What's the big deal about large roadside attractions? There's a lot to love
Canadian summer road trips get a big boost from larger-than-life stuff on the landscape
The May long weekend marks the official start of summer road trip season and Kyler Zeleny — a fourth-generation sausage-maker in rural Alberta — expects to see a whole lot more tourists rolling up to see a giant Ukrainian kielbasa.
The massive meat monument in the town of Mundare, 80 kilometres east of Edmonton, was the brainchild of Zeleny's grandfather, Edward Stawnichy.
"The thinking was if we're making sausage and we've got a bunch of Ukrainians here, let's erect a Ukrainian sausage — a kielbasa," says Zeleny, now the assistant manager at Stawnichy's Mundare Sausage.
The kielbasa, which went up in April 2001, is 12.8 metres — about 42 feet — tall.
The family's charitable foundation is said to have paid $120,000 for the red fibreglass structure that stands in a park not far from the meat processing plant.
Zeleny says the larger-than-life link (pun intended) to the 66-year-old family business has helped the company grow. It now has 80 products in more than 300 stores.
He's proud of the sausage sculpture.
"There's just something about small towns getting behind creating really kitsch ideas as a way to drive people into towns," says Zeleny.
Craig Glenday, editor-in-chief of Guinness World Records, circles the globe weighing and measuring big things.
Glenday said Alberta has about 40 claims of the world's largest things, according to the website Large Canadian Roadside Attractions. The rest of the country is dotted with giant structures that include a fiddle, a canoe paddle, a nickel, an axe, a whole bunch of animals and giant food.
"It's a really fascinating collection," said the London-based Glenday.
He says roadside attractions grew up alongside North America's car culture and finding these off-the-beaten-path destinations is half the fun.
"It's a weird thrill, isn't it, when you're driving and you see something off in the distance and think, 'What is that?'" says Glenday. "It's intriguing and it gets the adrenaline rushing, it's quite exciting."
Glenday said Guinness World Records recently certified the world's largest dream catcher. It hangs from a massive wooden frame at the powwow grounds on Rama First Nation, not far from Orillia, Ont.
A dream project
Its creator, 61-year-old Bob Williams, spent more than a year planning and crafting the structure, which weighs 900 kilograms (1,985 pounds) and is about 13 metres (42-ish feet) in diameter.
Williams has been building dream catchers for half his life, but never something on this scale.
To be a traditional dream catcher of the Chippewa territory, no metal could be used, said Williams. So it's made of 2,100 metres of rope, 1,500 metres of sinew and flexible trees collected from the bush near his house.
"I choose those woods for a reason, because they have a lot of meaning for our culture — ash and willow, we work with them a lot," said Williams.
Hoisting the creation into place was a bit like handling "a great big anaconda," he said.
"It was scary, I tell you. I didn't realize how flexible the dream catcher was. Lifting it off the ground took, like, 300 people," says Williams.
The record for the largest dream catcher was previously held by Lithuania at 10 metres in diameter.
But because dream catchers were created in North America by the Ojibwe people, Williams wanted the world's largest to be located in Canada.
"I wanted to make that happen in Rama."
Darryl Lem hasn't seen the dream catcher yet, but the recent retiree and motorcyclist enthusiast has seen more than a few giant landmarks while travelling the highways.
"There's the happy rock in Gladstone, Man., a great big Viking in Winnipeg Beach and the Wawa goose," said the 59-year-old, who's been taking in the big sights over about seven years of touring.
"We did Route 66 last year and saw everything from the big muffler man and all sorts of attractions," said Lem.
He considers it a bucket list kind of thing.
"Who doesn't want to ride a couple thousand kilometres to see the biggest ball of yarn and get an ice cream?"
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