Edmonton Part 1: A Big Mall

Edmonton, Alberta was to be my first extended stay in Western Canada and I was looking forward to a whole new set of experiences. Ontario is my home and I love it but I've seen almost every inch of it now and have had a sense of this vast country of ours being out there.. waiting for me to experience it.

Driving into West Edmonton where I was staying I was amazed first by the seemingly endless kilometers of retail. Strip mall after shopping center after reataurant and hotel complex line the roads in every direction. Whole suburbs of shopping and eating spots with little evidence of anyone living there in way of sousing, schools or.. people.  And all this surrounding North America's largest shopping/entertainment complex, the infamous West Edmonton Mall.

I spent enough years as an teen working and hanging out in malls to develop a pretty good hate for them in general but this one I was interested to see, after all this was no regular mall. The second day in town a colleague and I drove over and started an aimless wander. Every corridor seemed to lead to something unexpected. The pirate ship was the first thing to wow me but when I turned the corner and saw the waterpark I was even more amazed and then the rollercoaster, quite an enginerring challenge, was also just pretty damn cool. Other areas of the mall contained tropical fish tanks, a marine park, and one of my favourites and hockey rink in the middle of one of the vast hallways.

 A few hours later, as our heads started reeling from over-stimulation we traced our steps back towards the car. We walked past an massive games arcade, a casino and then one last susprise, a shooting range. My colleague and I looked at each other and instantly said 'Yes'. We pushed open the door and found ourselfves facing a wall of weaponry from handguns to shotguns to semi and fully automatic machine guns.

Now I would've assumed I could've made it all the way through my life without ever firing a gun but with the opportunity in front of me I was suprised to find myself completely pumped up for the experience. We asked some questions and decided that immediately after work the next day we would be back. On our way to the car as were discussing all the crazy attractions in the mall werealized that we hadn't even paid attention to the hundreds of high end retail shops that really define the mall as a mall.

We were back next day and after signing a waiver and forking over about $70 bucks we were given ear and eye protection and we entered the shooting range. A rapid fire safety lesson and I found myself, shaking with adrenalin as I loaded 10 rounds in a clip and slammed it home into a Glock semi automatic pistol. I hit the target with the first three shots and set it down to wipe the sweat from my hands. Wow.. this is really cool I though aiming at the target again. We had paid for fifty bullets and by the time I had spent them my target was covered in holes, I had only missed a couple of times as had had a blast doing it. Although I could never imagine using a gun for sport hunting, it was cool to think if I had to rely on a gun for survival I might have a shooting chance at eating. It was an adreline producing experience and one that I was glad I had taken part in, especially becasue it was one that I never even knew I would enjoy.

There were several more trips to the mall over the next ten days to shop and just to gaze at the non retail attractions, with several diffrent co workers in town it was interesting seeing the different reactions as well a my own changing internal reactions to the West Edmonton Mall. Where at first I had enjoyed the excesses off the place and found the over the top, wow-factor attractions exciting and novel I now began to develop a not-so-slight aversion to the massive reatil/entertainment complex. It started to seem like a pretty good representation of everything the rest of the world hates about America, and by association, me. The expensive shops, the extravagence, the tourist trap. It must seem so wanton and gratuitous to those countries, those people that have so little..

The West Edmonton Mall was an experience unto itself. I was overwhelmed by all of it's sparkly lures at the beginning and ultimately a litte disappointed that I missed some of it's attractions (might have tried bungie jumping if I had seen it). At the same time the massive edifice to the kind of blatant and unrelenting consumerism that the world hates about us so much became less and less enjoyable until I backed out completely of the last planned visit. I had enough of the that aspect of life in Edmonton and was ready to see what else the city had to offer.