I took a mini holiday this weekend. With the price of gas and the fact I'm not allowed to leave the country, that meant a trip down the QEW to Niagara Falls.
I haven't been there in quite sometime and was amazed at all the changes. Just how white-trashy everything had become. I mean it was still loaded with the wax museums and haunted houses I remember as a kid, but something seemed to be missing, or different.
Perhaps it was always this way and as a child I just wasn't aware of the mass pressure of the vendors to strip you of your hard earned money for a sub standard thrill of commercialism- and I'm not talking about the casino either.
Everything from souvenir shops, to restaurants, to the cheesy Golden Elvis Statue Guy who looked more like Robert Mitchum and couldn't stay motionless to save his life, seemed to cry out "Give me money for nothing!"
The masses that I witnessed seemed more than happy to oblige, but then again, they all seemed once removed from the family tree of trailer parks and mountain men.
Hell, even the arcade which gladly took $50.00 of our money for 40 minutes of fun and then spit our seven tickets we could cash in for a Bonhomme Carnival key chain.
"What the fuck is a snowman mascot from Quebec City doing as a prize figuehead in Niagara Falls?
Wait a minute! Isn't Quebec like the 51st state of the U.S. anyway?
Now I see the connection, or should I say conspiracy!
It took a side trip to Niagara on the Lake to calm me down. "$15.00 sandwiches? $7.50 for a pint of draught? Yup, I'm in Canada all right."
So today, of all days, as we celebrate all that is distinctly Canadian, I say, let's give Niagara Falls to the Americans. We might as well, because it seems that with the way it is now, we already have.
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