Big Art, Big Smiles

Planning a summer road trip through the Prairies? It’s hard to miss this homespun art.

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After driving for hours alongside rolling wheat fields, a ghostly shape rises against the horizon, billowing like a cumulus cloud. As I approach, the huge structure becomes solid but no less surreal. This apparition in Macklin, Sask., near the Alberta border, is The World’s Largest Bunnock. 

That’s bunnock – not bannock. So, it refers not to puffy fried bread, but a game that’s played with the ankle bones of horses. Comparable to horseshoes, the pastime was brought to Canada by German-Russian immigrants more than a century ago. And, it has fallen to Macklin, with a population of about 1,200, to host the world championships, a source of hometown pride. The statue is an equine ankle bone, enlarged 98 times its actual size.

This idiosyncratic roadside attraction is just one of hundreds of gigantic monuments across the Prairies that portray everything from a mosquito and a fire hydrant to a sausage and a Ukrainian Easter egg. They attract carloads of tourists who take quirky snapshots to post on social media and then pick up coffee or ice cream, bolstering small-town economies. This year, I am one of them, making my way from my home in Edmonton, along the backroads of Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

As an artist whose practice centres on community art, I’m fascinated by the populist appeal of these monuments. How did they become a thing? Who made them? How are the themes chosen? But, most of all, despite my love of highbrow art, why do they make me smile? 

As it turns out, my smile is welcome. Kim Gartner, Macklin’s chief administrative officer, is used to jokes about the giant bunnock, built in 1994 with chicken wire, metal rods and fibreglass by taxidermist Ralph Berg on his farm in Cabri, Sask. About three storeys in height, it is spacious enough to house a tourist office. Gartner says locals joke that the monument resembles a voluptuous woman, particularly with its suggestively located entrance.

The Prairie gargantuans I encounter on my road trip seem thrilling after traversing long stretches of flat land that boasts little taller than barns or silos. The incongruity of their scale and location is one source of delight. For instance, Giant Mosquito was designed by artist Marlene Magnusson Hourd for the community of Komarno, with its few scattered houses and one store, about an hour’s drive north of Winnipeg. The mosquito, when I finally spot it, overlooks wide-open prairie. There’s a certain insider humour at play. Komarno is surrounded by lakes and bogs, which led local residents to joke about living in the mosquito capital of the world. The region’s tourist association invites visitors to “come see this big critter and give him a swat!” But the full scope of the gag is particularly rich for those who speak Ukrainian – komarno means mosquito infested.

Prairie monuments are linked to the growth of the North American highway network and the burgeoning car culture of the mid-20th century. Communities wanted something unique to bring attention to themselves, and small-town rivalries probably fed the impulse. The inception of Guinness World Records in 1955 spurred competitions for the world’s largest objects, generating more interest. From Australia’s largest mango to China’s kissing dinosaurs, unusual monuments started sprouting up around the globe. 

In the late 1970s, around the time old grain elevators were being demolished on the Prairies, large monuments proliferated in startling numbers. A reliable count is difficult to ascertain, but Large Roadside Attractions of Canada, a website started by afficionado Ed Solonyka, lists more than 200 sites in Alberta alone. Roadside attractions fall outside the interests of most historians so accurate information can be hard to find. One line of inquiry – pestering small-town mayors for information – didn’t prove fruitful. I discovered that reliable facts about such structures are easily lost over the decades. 

Kyler Zeleny is a fourth-generation member of a Ukrainian-heritage family business, Stawnichy’s Meat Processing, which erected the World’s Largest Sausage in Mundare, Alta. He points to the promotional benefits of such monuments. Businesses can get worldwide exposure: search “giant sausage” online and up pop Mundare and Stawnichy’s. The fact that a 42-foot sausage is comical, even raunchy from certain angles, doesn’t bother Zeleny. “Food is heritage, culture and something communal we share,” he says. “What do we do when we share meals? We have a good time. We laugh and joke. So that’s part of it.”

Not every monument is funny. An aura of reverence is perceptible when I visit a park in Vegreville, Alta., that displays a giant pysanka, a Ukrainian Easter egg. Even children from the van parked next to me approach in silence. This monument, one of the earliest on the Prairies, was commissioned in 1973 by the Vegreville Chamber of Commerce. Funding was available to mark the centennial of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police so a statue of a Mountie on horseback was first suggested. But many residents in this community, an hour’s drive east of Edmonton, trace their roots to Ukraine, and the idea of displaying a pysanka won their hearts. Somehow, it was built instead.

Paul Sembaliuk, an Edmonton graphic designer, was hired to lead the project. His daughter, Larisa Sembaliuk Cheladyn, a scholar of Ukrainian-Canadian culture, says her father wanted the monument to connect with local residents. She believes the pysanka became an outlet for ethnic pride, helping offset various traumas, including the internment of Ukrainian immigrants during the First World War and punishments meted out to children who spoke Ukrainian at school.

Who actually built the different Prairie monuments? It varies. Often it is local folks with tools and a can-do attitude. A fire hydrant in Elm Creek, Man., a glowing red beacon visible for miles, was built by volunteer firefighters. By contrast, Northern Pike, installed in 2020 in Rochon Sands, a village in central Alberta, was constructed by a specialized company, Dinosaur Valley Studios, with a skill set that includes designing movie props and sets.

While rural monuments offer a potential revenue stream for artists, the lack of professional protocols, like peer juries, could be a disincentive for some. There’s also an identity issue – are these projects art or kitsch? Winnipeg artist and consultant Cameron Cross, who mounted his Vincent van Gogh-style sunflower painting on a 76-foot steel easel in Altona, Man., and then gave media interviews about conceptual art, found his work was often treated as a roadside attraction, not art. Instead of losing sleep, Cross rethought his attitude. If one of Swedish-American artist Claes Oldenburg’s renowned works, such as Saw, Sawing, had been set on the Prairies, instead of in Tokyo, he thinks it would also be seen as a roadside attraction. “If it’s placed in a small town, it’s got to be kitsch,” he says. “If it’s in a city, it’s humour.” 

As I pursue my Prairie adventure, his words echo in my mind. It’s okay, I decide, to embrace different modes of creativity. That doesn’t mean all monuments are magnificent art. It’s not as if Pinto MacBean: World’s Largest Pinto Bean, in Bow Island, Alta., could ­– or should – aspire to appear in an art gallery. But this is also a two-way street – some artists draw inspiration from these homespun monuments, like Alberta artist Jude Griebel, whose fondness for models often plays out via humorous shifts in scale.  

Clearly, there’s something to learn here. The ability to smile and jest is undervalued in the art world. In turbulent times, laughter is necessary. And, under the open skies of the Prairies, big brash monuments confidently point the way. ■

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