Kelowna, Kelowna, We Stand on Guard for Thee

I sometimes compare Kelowna, British Columbia to Bend, Oregon, but that's unfair to Kelowna. Like Bend, Kelowna is in a semi-arid high desert surrounded by mountains and water features. They're both expensive to live in; they're both tourist destinations.

But last week, when I devoured heaping bowls of poutine and tried to immerse myself in the Canadian experience, I realized something. Kelowna represents a transcendent departure from my American routine. It is a wholly unique and magical place, and the vexations of modern life dissolve when I cross the glassy Okanagan Lake and head into town.

People are just more chipper in Kelowna than anywhere else. They have good reason to be: the Okanagan Valley is rich in wineries, ski resorts, and clear lakes. I knew all that, and had traveled to Kelowna before to enjoy some of those things, but this time it was different. My buddies Jeff and Jamie and I were determined to get under the skin of a place, to leave the hotel room and really rub elbows in the community.

I realized last summer that the best way to quickly learn about a place is to see local sports. Milwaukee and Chicago came alive with the Brewers, Cubs, and White Sox--baseball is an affordable and thoroughly entertaining "welcome" to any good city. In Kelowna, of course, we had to check out the junior hockey team, the Kelowna Rockets. This was an apotheosis. A hockey game in Canada is like a soccer game in Mexico or a baseball game in Chicago. It is the perfect intersection of intense athletic endeavor and spectator support. The two games we caught were both high-stakes playoff games, and I was enthralled from the first face-off. Hockey, minute-by-minute, is more violent than American football, and yet the athletes exhibit tremendous grace and skill, changing directions on skates without effort or catching pucks sailing high above the ice. The team moved as a unit, a swelling and contracting organism that simultaneously looked angelic and malevolent, gliding to and fro on the pale rink. The first game went into double-overtime. The second game was decided by a goal. Both times, the home team won. And as we watched, transfixed, the locals around us stomped and yelled and embodied the collective exhultations of a Canadian hockey contest. The thundering arena became part of the entertainment, and us three naive Americans, for a few special hours, joined the fun.

Jeff and Jamie and I all went to a Tim Horton's and bought Timbits (doughnut holes) to celebrate the end of game six, when the boys fended off elimination and won one for the good people of Kelowna.

We skied for a few days and wandered around the lake shore. The wind blew cold off the water: the Okanagan Valley still hadn't shaken winter. We wandered the streets of Kelowna and checked out the cycling scene. We ate french fries smothered in cheese and gravy, and watched Sportcenter about hockey.

The indelible image of Kelowna, for me, was a moment on Friday at the H2O Adventure & Fitness Centre. This enormous add-on to the local YMCA/YWCA is the largest indoor water park I'd ever been to, by far, and was a thrilling diversion. The H2O Centre, filled with local swim teams, teenagers, young families, and the requisite old loners, had it all. Three water slides hung suspended, four stories up, over much of the wave pool. A lazy river wound under the slides, and high dives towered from the next pool over. A false wave, built for surfing and boogie boarding, raged along a far wall. Sunlight peered in from distant windows on the ceiling.

We stayed several hours at that community pool, and the indelible image came near the end of our stay, in the lazy river, when I happily lay on my back and floated around gentle curves. I was surrounded by Kelownans of all ages and foam-noodle flotsam, and I remember the water was warm and the air was very bright as the afternoon sun angled just right at the river. In that golden place, I was an ingredient in a weloming Canadian soup, and everything in life became ideal.