I rarely exaggerate, but Canada, and especially its western province of Alberta, impressed me to the point, at which compliments sound banal. Yes, I was younger so to say, I emigrated there. Actually, I feel young enough, and found, that there is no exaggeration in the ad that the Canadian Rockies are one of the most beautiful places on Earth. I understood why the 7600 residents of Banff (for me it is like Monte Carlo or Karlovy Vary in North America) calmly welcome three million visitors a year, why the Queen of England comes to rest in Jasper and why some biographers believe here was the last place where Marilyn Monroe felt really happy. A minor detail of the landscape is that Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones with their two children, even Robin Williams, Alec Baldwin, Brooke Shields, Brad Pitt and dozens of Hollywood celebrities come skiing namely here. The harmony between the 5-star standard and pristine nature with spectacular canyons and wild animals has been achieved for the mere 130 years. It all started in 1883 when three railway workers made way here to lay the groundwork for the first transcontinental railway in Canada. Then came a Tyrolean wearing wooden skis and exclaimed “This is as beautiful as 50 Switzerlands together”, and the American vice president of the railway company ordered:” As we are unable to export the scenery will bring the tourists”. Banff Springs hotel can easily accommodate 22,000 tourists and Chateau Lake Louise has room for even more guests, also in hyper-luxurious interior. It’s not at all cold – the dreaded temperatures of minus thirty to minus fifty degrees sometimes feel like a minus five because of the healthy climate and the lack of moisture. On the other hand, the ski season starts in November and ends in May, and on top of that, the remaining five months of the year are held as an active time for tourism – rafting, mountain biking, or climbing. For the first time in my life I felt the adrenaline from the freezing climb with ropes and nails on frozen waterfalls. I secretly copied Bill Gad’s phone number, the most extreme climber and flying planerist I know. His credo is “Keep going” – which most often means “To not die” in hyper adventurous challenges.
Alberta is unique and inimitable in terms of a business example, in which the construction of the resort with a scale of 6500 beds was stopped as endangering national park in 1960. In Alberta there are 4 national parks, even some of them are under the auspices of UNESCO as World Heritage, with untouched flora and fauna. When constructing the transcontinental highway for example, overpasses and underpasses were built frequently enough to avoid harm to the forest dwellers, accustomed to roam freely. Not only that, but with discrete videocameras scientists realised, that 9 species pass over the road, and 16 crawl or run under it, enfirming their fame, that they have taught wildlife to safely cross the highway.
Now that is something I have not seen anywhere else except in Canada, and if I had not seen it with my own eyes, I would not have believed it. Nature is an imperative, the alpha and omega of the Canadian beauty and urban culture. Admiration of the greatness of Mother Earth is steeped for generations in the minds and behaviour of the people in the Rockies. Their museums are full of dinosaur bones, a hundred years ago Indians from the people of Sioux roamed these lands. However, as tourism has developed there is no obstacle to sleep in a wigwam or Type, if you enjoy listening to howling coyotes at night and to grizzly bears hunting at day.
On top of that the underground depths of Alberta contain hidden stocks of fuel: crude oil deposits are estimated at 5.5 billion barrels, in the sands under the Athabasca River there are 1.7 billion barrels more crude oil, (which is 5 times more than the Saudi Arabia stocks) and a separate 97 billion cubic meters of natural gas. The confidence of richest Canadian province is lined with investments worth hundreds of millions of dollars of the oil industry of France, Holland, Japan, China and the U.S. for years to come. In the area of Fort MakMari is also concentrated the largest energy project in North America, in which 10.5 billion U.S. dollars were invested. The history of Alberta starts with the train – in the late nineteenth century the railroad made its way west to the Pacific Ocean and crossed something larger than the Klondike. Banff for example was built as a railway station as the stop at the hot springs with sulfur, when it became fashionable to go to to the baths there. So now – in my humble composition I attach like train cars several travel books of the resorts in the Rocky mountains.In the northwestern Canadian province everything starts and ends with the mountains. The Rockies are a huge array, not just scenery, but a base for the climate, history, occupation, wealth. They materialize sense of infinity, freedom, strength and unity of man and the Demiurge. In some invisible way, even deposits of oil are encoded in the national consciousness and psychology of a people whose motto says “I do not ask what they called your father, but what can you yourself do.” Over 50 countries I’ve traveled so far, but I’m already longing to go back to Canada. The plane landed and I returned home a few days later , I realised that I sojourned in more than a fairytale, that I was in something real and different from our monotonous and transitory life, we lead in the rest of the planet. I loved Alberta for a modest personal reason too: I had dreamt to shoot downhill ski run. Without being pro mounted recorder on the helmet, and thanks to modern technology I achieved my dreams as if it were a game. (The breakneck speed of 60-70 km / h now passes for an average, at least I children slide more carefully!). It is here that you will see for the recordings made by the Windsister on the slopes in the Rockies. The memory of them is like salt on the lips after his surfing in the ocean. To fly on Olympic routes and simultaneously shoot remains for me the symbol of true freedom.