Word: winterizer
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...flashing a smile that would melt half the snow in the province of Alberta. "It's the friendliness that keeps the city warm," adds Kimberly Palsson, 18. Six hundred forty-seven thousand Calgarians, on the nervous verge of being discovered by a world ready to attend the XV Olympiad Winter Games, are determined to ladle on a downright cordial welcome. "Smile, you're a tourist attraction" has become an unofficial local slogan. To a visitor, plunked down at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow rivers 150 miles north of Montana, Calgary seems to have an unsophisticated, almost south...
...precautions can control another specter that hangs over the city. It is the arch of clouds created by the dread Chinook wind that sweeps out of the west each winter at speeds up to 72 m.p.h. The winds can raise the temperature by 18 degrees in the time it takes to grill an Alberta-bred New York strip steak. The Chinook could turn venues in the mountains into piles of slush. Snowmaking machines are already churning away, building stockpiles in case...
Calgary is no one-cuisine culinary backwater, as some smaller Winter Olympics-host towns have been. There is a large and prosperous Chinese community with roots dating back to 1883, when the tracks of the Canadian Pacific Railway were laid. In recent years the scores of Chinese restaurants have been supplemented by a handful of Japanese, Korean and Vietnamese establishments, and there are also French, Italian and Greek entries. A first- rate seafood restaurant, Cannery Row, has fresh fish flown in from Vancouver. Still, a steakhouse is Calgary's idea of a real night out. At Hy's the menu...
Other prices have escalated. Last winter an adventurous tourist could have had a bone-rattling ride down the Olympic bobsled run for $20. Before the ride ! was closed to tourists last month, the same 60 seconds of terror cost $39. A simulated bobsled run at the Olympic Center downtown is free but is a pale imitation of the real thing. The equally free simulation of the 90-meter ski jump, however, is realistic enough to discourage all but the most demented from thinking about attempting the actual hill. Fortunately, that is a thrill forbidden to foolish amateurs...
...speeders, the Mounties almost always get their man. Visitors should slow their pace and accept that Calgary is a small town in spirit. Says Mayor Klein: "People here still say 'Hi' to strangers on the street." By that measurement, whatever the weather, everyone seems certain to have a warm Winter Games...