A couple of years ago I passed by Wawa in Northern Ontario on my way to Thunder Bay. It is always interesting to see what a town will do to get itself noticed. Wawa is known for its big goose statue right on the side of the TransCanada highway. When I got back home to Ottawa sometime later I compared a photograph of the goose statue to an older postcard photo from Wawa. To my surprise the goose today is not the goose of yesteryear.
I consulted one of my favorite web sites called Big Things in Canada and found out the story of the Dueling Geese.
The current goose is the second goose built for Wawa. It replace the first goose, which had been first erected in 1960, in 1963 because the first goose, made of wire and plaster could not stand the harsh winters of Northern Ontario.
The old goose was put into storage for many years and almost forgotten until it was “rescued ” and placed in front of Fort Friendly. The original goose could talk. If you pressed a button on the stand it would tell you its history.
