Roadside Attractions Attract!
Okay, so here’s the follow up on the Ragged Ass Road sign in the Woodworking article. This turns out to have a marvellous and entertaining history, complete with a hero…Lou Rocher… who was a humble and hardworking man, a true Canadian kind of guy who logged, sought minerals, ran a hunting camp and raised a family and who also (naturally) battled the unimaginative louts at City Hall all his life.
He never made much money, but he left a famous legacy with his memorable road sign!
If the sign offends you, you’re probably not reading this anyway, but I thought it was very funny and so had to find out the story…
The now iconic Ragged Ass Road in Yellowknife got its name back in 1970 when Lou and some of his pals were sitting around having a few drinks one evening.
Lou owned 6 of 9 lots on an unnamed road in Yellowknife, and he jokingly said he should call the road Ragged Ass Road because they were all dirt poor at the time….and the name stuck.
Lou began making homemade signs, the town fathers protested in vain, and curious tourists stole the signs as fast as they went up!
Ragged Ass Road is now part of Yellowknife’s lore, musician Tom Cochrane named both an album and a song after it, and Ragged Ass t-shirts and road signs sell briskly to Yellowknife visitors.
Tourists buy fun stuff, and the more entertaining and memorable it is, the more they will buy.
And, following this train of thought, tourists also visit places that feature out of the ordinary attractions, hence the strange but undeniable popularity of big, unusual or just plain weird sculptures.
Canada is absolutely chock full of strange roadside attractions, some more memorable than others, it is true!
We all know that Plaster Rock has big fiddleheads, Shediac has the World’s Biggest Lobster, and, as I discovered, a big rooster as well!
In fact, probably there’s a giant statue of just about anything you can think of out there, animal, mineral, vegetable or extinct critter!
How many people check out the covered bridge in Hartland every year? We here at the Blackfly think Perth-Andover needs to get on the boat and become the home of the world’s largest….well, something!
We have some fun notions, but we thought we’d put the idea out there. What do you, our readers, think?
Imagine the scene in the family car…Dad! Dad! Let’s stop and take our picture with the world’s largest (fill in the blank!)
And, while they’re here, let’s be sure to have plenty of t-shirts, coffee mugs and postcards available as well!
These pictures are just a fraction of what’s out there. Check out this website for a full feast of fun and fabulous Large Canadian Roadside Attractions!
