Noteworthy: Everybody loves a parade, or at least they did that day

By Bruce Penton on July 31, 2024.

It’s said that everybody loves a parade, and judging from the smiles on the faces of the thousands of parade-goers last Thursday, it’s true. This year’s Exhibition & Stampede parade had a convoluted route due to downtown construction, but it seemed in my mind to be longer than other years. Or maybe it was just my imagination. I know my mug of ice water was empty before the final parade participant went past me.

Missing from the parade was Premier Danielle Smith, who had a legitimate reason because of the Jasper wildfire disaster, but I didn’t miss newly crowned NDP leader Naheed Nenshi, who walked the entire route (or at least he was walking and waving as he went past my vantage point). So now we know Nenshi can walk the walk. And while he’s known as a renowned chatterbox, we assume he’ll also be able to successfully talk the talk. One wag suggested Smith might have appreciated “hiding out” in Medicine Hat that day to avoid big-city media questions about free hockey tickets.

But the Jasper situation is no laughing matter and Smith rightfully stayed back to deal with it.

Local businesses, organizations and service clubs went to a lot of trouble to put on their best face for the parade and judging from the citizens lining the route, the effort was much appreciated.

– Wacky news from the world of restaurants, gleaned recently from the News’ website:

… A restaurant in Vancouver welcomes dogs, and actually features menu items for the four-legged guests – a milk-boned-rimmed “pawgarita” and a beef liver-dusted and pepperoni-topped “pawtini.” Some wineries in Canada, the story says, sells “barkuterie boards.”

… An Alberta town called Czar, population 170, located a half-hour by car south of Wainwright, has a restaurant that seems normal until you see some of the oddball items on the menu: Burgers featuring frogs legs, kangaroo, ostrich, camel, turtle, yak, shark and alligator. Interesting, for sure, but I’ll stick to good ol’ Alberta beef for my burgers, if you don’t mind.

– It’s not newsy to report that small towns in rural Saskatchewan are facing dwindling populations, and one such example is Herbert, just east of Swift Current. At one point, the town had a population of 1,400, and these days it’s in the 800 range. But it’s not true that town officials are following the population decline by changing the town’s name to plain ol’ Herb.

– Kelly-Anne Reiss’s online publication The Flatlander, which features stories from Manitoba and Saskatchewan, had a recent yarn about a movement to try to get music superstar Taylor Swift to come back to Saskatchewan.

Arguably the most famous singer in the world, Swift performed at the country music festival in Craven in 2009 before she skyrocketed to superstar status, and called the province ‘Saskatch, writing on social media that she liked to shorten the name of the four-sylabble province. The story in the Flatlander also said the city of Swift Current was willing to temporarily change its name to Taylor Swift Current if she arranged a concert performance in the Wheat Province. (The story’s origin was The Canadian Press.)

– In case you’re keeping track, planet Earth’s mean air temperature Sunday, July 22, was 17.15C, the hottest single day on record, according to Copernicus Climate Change Service data. Monday, July 23, the average was even warmer, breaking the one-day record. Global warming? Hard to argue that we’re not dealing with that phenomenon.

– Short snappers: We’ll trust that studies quoting statistics from the U.S. are likely similar in Canada, so it’s interesting to note that in the U.S., nine per cent of people 75 and over are still employed. That number in 1987 was four per cent. So is it an economic necessity, or are people maintaining brain power and energy as they get older? … Olympic nitpicking: My TV preference is to tune in to the Canadian networks, which cover Canadian athletes, plus a lot more, as opposed to the coverage of the U.S.-centrric NBC, which goes overboard with its jingoism. But in individual sports, NBC always includes in its bottom-of-the-screen graphic the name of the athlete’s hometown, which is missing from the Canadian coverage. … A report found in the New York Times and Axios says doctors may soon be able to test for Alzheimer’s with a simple blood test. Preliminary studies have proven the blood test to be more accurate than scans, spinal taps or cognitive tests. … The Summer McIntosh hype is real. By the end of Day 3 in Paris, the Canadian swimming sensation already had a silver and a gold from pool success.