Wordsworkinc's Weblog

The Town of Irricana, Alberta

Last month we made another trip to Saskatchwen.  Beautiful as the prairies can be, the long straight roads and flat countryside can become monotonous after 6 or 7 hours driving so this time we decided to make a few side trips to see places of interest.  I found six places along our route which I thought would be worth visiting on a website called bigthings.ca/alberta.

The first place on our list was Irricana, a little town of approximately 1200 inhabitants just over 50 kilometres from Calgary.  In fact, Irricana was only elevated from village to town status in 2005.  But what an enchanting little town!  The ‘point of interest’ we were after was a metal horse standing in front of the rather run down Irricana Hotel.

The only information I could find on the horse was that it was built of an unknown metal in approximately 1988 or 1989 and was commissioned by a man named Mel Brown who had lived most of his life in Irricana, presumably spent much of his time at the hotel,  and wanted the statue to stand as a memorial to himself.

But Irricana lived up to its slogan: More than just a one horse town.

It was obvious from the little gardens on either side of the road as we turned off the highway that this was a community with a great deal of pride in their town.  We found, and duly admired the metal horse, but it was the fire hydrants which had us driving up one street and down the next, trying to identify as many as we could: Donald Duck, Sylvester, Tweety and many more added more than a touch of whimsy  to the streets.

Eventually we decided to have our breakfast in the little camping area, near a statue of a unicorn, and, having spent an hour at our first stop off point, whittled down our list to avoid reaching Saskatoon after nightfall.

November 24, 2013 - Posted by Words Work Inc | Living in Canada, Travels | Alberta, Day Trips from Calgary, Irricana, Living in Canada, Travels