Larger than life

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 09/02/2019 (2621 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We can only hope cooler heads will prevail.

For those of you who have spent the past few weeks hiding in a drainpipe, we are referring here to the heated war of words between Canada and Norway over an extremely sensitive issue — which country has the largest moose sculpture.

For 34 years, Moose Jaw’s legendary Mac the Moose, standing 9.8 metres tall, was the undisputed world champion, but he was knocked off his pedestal when a polished stainless steel moose, just 30 centimetres taller, was unveiled in the Norwegian town of Stor-Elvdal.

Unwilling to give up the title, Moose Jaw Mayor Fraser Tolmie — who has dismissed Norway’s statue as a giant hood ornament — launched a fundraising campaign that has so far raised more than $37,000 to give Mac a leg up, so to speak.

Among the ideas floated for raising Mac’s height are skates for his hoofs, a stylish Mountie hat, a larger set of antlers and even stilettos.

Last week, however, Stor-Elvdal’s deputy mayor, Linda Otnes Henriksen, revealed she is hoping to visit Saskatchewan to discuss a possible Moose Truce, because her town doesn’t have the cash to keep building bigger sculptures.

“Maybe, you know, we could get out of this by making the moose the same height,” she told The Canadian Press.

But Moose Jaw’s mayor vows to fight on, which makes this the perfect time to gaze in awe at today’s towering list of Five of the Biggest Battles over Gigantic Roadside Attractions:

5) The awesome attraction: The world’s largest garden gnome

And the title goes to: Why would anyone want a garden gnome tall enough to block out the sun? We don’t know and, truthfully, we don’t care, but the race to construct the world’s biggest gnome has been going on for decades.

The first to hold the world title was “Gnome Chomsky,” a concrete monster more than 13 feet tall erected in Kerhonkson, N.Y., in front of a 10-hole miniature golf course on the 100-acre Kelder’s Farm. According to enchantedamerica.wordpress.com, Manhattan artist Maria Reidelbach created Gnome Chomsky in 2006 to nab a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. Chomsky reigned supreme until being supplanted in 2010 by “Elwood,” a 15-foot-tall, 3,500-pound gnome installed in the Reiman Gardens of Iowa State University in Ames, Iowa. Elwood was knocked off his perch when a 17.7-foot fibreglass rival was raised in Noma Sol, Poland. Who’s the current king of the gnomes? Prepare to feel a burst of national pride because, according to the website of the Guinness Book of World Records, the world’s tallest garden gnome makes its home on Vancouver Island in the community of Nanoose Bay.

For the record, “Howard the Gnome” stands a whopping 25 feet 11 inches tall. “The towering gnome… was built in 1998 by Ron Hale for a junk art show and soon became the mascot for a go-cart track which Hale operated. Hale has since sold the property. An Esso gas station resides there today,” enchantedamerica.com notes. “The gnome was constructed from scrap metal lying about his garage and other bits and pieces he gathered from the nearby mill in Port Alberni.” Howard was recognized as No. 1 in 2012 after the Esso station manager provided official documentation.

 

4) The awesome attraction: The world’s largest frying pan

And the title goes to: We can’t believe we are about to say this, but the fight to be home to the world’s largest frying pan is pretty… um… heated.

“You’d think it’d be a simple thing to identify the world’s largest frying pan, but there are six in the United States alone that make that audacious claim,” a 2010 article on villagevoice.com notes. For instance, Wilmington, Del., claims to have “the World’s Largest Chicken Frying Pan,” while Pittsfield, Maine, prides itself for having “the World’s Largest Non-stick Frying Pan,” while London, Ky., home of the World Chicken Festival, has a whopper, but in all honesty, it’s really a huge deep fryer. The winner? Well, it kind of depends on how you measure. In Brandon — sorry, we’re talking about the one in Iowa — they have a hefty skillet that is 14 feet long (with handle) and more than nine feet from rim to rim. “Built in 2004 for the town’s Cowboy Breakfast Festival, the skillet could fry 44 dozen eggs or 88 pounds of bacon,” the travel website roadsideamerica.com notes. Long Beach, Wash., claims its frying pan — 14 feet long (with handle) and nine feet six inches across — is the biggest in the world. “It is a replica of an oversized metal pan that was once made so a woman could strap bacon to her feet and skate across it,” notes the website of online travel magazine Atlas Obscura. “No longer operational, Long Beach’s frying pan serves as a nice photo backdrop for families who couldn’t get a decent picture in front of the Alligator Man across the street at Marsh’s Free Museum.”

Technically, the biggest skillet is found in Rose Hill, N.C. Fifteen feet in diameter, it weights two tons, holds more than 750 litres of oil and can fry 365 chickens at a time. But roadsideamerica.com warns it’s “less visually satisfying” than retired pans on public display, because it’s tucked away in a gazebo and frequently boarded up.

 

3) The awesome attraction: The world’s largest lobster

And the title goes to: When it comes to mammoth tourist attractions, it’s all in how you measure. Is it the tallest? The widest? The heaviest?

Consider the heavyweight battle for the title of World’s Largest Lobster Statue, for example. In 1980, sculptor Richard Blaze started work on “Betsy,” a giant replica of a Florida Spiny Lobster. It took him five years to complete this 30-foot-high and 40-foot-long creature, which is now parked in front of a Florida artisan’s village in Islamorada. “Believed to be the world’s largest lobster sculpture, she is one of America’s most famous roadside attractions. The 12-legged lobster is the second-most-photographed attraction in the Florida Keys, only behind the Southernmost Point in Key West,” the Islamorada Times notes.

How heavy is Betsy? No one seems to know, but she is not 90 tonnes, which is what the huge attraction in Shediac, N.B., tips the scales at. Sculpted in 1989 by artist Winston Bronnum, the fibreglass statue is 36 feet long and 16 feet tall, with a life-size bearded fisherman in its claws. “Why is it called the World’s Largest Lobster? Because the sculpture weighs around 90 tonnes; the lobster alone weighs 55 tonnes while the pedestal weighs around 35 tonnes,” the website of Tourism New Brunswick gushes.

Meanwhile, for the past 40 years, “Larry the Lobster” has stood guard over the small town of Kingston in South Australia. A fibreglass-on-steel statue, Larry is 56 feet high, 50 feet long and 45 feet wide. On the other hand, he weights a paltry four tonnes, meaning he’d be crushed flatter than a pancake if you dropped Shediac’s lobster on him.

In 2015, the Chinese city of Qianjiang in Hubei province believed it took the crown when it unveiled a 49-foot-tall, 59-foot-long, 100-tonne statue for its annual lobster festival. The problem? Qianjiang’s statue is clearly a crayfish — a freshwater cousin of the lobster, but not an actual lobster — so they may have the world’s largest crustacean monument, but we are giving the lobster bib to Shediac.

 

2) The awesome attraction: The world’s largest fire hydrant

And the title goes to: We hate to brag, but Manitoba is no stranger to gigantic roadside attractions. You’ve got your world’s tallest painting on an easel in Altona, your world’s largest curling rock in Arborg, not to mention Tommy the Giant Turtle in Boissevain and that humongous mosquito in Komarno.

In July 2001, on Canada Day, the town of Elm Creek, located about 50 kilometres west of Winnipeg, threw its hat into the ring for a highly coveted title — home to the world’s largest fire hydrant. Built over the course of seven months by volunteer firefighters, Elm Creek’s huge red plug is an impressive 29.5 feet tall.

That was the day Manitoba stole the crown from Beaumont, Texas, home to a 24-foot-tall hydrant that was built by Walt Disney’s home video division to promote the re-release of 101 Dalmatians. Its black-and-white spotted hydrant, displayed in the Fire Museum of Texas, weighs 4,500 pounds and can blast more than 5,600 litres of water a minute. The town has cleverly rebranded its attraction as “the World’s Largest Working Fire Hydrant.”

For sheer size, however, you have to hand the crown to Columbia, S.C., which is home to a 39-foot-tall steel fire hydrant. This hydrant was created by local artist Blue Sky (formerly Warren Edward Johnson) and unveiled on Feb. 18, 2001, although it took awhile to get measured for the official title. Blue Sky was reportedly inspired when a car hit a hydrant in his yard, causing the hydrant to lean. “Almost 40 feet tall, weighing 675,000 pounds, the fireplug was built to withstand a direct hit from a tornado, and purposefully over-scaled to dwarf other claimants to the world’s-largest title,” according to roadsideamerica.com. “The hydrant is designed to look tilted and broken, as if it had been knocked cockeyed by a giant truck.” At least our hydrant stands up straight.

 

1) The awesome attraction: The world’s largest chair

And the title goes to: There are a lot of roadside attractions competing to be the largest, but arguably no race is as intense as the one to decide who has the world’s biggest chair. “The battle of the largest chair may be the most contested competition in all of roadside attraction history. Countless giant chairs have been created all over the world, as both attractions and pieces of carpenters’ showmanship,” online magazine Atlas Obscura notes. Adds roadsideamerica.com: “In a nation where more and more jobs have shifted to sitting, it makes sense that America recognizes the necessity of big chairs as high-profile landmarks.”

The first shot in the battle for the title was reportedly fired in 1905, when Gardner, Mass., erected a 12-foot Mission chair. Ever since, it’s been a constant game of one-upsmanship. Around the world, different communities lay claim to having the world’s biggest upholstered chair, or Adirondack chair or office chair or… well, you get the picture.

You’ll be glad to hear that Manitoba has a reasonably large chair, one that pays a silent tribute to the “Wavers of Brokenhead.” The chair, about 6.5 feet tall and five feet wide, sits near the community of Scanterbury on the Brokenhead Ojibwa Reserve, marking the site where brothers Nelson and James Starr stood or sat in lawn chairs on the side of the road, waving at people passing by for more than 20 years.

For a while, Manzano, Italy, was home to the world’s largest chair, a 65-footer in a traffic circle. But, as Atlas Obscura notes: “The fight for the title of the world’s largest chair is a competitive one… Like having the world’s tallest building, having the world’s largest chair tells the world that your town has arrived and is worth something.”

The current king is a giant chair in Lucena, Spain. It’s made of solid laminated pine and houses a meeting room in the seat. “With a height equivalent to an eight-storey building (85 feet tall), the Lucena giant chair just edges out its German competition. It weighs 120,000 kilograms and uses 230 cubic metres of timber (which could make roughly 9,200 normal seats). The giant chair… stands outside of, where else, a chair factory.” But, hey, there’s no time to sit on your laurels in the quest to be the biggest.

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca