How things get their names: Prince Island Park

Buried within the metal heart of downtown Calgary, there is an island that serves as a verdant sanctuary from the intimidatingly phallic buildings that define the city’s corporate core. It floats there in the Bow River, tethered to the city with bridges but otherwise seemingly disinterested in the machinations of commerce and power occurring a few scant blocks away. Indeed, it seems ready to float away to some balmier, more hospitable clime, and while I enjoyed the hospitality of the island during the Calgary Folk Music Festival this past July, I also cautiously eyed the bridges for those first groans and cracks that would signify Prince Island’s great escape.

Curious readers might wonder about the origin of the name Prince Island, and I am all too happy to indulge your spirit of inquiry. Many rumours abound as to source of the island’s name, each surely speaking to some obscure truth lost to history. In fact, the festival was rife with speculation. For instance, some claim the island was renamed for the musician Prince during the mid-eighties in an attempt to lure the man to take up residence there—all part of a poorly conceived scheme to resurrect the city’s then-struggling, now-vanished velvet industry. However, it should be noted this story never makes it past the beer garden fence.

A somewhat more persuasive explanation is that the island was named after Donald Prince, a tragic 19th century lumber baron (“A prince among men,” his friends liked to say, “and yet still a pauper among women”). Donald was renowned across the whole of the prairies for his knowledge of the forest, while being equally infamous for his ignorance of his loyal wife, Theodosia.

Born in England, Theodosia had braved the journey to the colonies out of necessity, not desire, though she had resolved to make the most of her life there. As an opera singer of some regard in London, she would have been content to live the cosmopolitan life until her last strangled note, but the sooty air of her rapidly industrializing homeland steadily crippled her voice until that once mighty instrument tooted but a squeak. The fresh air of Canada proved to be a balm for her strained voice, and she salvaged her song, even though none in the fresh, uncultured land cared to hear her sing it.

The marriage had come about largely due to the persistence of Theodosia—she had snuck into the life of the perpetually distracted Donald by first posing as a maid, then a cook, and finally a lumberjack, felling a mighty pine tree and then revealing her true identity to the stupefied Donald, who proposed on the spot, so stunned was he by her superb axmanship—and the union continued due only to her dedication. The man’s fortune accumulated at an astounding rate, huge piles of bills molding and coins rusting in the mildewed corners of his mansion. But Theodosia cared not one whit to spend the rotten money, for it was that most precious commodity—time—which Donald hid away from her. Neglected by her love, Theodosia took to shadowing Donald on his walks into the forest, passing the time by whistling tunes to the birds, her only appreciative audience in this rude country.

Donald treated the forest with a reverence and intimacy typically reserved for lovers. He could tell the age of a tree just by lightly caressing the bark, while a birthmark in the shape of Italy on his wife’s lower back remained foreign territory to him. Blindfolded, he could note the type of tree just by the odor of its leaves, while the fragrant scent of his wife’s delicate farts—which, as befitting a lady, smelled only of hyacinths floating on a creek in summer—passed unremarked every Wednesday after their weekly chili night.

And so it came to pass that he would lose his wife through his own carelessness, while chopping trees—his favourite hobby, which he often pursued in the woods around their home. So forgetful of his wife, Donald cut a tree without considering that his lonely wife might be out there in the woods, singing to her birds. The tree cut her down in one blow, and the stunned Donald realized with horror his loss.

Atonement was in order. He took to the island in the Bow River and proceeded to clear it with his bare hands, tearing up trees by the roots and causing others to wither and die with his tears, salted to the point of poison with self-loathing. Next, he built a stage on his lonely little island, and each night he sat before it, waiting for the ghost of his wife to return and perform her music to a dedicated audience.

None were permitted onto the island, save for Donald, so who knows what he saw there each night? But people on the banks of the river reported an unearthly sound of unbearable sadness drifting across the water each night. Perhaps it was the voice of the dead Theodosia, or perhaps—more plausibly—the sorrowful lamentation of Donald himself. When he died, he was buried beneath the stage and the island named in his honour. Area residents still notice that ghostly song some nights, save for those four tranquil evenings in late July, when the Calgary Folk Music Festival comes to the island and the joyous tunes calm Donald’s restless spirit—or simply drown out his keening cry.

Waiting at the Greyhound station, again

I was waiting in line at the Greyhound station, sweating through the summer heat but still unflagging in my excitement to hit the road and enter that strange land that lay a few scant hours drive to the south. I was heading to Calgary—for the first time in my life, in fact—in order to attend the Calgary Folk Music Festival. It promised to be a delightful weekend, filled with wonderful music, but one thing stood in my way—Greyhound itself.

Need it even be said? The wait was excruciating. Behind me, a woman from Quebec was talking in fractured English to two other passengers, resulting in a bizarre multi-lingual parody of an Abbott and Costello routine as they tried to decipher whether or not she lived east or west of Montreal. At first I thought they simply did not grasp the distinction between “est” and “ouest,” but as the wait dragged on it seemed more likely they were just stretching out the pointless conversation in order to pass the time.

The boredom was broken by a crash coming from somewhere behind us. An angry man cursed loudly as he stormed out of the station. He had kicked over a magazine rack for some unknown reason, and two security guards followed him into the street.

The initial confrontation took place right outside the doors of the Greyhound station, but we—the bored passengers standing in line and drinking up this excitement like a parched man discovering a bottle of water in desert—couldn’t hear a word that was said, despite voices obviously being raised. Still, we could see that the angry man had puffed up his chest in the international sign of “You wanna go, huh?” For their part, the guards were not about to be scared off, and one pointed up at what was presumably a security camera, daring the man to make a move.

The angry man—a fairly thick young dude in a printed t-shirt (which I believe is the international sign for “I’m a douchebag and drive a big truck”)—started to walk away, but the guards followed, apparently goading him to pick a fight. A block of pay phones and arcade machines blocked our view from inside the station, but when they reappeared on the other side of the obstruction, one of the security guards had the man in a headlock and the duo was grappling in the street.

At this point the security guard who had been rifling through our carry-on luggage for knives and nuclear warheads bolted outside to help his colleague, leaving our already late bus to wait a little longer. I believe this is what is known as a “routine delay” at the downtown Edmonton Greyhound station.

A customer service agent not interested in street wrestling finished searching our bags and sniffing our beverage bottles for booze (“Do you want to smell my water?” I offered helpfully, but she declined for some reason). Tensions were starting to build. Most of us had been in line for almost an hour, and the mood was starting to simmer with the suppressed rage of boredom. The bus driver was threatening to refuse to allow a large family on the bus because their baby was crying. He relented, but only after making it clear that he was only tolerating their presence on the bus out of the generosity of his heart, and not because they had paid for a ticket or anything like that. An old woman was caught smuggling nail clippers and a book of matches onto the bus and had to put them in her luggage going underneath the bus. Disaster narrowly averted again. Can you imagine those headlines? “Grandmother of five beheads bus passenger, sets fire to corpse.” Sorry, psycho. You’ll just have to nap or watch “Bedazzled” instead.

(Actually, scratch that last bit. Greyhound stopped playing movies on their buses a while back, presumably for fear of overstimulating their numbed clientele. After the combination of boredom and discomfort that is the bus station experience, the company expects its ridership to sit in a respectfully catatonic state. Or perhaps Greyhound was too cash-strapped to afford a membership at Blockbuster any longer.)

All that remained was to board the bus and head out on my adventure into the strange world (which I was starting to think could not be any stranger than this bus station). More trouble was in the air, however. The driver called everyone going to Red Deer to board, as they were running out of space and couldn’t fit everyone in the line. I was left five people back in line, eyeing the others as if we were passengers on the Titanic staring at the last life raft and contemplating whether to draw straws or just push your way through.

The driver came back after boarding the Red Deer crowd and said there was room for one more. And with that said, the person at the front of the line jumped into the life raft, beat back our flailing hands with an oar, and said goodbye suckers, leaving us to swim with the icebergs.

This was really the Greyhound experience at its purest—the always present sense of mild chaos, of anger and discomfort restrained by a bureaucratic system so expertly devised to demean and dehumanize that even the Soviets would have been jealous. How dare we defile Greyhound’s fine buses with our foul, stinking humanity! We should be grateful they even let us in the station. I made the mistake of asking if I could get a refund, which elicited only condescension from the customer service agent who pointed to the words “non-refundable” on my ticket and then carefully explained with a weary sigh that this is what the ticket says, as if I couldn’t read.

I was tempted to point out the part of the ticket that says “July 24, 2009, 1:30 to Calgary,” and to explain how I understand that the tickets say non-refundable, but if Greyhound can't hold up their end of the bargain (i.e., allowing me to board a bus at the agreed upon date and time), then surely the obligation lies with them…ah, but I stopped myself. Explaining the concept of customer service to a customer service agent would surely only irritate her, just as her assumption that I’m a sub-literate goon irritated me as a professional proofreader. This is a road that ends with me in a headlock in the middle of the street, while the drunks in the parking lot across the way cheer us on and place bets with bottle caps. Thanks, but no thanks.

Instead, I called a coworker who was going to Calgary later that day and arranged to hitch a ride (thanks Lilly!), thus sparing me the prolonged agony of the Greyhound experience. And so I left behind me the bus station and the dark future it promised. No street fights, no searches, no penny-ante dictators lording their meagre authority over the hapless, helpless, and hopeless fools who have the gall to give them money in exchange for a service—I would just have to settle for comfort and convenience instead. C'est la vie.