In the National Post, Lorne Gunter has a bit of fun with the notion of what kind of attractions to put in a theme park celebrating Confederation:
“It’s easy to mock Preston Manning’s idea for a Confederation Theme Park … for starters, it’s somewhat odd to see the pro-small-government, West-wants-in Reform Party founder to be proposing a large government expenditure on a historically slanted amusement park to be located, of all places, in Ottawa.”
So said the Ottawa Citizen’s Mark Sutcliffe — two years ago!
It’s still easy to mock.
Although ultimately endorsing Mr. Manning’s idea (in his own altered form), Sutcliffe called the project “Epcot Centre on the Ottawa River,” a dig at the multinational exposition at Disney World in Orlando, Fla. (The one lasting impression I have of Epcot is that every pavilion was tedious and getting from one to the other required a lot of uncomfortable, fruitless walking. Hey, maybe that would be a good blueprint for a celebration of Confederation after all.)
Sutcliffe had his own satirical ideas of what rides a Confederation Park might offer. There could be “Universal (Health Care) Studios” and the “Sovereignty Movement Roller Coaster” that soared to the same dizzying highs and plunged to the same gut-turning lows as Quebec nationalism has experienced over the past 40 years. Patrons could also “board the Avro Arrow as it sits on the runway and never takes off!”
[. . .]
Imagine the joy on tots faces when Mom and Dad tell them that instead of going to central Florida for Pirates of the Caribbean, It’s a Small World (gad, I still have that cloying song stuck in my head), Space Mountain, Splash Mountain and Typhoon Lagoon, they’ll be heading to Ottawa in February to watch an animatronic debate between robot John A. Macdonald and robot Joseph Howe over the British North America Act’s division of federal and provincial powers at the authentic recreation of Charlottetown’s Founders’ Hall at the PEI display.
Then there’ll be a ride on the Drop of Western Alienation Doom; the Endless Trip to the Sovereignty-Association Dentist (sponsored by “money and the ethnic vote”); the Constitutional Reform Merry-go-round (also dubbed the Canada Round); topped off by the Centre-of-the-Universe Centrifuge where riders strap themselves into cars resembling Canada’s regions and the entire contraption revolves around Toronto.
