Things To Do (or not) In Banff

Certain elements of a school outing are predictable, others are not. You can pretty much count on people breaking the set rules given before, during and after and specific outing. You can also count on somebody getting busted for something they did wrong. We took pride in the fact that while we conformed quite aggressively to the breaking of the rules, we never got hit with any retribution from the authority figures on our trip.

Such an occasion was present when we hit Banff. After a bus ride that took longer than we figured it should we had arrived in one of the most beautiful places I think this country has to offer. We did the tourist thing and checked out Lake Louise and the Chateau Hotel. We checked out the hot springs and the Banff Centre for the Arts. All of these events went fairly well, although a handful of us left the Chateau before we thought we were about to be asked to leave anyway. I guess a bunch of hooligans in a posh resort hotel wasn’t their idea of maintaining their image.

After the hotel we decided it would be fun to rent canoes and paddle around Lake Louise a little bit. The fellow who rented the canoes was pretty excited that there were 3 canoes full of us with wallets in hand. He wasn’t so impressed when we hit the lake and began to wage a naval battle the likes of which, apparently, the lake had never seen before. I don’t think he would have noticed so much but for one incident. We almost successfully capsized two canoes unnoticed. The incident that drew his attention was when a canoe full of overzealous Monty Python fans yelled at the top of their lungs “RAMMING SPEED” and paddled like their boat was on fire. Some great evasion by the target saved their day, but when we returned the boats we noticed that everybody but the booth attendant enjoyed our antics. No matter, I don’t think that we would be back to rent one again soon after, and if we eventually returned he wasn’t likely to be there (or at the very least, recognize us anymore).

Our crowning achievement came when we were in the shopping village portion of Banff. We frightened many a shopkeeper and decided it was time to feed. What the Trip organizers never gave any thought to, that we had noticed pretty much on the plane on the way out, was that the legal drinking age in Alberta was 18, not 19 like at home. As luck would have it a handful of us were 18 so we had a really good dinner. Thanks to the fact that band people are relatively naive we went pretty much unnoticed. Those that figured something out were pretty oblivious.
“What’s wrong with them?”
“I guess they’re sick.”
“Hey! You guys alright?”
“Yeah I guess we got some bad food at dinner”

Bad food, yeah that was it. It was just too bad that we had to get an early start the next day.