Showing a guest through a well-appointed home during a festive dinner party here last week, hostess Joan Williams, wife of the board chairman of a local electric company, opened the door of the front hall closet to show a prized possession. ”It`s Marshall`s Olympic jacket,” she said, pointing out her husband`s light-green padded ski wear with a five-ring emblem.
These days no fashionable home in Calgary, a city built on volunteer spirit and considerable hoopla, is without one. The XV Olympic Winter Games, beamed from this prairie city by the Rockies to far corners of the Earth, begin Saturday. If cities were people, Calgary would be a nervous debutante, dressed up, waiting for the party to begin.
The big events in a nation`s history are usually disasters-wars, revolutions, social upheavals, floods. Partly by luck and partly by political design, the nation of Canada has had few such major events in the 111 years of its confederation. This has made daily life somewhat easier on the inhabitants, but it has left the country with a less-than-satisfying sense of national worth and common purpose.
Perhaps for this reason, Canada always has had a special love of world festivals, spending $2 billion on Expo `67 and dazzling accountants a second time at the 1976 summer Olympics in Montreal. Now, to Calgary come the games of winter with laser shows, fireworks, bobsledders, skiers, skaters, shooters, an arts festival, a writers festival and P.J. O`Rourke, a ”foreign correspondent” for Rolling Stone magazine who will address University of Calgary students on the topic ”Holidays in Hell.”
Traditionally, winter games take place in villages, not metropolitan areas. Most spectators are homebound couch potatoes, watching before a blazing television set. Few dwell on the history of, say, such rustic retreats as Sarajevo or Lake Placid. But behind the flags and athletes who will parade into McMahon Stadium this Saturday afternoon lies a city with proud, often-misunderstood traditions, values and a considerable amount of sensitivity.
”Please, whatever you write,” Calgary stockbroker Mary Barr urged a reporter last week, ”don`t call us a cow town.”
Yet, as historians note, Calgary always has had a flavor of the American West. Many early cattlemen were American cowboys who drifted north. The Calgary Stampede, which draws a million visitors every July to what is billed as ”The Greatest Outdoor Show on Earth,” reflects American, not Canadian, frontier lore.
Calgary`s oil and gas industries have strong ties to Texas. At least 10 percent of Calgary`s 640,000 residents, many in upper-income brackets, were born south of the Canadian border. Indeed, the area`s first settlers were fur- trading American renegades who built notorious forts from Montana to southern Alberta and introduced the natives to whiskey.
In 1875 the Canadian government, barely 8 years old, dispatched 50 uniformed members of the North West Mounted Police to show the riffraff who was boss and set up a police post. Ft. Brisebois, named by its imperious Mountie commander Ephrem Brisebois, was quickly hit by mutiny. Brisebois was accused of, among other things, hogging the camp`s only iron stove to warm himself and his mistress. He was relieved of command. The town name was changed to Calgary, for a bay on Scotland`s Isle of Mull.
Most times, however, the western plains of Canada were stable and law abiding, with a tradition of problem-solving that makes for less-than-gripping historical drama. That problem shows in Theatre Calgary`s current production, ”Walsh.” Set in 1886, it pits Mountie James Walsh against far-off British authorities who ordered him to deport Sitting Bull, the Sioux chief who fled to Canada after the controversial Battle of Little Big Horn. At the play`s end, Walsh, approaching a nervous breakdown, fears certain death for the native leader.
In real life, the deportation took place, but Sitting Bull lived nine more years before being killed in an unrelated incident. Walsh left the Mounties and developed a successful second career as a roofing contractor.
Other fanciful images of Canada were shaped by Hollywood tales of ”half- breed” trappers, endless snow and rustic simplicity. In a 1929 epic called
”Man of the North,” for example, the only dance that miners north of Calgary seemed to know was the Paul Jones. ”Ees a dance,” explained Gilbert Roland, as one of the miners, ”zat les voyageurs `av brought to dees con-tree.” Historian Pierre Berton, writing of such incongruities, reports that Canadian mining camps were well acquainted with both the Charleston and the Black Bottom.
Though most Canadians live in modern cities, they have a deep sense of climate. An old Canadian maxim claims, ”There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing.” But much of the year it is appallingly cold. One morning last week a Calgary radio program recalled the days before school buses, when many an Alberta child rode a pony to class, bringing oats and warming its bridle by a classroom stove for the ride home, often in a blizzard.
To others, winter is a time for hockey and the pain that comes from unthawing an ear, as writer Christopher Dafoe recalled in a recent newspaper essay, ”Freezing for Dear Old Canada.” It was not pleasant. Outside on the rink, Dafoe wrote, ”you heard a little crackling sound and all feeling vanished in your ears.” Inside the changing shack, the source of warmth, wet socks sizzled on a stove the size of a boiler, stuffed full of blazing coal and logs. Sometimes boys urinated on it, creating clouds of hissing steam.
”I hated hockey with all my heart,” Dafoe added, ”but playing it was part of the price we paid for being Canadian. We heard that every red-blooded Canadian boy plays hockey. Who were we to dispute the national mythology? They play indoors now, I am told. What wimps!”
To the late Canadian pianist Glenn Gould, the country reflected what he called ”The Idea of North,” a direction of solitude and great distances. ”I think there are tremendous virtues,” he said. ”I personally am more at home with the somewhat reserved, quieter Canadian spirit than the more energetic American spirit. Being Canadian, I understand the wish to preserve it.”
Yet Canadians also have a certain yearning for spotlights, especially now in Calgary. ”Calgary is excited,” noted University of Calgary sociologist Robert Stebbins in an interview. ”Sure, the Olympics will upset life for us, create traffic jams and bring in a lot of lost drivers. But for a change Calgary feels at the center of things.”
”Calgary`s funny,” added a Montreal stockbroker. ”It`s about 10 blocks square and a mile high. They went up instead of out. There`s nothing for a thousand miles, then-boom-all these skyscrapers bunched together.” Nor does it have an uncritical spirit. At the Olympic Gala, some complained that singer Anne Murray had lipstick on her teeth. Calgary Flames goaltender Mike Vernon, interviewed on a flight to Winnipeg, noted that fans boo the Flames on ”off” nights though his team, for much of the season, has had the best record in the National Hockey League.
Despite the Olympic hoopla, sociologist Stebbins expects Canadians from other areas to stay home. ”Viewpoints are available on TV that spectators simply don`t have access to,” he noted. ”The luge is basically a blur. Downhill skiing is hard to watch. And who wants to freeze to death? Many people feel more comfortable taking the $2,000 it costs to come to Calgary and spending it on a TV set. After the games, they still have the set.”
That`s fine with Ralph Mellanby, executive producer for the host television network, Canada`s CTV. ”Crowds provide ambiance,” said Mellanby, a three-time Emmy award winner for sports programming and a former cameraman at Chicago`s WGN-Ch. 9. Otherwise, they just get in the way of television cameras. To Mellanby, the Olympics are a laboratory for television technology. ”After every Olympics, we get together and ask every producer what shots they couldn`t get,” he said. ”Until now we`ve never been able to show where a skier is on a run.” The wonder of this year`s show, he says, will be a 2-mile zoom camera that can picture an entire mountain, then pinpoint a skier`s location on the run.
”We`ve also worked to improve the sound,” he said. ”We`ve had good pictures. Now, if we can get the announcers to shut up, we`ll hear the crackle of snow, the huff of cross-country skiers and the pop that skis make when they leave a jump. I want to hear the coaches as they skate alongside the speedskaters. So what if it`s in Finnish?”
For Mellanby, born in southern Ontario, staging the Olympics is also a Canadian challenge. ”We`re a small country in population, like Austria,” he said. ”People in the rest of the world expect Canadians to do everything as big as the Americans. It`s hard. We only have 28 million people here. And many of the best leave.” His team, pulled together from across the country, will command 42 microwave links, 21 satellite circuits, 12 mobile vans, 13 studios, 34 control rooms, 300 cameras and 388 commentator positions to relay signals to 760 million TV sets around the world. ”We`re ready to go,” he said.
”Nothing can stop us.”
Though comedy and spectacle are not ready partners, some Olympic humor was provided by Bob and Doug Mackenzie, two ”hosers” who speak what one critic called ”Ottawa Valley Shell Station English.” The duo, actors Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas, were asked by the Canadian government to host a 60-minute Olympic preview that, along with providing useful information, used rear-screen projection to simulate Bob on ”the one-man luge and I`m the one man, eh?”
Both suggested ways to carry an Olympic torch ”without setting your tuque on fire.” Later, brother Doug explained biathlon. ”It`s skiin` and shootin`,” he said. ”Used to be hockey and shootin`. But that kinda got out of hand.”
As ambassadors, Bob and Doug leave much to be desired. ”But then,”
Thomas added, ”Americans have a pretty parochial view of the whole world anyway. I mean, they think people in Canada, well, it`s like `Do you know a Mountie?` and `Do you live in an igloo?` I don`t think anyone in the world should ever be insulted that Americans have a narrow view of you. That`s the American way.”
Carried for thousands of miles before crowds who cheered and stamped feet in below-zero temperatures, the Olympic torch relay, which began Nov. 17 in Newfoundland, inspired Toronto`s Second City cabaret. One sketch opens with a farm family consoling their despondent teenaged son, who misread the time and, after a year of planning, missed the run-by. ”How should I know when 1530 is?” he moans. His mood is not helped when his kid brother falls through the front door and gasps: ”I ran ahead. Saw it three times. In Wawa, it went around the Great Goose. In Sudbury, around the Big Nickel. In Timmins, around the Tim Horton Donut Store.”
No one in Calgary plans to miss the festivities. Calgary officials have encouraged residents to leave up Christmas house trimmings. Streetlight and utility poles have been hung with 4,400 Olympic banners. In the fashionable Mt. Royal section, one smart set is planning its own torch run from house to house, winding up at a country club bar. Downtown, city planners decided several raucous night spots would better serve as parking lots. One holdout, the York Hotel, booked Ms. Nude Alberta, though February generally is regarded as a dangerous time for such activities.
Not all attempts at splendor have succeeded. A tire store flying a flag is still, after all, a tire store. Nor is everyone coming who was invited. A major sponsor, Federal Express, offered a pot of money to Chicago photographer Victor Skrebneski to spend three weeks in Calgary photographing; Federal Express would rush prints overnight to parents of gold medalists. Skrebneski, known for passion not ice, declined.
Notables expected this week include Prince Rainier of Monaco, whose son, Albert, is competing in bobsledding; Prince Carlos of Spain; the King of Sweden; Mary Hart of ”Entertainment Tonight”; and a delegation of Hearsts from San Francisco. Calgary Mayor Ralph Klein, an ambling former TV investigative reporter, plans a ”Happy Hour” for celebrity arrivals at City Hall late every afternoon instead of racing out to the airport every 30 minutes.
Helpfully, the Calgary Herald is offering parents a February calendar with suggested daily activities for children. Among them: ”Discuss what people arriving from other countries would find very different in Calgary.”
One possible category would be sparkling Olympic toys: ski jumps that can be covered with water-slicked plastic thatch for summer use; a refrigerated bobsleigh run, longest in the world, that will be open 10 months a year;
frictionless suits for luge riders. Another would be good help: ski technicians for last-minute tuneups; bobsleigh coaches who never let their sleigh runners out of sight and take them into their bedrooms at night.
Best, to many, is a certain heady sense of world applause. At a recent dinner party, architect Frederick Valentine, partner in the Calgary firm of Cook, Culham, Pedersen and Valentine, wore a silver medal on a sash around his neck. His prize: second place in an Olympic Arch competition held in Prince`s Island Park, a downtown recreation area. An urbane man, he confessed that during the medal ceremony, he had been close to being overwhelmed.
