This Alberta town is ready for Close Canadian encounters

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The Alberta towns of Banff and St. Paul are suspiciously proximitous.

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Prime Minister Mark Carney hosted a cabinet retreat in the famous Rocky Mountain town at the human heart of the eponymous national park, our busiest, on Sept. 10 and 11.

He hosted the world’s financial power brokers in Toronto on Sept. 14 and 15, announcing on the order of a half trillion dollars worth of new investment in the process.

All of this gave the native of Fort Smith, N.W.T., and former central banker more than enough time to visit St. Paul in the days between, and what’s in St. Paul?

At the end of its useful life.

That could use an injection of foreign capital — really foreign capital.

Really, really, really foreign capital.

Forget the European Union: Canada could be up for membership in the United Federation of Planets.

Built to coincide with Canada’s centennial celebrations in 1967, the pad and attached visitor centre is very much of its time.

It bears the hallmark silhouette of the aspirationally futuristic Gene Roddenberry-inspired original Star Trek series, with sweeping curves and flaking green paint. The gift shop, with its roof modelled after an angular spacecraft, Martian-green glass dome and blinking lights, was added later.

The concrete stairs leading up from the ground cater only to bipedal beings. Quite the assumption.

Likewise, any galaxy-class starships will have to remain in orbit as the pad looks as though it wouldn’t be able to handle more than a shuttlecraft carrying a skeleton “first contact”-capable away team.

The world’s first official UFO landing pad is recognized by the Guinness Book of Records, too, so you can put away your AI misinformation app machine thing. No one is taking this away from St. Paul or its 5,000 (mostly?) human residents.

As Guinness recognizes in the pad’s online entry: “The area under the World’s First UFO Landing Pad was designated international by the Town of St. Paul as a symbol of our faith that mankind will maintain the outer universe free from national wars and strife. That future travel in space will be safe for all intergalactic beings, all visitors from earth or otherwise are welcome to this territory and to the Town of St. Paul.”

The invitation to invest is implied.

As to whether the prime minister has his eye on the sky, his head in the clouds or both, watch this space.

As they say in British Columbia, bring blemflarcks.

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