminders from relatives, "Hey Shane...remember how there was no one even around you at third and you still face-planted?"

But the most painful aspect of all has been the coverage of the Obama campaign. Even here north of the border Obama's European tour is the top story. I think that most of us can safely say we have never seen a Presidential candidate like this in our lifetime. The National Review crowd is rightly deriding him for acting like he is already President (you want to speak at Brandenburg gate....seriously?) but why should he not? The world and especially the press has so little regard for Bush and fawns over Barack like a baby deer, the man is just acting the part.

And finally the though occurred to me - what if he doesn't win? I realize that this is a remoted possibility. The media has already handed him the election, he is leading in key swing states, there is not conceivable scenario in which he could not beat a tired, uninspiring, war-monger like John McCain. But what if he doesn't? The shock of a McCain victory would dwarf the 'Dewey defeats Truman' election as the biggest upset in American history.

This is why I think America is almost trapped into voting for Obama. He is inexperienced, ill-informed, and incredibly self-obsessed. But if he loses, the media will demand to know why. They will spend weeks and months analyzing how it was possible for a young, articulate, energetic, inspiring candidate could possibly be defeated given the unpopularity of the war and the state of the economy.

It's not difficult to imagine the conclusion they will offer.

Pictures from Pleasure Island

Spencer, Grant, and Jake smother Chubber-Chalong
Luke and Kelsey
McKay, Isabelle, and Meg
Lampwick vandalizes the court
Meg and Isabelle
The Flash with new cousin Cole
Zac, anonymous friend, Whitey, Spencer, and Noah

So what's your dissertation about?

For years I have been practicing how to answer that question. Every conversation with a friend or relative inevitable turns to that topic, and I am forced once again to stumble my way through a shoddy explanation. The reaction is always the same. The face betrays a combination of confusion and boredom, followed by a half-hearted, "That sounds interesting."


Next subject.


I certainly can't blame them. These are all intelligent people. They didn't understand my explanation because I didn't understand it. I knew the questions I was asking, I just didn't have the language to formulate a dissertation into a refrigerator magnet. It's like taking four hundred gallons of sea water and trying to distill it into a single glass of drinkable water.

But today I had a breakthrough.

My dissertation explores nationalism. (For those of you who don't have a copy of Ben Anderson on your nightstand, nationalism involves the study of how groups of people imagine themselves as having things in common with other groups of people. We are a nation because we share common traits. These can be a common language, religion, ethnicity, or political philosophy.)

In Thailand, historians have always credited two institutions with creating a sense of community: Buddhism and the monarchy. I will argue that a third factor has been overlooked - the collective memory of national humiliation.

Thailand's loss of territory to French imperialism created deep scars on the national psyche. These act like traumatic childhold memories that can cause re-lapses and influence behavior later on (ie. the current political crisis over Preah Vihear).

Collective memories of victimhood form an integral part of what it means to be 'Thai'. The communal sense of resentment and bitterness towards the west provides an additional sense of cohesion to an otherwise diverse group of people. It also means that a country which was never colonized is afflicted by a post-colonial mindset.

So there it is - my future contribution to knowledge. Not as ground-breaking as Orientalism or the Bush Doctrine, but hopefully good enough to get a diploma and one day...a job.

Get to know your neighbours to the north

The Death of General Woolfe

Many of you are probably unaware that today is Canada Day. Because July 1st falls so close to July 4th (Filipino-American Frienship Day) it often doesn't receive the attention it deserves. In Canada, we sometimes refer to it as 'Dominion Day', because it was on this day in 1867 that Canada became a semi-independent country. As a historian and a Canadian, I feel it's important to help educate other about our great nation.

So, here is a list of important events that happened on July 1st. I hope you enjoy your tour through our great nation's history.

1755 - British punish disloyal Acadians by forcing them to live in Louisiana.

1812 - Laura Secord walked thirty kilometers through the snow to warn the British encampment at Fitzgibbon's headquarters that Americans made really inferior chocolate bars.

1837 - Lower Canada riots due to confusion over its precise geographical relationship with Upper Canada.

1885 - While preparing himself to face the gallows, Louis Riel utters famous last phrase, "Friendly Manitoba, my a--!"

1952 - Rocket Richard torches the Capitals for five goals, then burns down Presidential Mansion during after-party.

1967 - FLQ crisis erupts after federal government tries to ban Quebecois from putting mayonaise on everything.

1983 - Captain Marc Garneau banned from future space missions after using shuttle's Canadian-made robotic arm to pick fellow astronaut's nose.

1987 - A young Mack Strate rips up Slalom course at St. Mary's reservoir following Raymond parade.

1996 - Bowling for Columbine director Michael Moore shot seven times at Toronto area bar for repeatedly saying, "No doot aboot it!"



The Prince of Wales Hotel, Waterton National Park