An Elephant Never Forgets...Winter in Edmonton

My route to work takes me past the local CityTV studio. Most days I peer in the window and see local bands destined for nothingness, hopelessly lame hosts failing to cook dead simple recipes, and green-screen weather reports. But the other day, as I passed the corner of 102 Street and Jasper Avenue, I noticed something a little different. Dudes in fezzes, a cluster of onlookers, cameras, a grinning host, and one giant elephant.

Actually, the elephant wasn't all that giant, as elephants go. In the interest of full disclosure, I once rode an elephant in Cambodia, but it was more like the elephant was taking me for a walk and the driver was just making suggestions about the route; several times we stopped to knock down trees for no reason; this decision was made neither by me nor the driver. And that Cambodian elephant was about the same size as the Edmontonian elephant on the sidewalk.

But riding a free-ranging elephant through its natural habitat is certainly a different activity than forcing one to pose for photos at the end of the infamous Northern Alberta winter. I'm not saying the Shriners are bad people; they raise a lot of money for good causes. I'm just saying that the Shriners appear to be bad people. But perhaps they are misguided. Perhaps they believe the elephant to be a native species of Alberta. Or maybe they think circuses are a natural product of evolution. It's possible that they think the elephant is an urban species because it matches the concrete. I don't know.

It would be cruel to interview and photograph a human promotional guest on that street corner at that time of the morning, never mind a five tonne mammal native to tropical climates. Most of the bad press has focused on the circus at which the elephant was to be performing. I think the advertising for the circus is much more diabolical. And I think it's weird that the Shriners and CityTV haven't figured this out yet.