Marching Bands Make Me Cry

"Calgary Stampede Marching Band", by Frank Maurer on Flickr, from Calgary Stampede 2008
Thank you, Frank, for sharing this.

This little story came to mind while I was writing Insider Tips on How to Watch the Calgary Stampede Parade.

My first visit to Calgary was back in the Middle Ages when our high school band came to perform in the Calgary Stampede Parade. Our red and white uniforms looked a lot like the official Calgary Stampede Marching Band, very much as they do in this picture. The white shoes were really hard to keep clean in the Stampede Parade marshalling area because, although the parade route itself is well-maintained and the horse manure is swept up before it gets cold, that's not how it was backstage in the hour or two we spent waiting for the parade to start. Fresh and deep.

But it was a fun trip, and playing in the parade was a fantastic experience. Up until then, I'd been in a lot of parades, but they were tiny compared to Calgary.

The band was a huge part of my life in high school. Thanks to our music teacher and band leader, Mr. Gregg Arnason, we travelled and performed as very few school bands in those days, and even now, ever do. When I think back to what he achieved with an ordinary band from an ordinary town, I'm overwhelmed. As an adult now myself, I don't know how to even begin to take some 50 or 60 kids from Canada on a three-week tour of Japan, but he did it. And much more.

I went through most of my twenties without going to many parades. Well, none. How many single, childless twenty-somethings do you see at the typical Santa Claus parade, anyway? It wasn't until after having children that I went to a parade again, and this time it was the Calgary Stampede Parade. Oh, it was all fun and games watching the horses and the clowns until... the plinkety plink of a distant glockenspiel should have had me on guard. The rat-a-tat-tat of the snare drums should have been my clue to run. But I couldn't escape it. The band came closer, my lower lip began to quiver, my eyes began to water, and it was all I could do to keep from sobbing.

Heaven knows what crazy neural pathways have wired my tear ducts to my band ears, but there you go. I cannot watch a marching band go by without crying. It's a curse.

Vancouver Canucks at the Westin Hotel, Calgary (1990 or so)

It's not that all my Calgary hotel memories are this old (like my story of seeing the Queen at the Palliser), it's just that I think of them when certain hotels come to mind.

So here's a story that happened at the Westin, one of Calgary's top-end downtown business hotels.

Not being a hockey groupie, I'm not sure whether all the NHL teams stay at the Westin when they come to Calgary, but I suspect a lot of them do.

Sometime long ago, around 1990, I was a speaker at a business conference at the Westin. There was a dinner and I must have ducked out early, because I remember being almost alone in the lobby except for two other people. One was the bellman. The other was carrying a stuffed armadillo.

We don't see many armadillos this far north. None, in fact.

So, while I was trying to see the armadillo without staring, I completely missed noticing the guy carrying it. It was Igor Larionov, a Russian superstar centre who came to Canada in 1989 and played for the Vancouver Canucks for three years. Like I said, I'm not a hockey groupie. The bellman filled me in later. The Canucks had just played an exhibition game in Texas and had obligingly stopped over in Calgary for a beating by the Flames on the way home.

That is probably the most interesting thing I've seen at the Westin. And that's no small claim. For several years, my office faced the hotel and I was regularly treated to Calgary's own version of Ugly Naked Guy on the Road.

I Saw the Queen at the Palliser Hotel in 1990

Queen Elizabeth looks so familiar. Well, no wonder. I've been licking the back of her head for years, until e-mail put a big damper on letter-writing. But still.

In 1990, Her Majesty visited Calgary. Not being on the guest list for any of the official functions, I waited for HM to call me up for a little girlfriend dog-walking time. Still waiting.

My friend Pat was in town for a conference, staying at the Palliser Hotel. So, that's where we had dinner, in the least hoity of the hoity-toity restaurants there. (And I say this with great envy of those who eat there often.) It was lovely.

Pat said the Queen was staying at the Palliser too. After dinner, we saw the Palliser's hand-picked crew of red carpet roller-outers rolling out the red carpet in the lobby. Hmmm.

Much waiting. Apparently Her Majesty was at a state dinner with our then-mayor, His Worship Al Duerr, and a host of other dignitaries. (Another invitation lost in the mail.)

In the beautiful Crystal Ballroom behind us, the Palliser's Crystal Ballroom specialists were just finishing polishing the silver for a big charity ball, unrelated to the Queen's visit, but with an inevitable overlap in the guest list. (Now that's one I could have had an invite to, were I not so cheap.)

We waited, Pat and I, thinking the Queen would only be able to handle so much local colour before rising to end the state dinner. Eventually, people in formal wear started coming in – walking on the Queen's red carpet, even. Turns out that another friend, let's call her Donna, was one of these lovely charity ball-goers.

Donna stopped to chat for a while, and to wait for the Queen with us.

More eminent Calgarians pranced by and then, at last, there was a bit of a buzz in the crowd by the door. The Queen? The Queen? No, it was Mayor Al Duerr in full mayoral regalia. A very nice man and a friend of Donna's.

His Worship stopped to say Hi to Donna. Donna, however, had to let him know the score, and said, "Get out of the way, Al. We're waiting for the Queen." And being such a nice man, Mayor Duerr smiled and got out of the way.

Wait, wait, wait. We were ladies in waiting, all right.

And then, every Canadian coin I've ever tossed came to life before my eyes, for it was she. A petite, in fact very short, woman passed us by on the red carpet. I could have touched her. (But wouldn't because that's bad manners.) Her diamond tiara sparkled, her queenly gown rustled, and she fairly glided with perfect posture. Regal, one could say.

The Queen looks exactly like she does on a stamp.