EDMONTON - There are gifts that wait for you. They are demure, these gifts, patient like blue moons. They refuse to shout “Yoo-hoo!” or wave their hands madly in the air trying to catch your attention. Instead they twiddle their thumbs, bide their time astutely until that perfect moment when you, the receiver, inhale sharply as you find them. “Where have you been all my life?” you cry, and the gifts think: here, we’ve been here all along.
I am not speaking of wrappable things. It is this way with gifts like love, I believe, and good authors and rescue cats and Candy Cane Lane.
All this time, it’s been here, waiting for me to find it. Nine winters I’ve spent in this city and Friday was the first time I saw Edmonton’s famous Christmas-themed street on 148th Street in the west end, the one that draws hundreds of thousands of spectators each year.
I suppose I have my son’s Christmas-lights fixation to thank. Had it not been for him, I doubt the Edmonton Transit System’s annual Christmas Lights Tour would have struck me as an ideal way to end a busy workweek.
The ETS tours started in 1995. Transit employees volunteer their time as a way of giving back; all proceeds go to the Donate-A-Ride program.
Don’t bother trying to get a last-minute ticket. These tours sell out faster than you can say St. Nick. Little wonder; it only costs $3 a person to take the scenic bus trip, which visits the famed Lane as well as the Alberta Legislature and Saskatchewan Drive.
Carol-singing and corny jokes are thrown in for free. Our host on Friday evening, Dennis Nowicki, handed out song lyrics as the bus headed west from City Hall, then launched straight into groaners
“What do elves learn in school?” he asked us.
Someone in the back called out the answer: “The Elfabet? Just a guess.”
“He’s been on this tour before!” someone else shouted with a laugh.
And another one about the long-lost 10th reindeer, Olive. “You know,” he said, then started singing, “Olive the other reindeer, used to laugh and call him names…” Chuckles.
I was the only passenger on the bus with a small child, much to my surprise; I’d anticipated a fiasco of strollers and overtired screaming. Perhaps the other parents were smarter, knew this trip was too late, too long for a toddler. But then, anything more than five seconds is too long for a toddler. A mom’s gotta take a chance now and then. A mom’s gotta live a little.
My thigh-high date had busted to bits numerous transit rules by the time we arrived at the festive lane, our first stop. He stood on the seat in boots, despite my reprimands, crumbled a cookie everywhere and used his outside voice far too frequently. But my embarrassment melted when the bus’s interior lights went out. I could do little but look as we crept along, Christmas lights ablaze on both sides of the bus.
My son, who is two, has yet to understand that one need not verbalize every thought and observation.
“BIG TAR COMING!” (He cannot say his esses.) “MORE CANNY CANES! MORE NO-MAN!”
Outside the bus, families ambled along the sidewalks, some pulling their children in sleds. Crowds gathered to admire the unusual: lights that seemed to drip like icicles, gigantic white presents glowing from within, a tree full of miniature disco balls glittering in the night.
I’d once discounted Candy Cane Lane as kitschy, wasteful. I judged it having never seen it. Now, with my son pointing and shrieking and bouncing, this neighbourhood’s enthusiasm and spirit stretched my Grinchy heart a few sizes.
Why isn’t THAT house lit, I wondered, or THAT house? How could you live here and not catch this festive bug?
The bus headed out to its next stop, the legistature. Our host passed the time with more silliness. “What’s red and white and blue at Christmas? A sad candy cane.” A collective awwwww from the passengers.
At the Leg, we stopped for half an hour, got out and listened to carollers, sipped free hot chocolate. It was past the boy’s bedtime, and I dreaded a meltdown, unaware this tour would last nearly two hours. My child held out, bless him, thanks to the snow piles and the music and our tour host, armed with a good supply of toy buses.
By the time we’d looped over to Strathcona and back to City Hall, I was fully in the Christmas spirit, feeling grateful this small, patient gift had waited until I got around to being a parent. Thanks Candy Cane Lane. It was worth the nine-year wait.