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28 June
It’s wedding eve, so today we start to home in on the venue - the Spring Break Flower Farm which is just outside the small town of Blairmore in Crowsnest Pass, about a hundred kilometres or so west of Lethbridge. Emma and Michael lived in the nearby town of Coleman for about a year when she first came to Canada back in 2018.
As parents of the bride it seems we have a few important duties, and today’s sacred task is as the “Custodians of the Ice Cream”. I don’t think the guests would be too happy if they didn’t get their fill of ice cream at some stage during the evening, so we’re taking our responsibilities very seriously. Six litres of ice cream was a bit much for Emma and Michael’s freezer, so it’s been living in the freezer at our Airbnb for the past couple days. We’ve been issued with a Yeti (that’s Canadian for “Esky”), but a trial run‘s demonstrated that the six tubs only fit in that particular receptacle if we store them on their sides. It’s a warmish day, and the tops of the tubs don’t fit all that tightly, so we’re
very much suspecting that if we don’t transport the Yeti standing on its end, there’ll be more ice cream in the Yeti than in the tubs by the time we get to Blairmore. I’m not sure if a bride’s ever disowned her parents on her wedding day, but we’re not taking any chances … and we decide that we must drive quickly … no stops … lest the sacred ice cream melts. LeeAnne warned us that the traffic cops in this neck of the woods are dynamite, but in this case I’m fairly sure I’d chose a speeding ticket over melted ice cream ….
We pass the turn off to the Windy Rafters Barn Dance Hall, where it seems you can enjoy barn dancing in a more than 100 year old “work - horse barn”. The website says it’s open for tours which include a “hands-on (fake cow) milking experience”. Sounds intriguing.
The wedding venue is very cute. It operates day to day as a garden nursery, but it seems they have lots of weddings here too. Emma and Michael will be tying the knot under an arbour in a lovely garden shaded by iconic local conifers. There’s
a bed and breakfast attached to it where Emma, Issy and the bridesmaids will be staying tonight whilst us blokes are relegated to a hotel in Blairmore.
There is of course the obligatory wedding rehearsal, which in this case is short a few groomsmen … well all of them actually, something about traffic hold ups behind a large bingle on the highway just outside Lethbridge. Hopefully it’s cleared by tomorrow; the fake groomsmen are doing an outstanding job, but I suspect the happy couple might prefer the real thing.
Then it’s off to a wedding party/family dinner at the excellent and brand new Crowsnest Pass Golf Club up on the hillside, with excellent views down over the valley. It’s roughly equal numbers of Canadians and Aussies, and not too much seems to be getting lost in translation. The one exception is the totally blank look LeeAnne gives Issy on being told that something is “fair dinkum”. Hopefully we won’t need a Canadian/Aussie phrase book to get through the speeches tomorrow. Steve and I are by contrast quite clear on everything as we pick the world apart and stick it back together again over a late night bottle of
whiskey. Family bonding!
29 June
So the big day has finally arrived. First up it’s off to the venue to set things up to live stream the ceremony for the folks back home. I’m feeling the pressure; I sure wouldn’t want to stuff this up; it seems a lot of our relos and friends have conveniently decided to take the day off work to enjoy the occasion, so I don’t think I’ll be overly popular if they’re left staring at a blank screen … and if that wasn’t enough pressure Emma then presents me with one of the rings and tells me that I need to deliver it to Michael back at the hotel. Aaarrrggghhh!! I’ve seen so many movies about things going wrong at weddings and most of them seem to involve rings. I thought “Custodians of the Ice Cream” was about as stressful as it could get but this makes that feel like a Sunday morning stroll in the park.
Scott and I decide to relieve the pressure with a visit to the nearby Frank Slide Interpretive Centre, which commemorates the 1903 disaster in which 110 million tonnes of rock slid off Turtle
Mountain, engulfing half the mining town of Frank, and killing somewhere between 70 and 90 people. Issy and I came here in 2018, and what had escaped our attention then was a display about the equally if not more horrific Hillcrest Mine Disaster. This occurred only a few years after Frank Slide, in 1914, and remains Canada’s worst ever mining disaster. 189 people died when an explosion ripped through the mine, which is less than a kilometre from today’s wedding venue. Crowsnest Pass was clearly a very dangerous place a hundred or so years back.
So then it’s off to the ceremony. Issy and I both get very teary when we see our beautiful daughter in her wedding dress for the first time. She looks perfect. We walk her down the aisle together and the formalities are completed in great style, in glorious sunshine, and almost Aussie type heat.
Now it’s party time, and it looks like these Canadians know how to party. If you get a bit tired of dancing you can always adjourn to the lawns for a session of bean bag tossing or frisbee throwing. An errant frisbee gets stuck in the bottom of an
empty buried pot that looks like it was supposed to accommodate a tree, and defies all attempts to prise it loose. I hope someone notices before the next tree they put in there gets waterlogged. The most eager participant in all games is one of Michael’s nieces, four year old Scarlett. She’s the energiser bunny on steroids, and she’s certainly not about to run out of steam anytime soon. And if you’re not into any of that you can adjourn indoors for a session of Jenga. This involves trying to build a tower out of wooden blocks. You get blocks by removing them from lower parts of the structure. If the tower collapses you lose. The tower on the table next to ours looks like it’s going to cause some serious havoc to the glassware, and possibly also some of the guests, when it eventually comes tumbling down. And of course there’s action aplenty on the dance floor. Best of luck to groomsman Trevor in getting his suit deposit back after an over-enthusiastic move leaves the seat of his pants ripped. Based on the comments he’s getting I’m guessing he’s now regretting wearing pink underwear. Troy challenges Michael to a “shoey”, that well known Australian tradition of downing a drink in one go from one of your shoes. The groom seems fairly well primed so the challenge is of course accepted and successfully completed to loud cheers all round. I’d always thought of Bethany as a quiet conservative young lass but the sight of her skulling wine from a bottle late in the evening has put that notion solidly to rest. The shuttle bus carts off the “survivors” a little after two. Issy’s last task as Mother of the Bride is to make sure that Michael isn’t still on the bus enthusiastically farewelling his friends, but rather making his way to the bed and breakfast to share his first night with his bride as husband and wife.
It’s been a very emotional, exciting and memorable day. We almost can’t believe it; our baby girl is married!
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D MJ Binkley
Dave and Merry Jo Binkley
The Wedding
Marvelous!