J. EDWARD LES -- Did global banana consumption go down, at least, in the aftermath of this crippling of Alberta’s economy? It did not. It went up.
Imagine if Alberta was famous not for its prodigious oil reserves, but for its banana plantations. It’s a bit difficult to picture banana trees carpeting our northern prairie, but it might have been possible once. Forty million years ago Alberta was a tropical paradise, rich in ferns and fauna. Giant sequoia trees stood watch as dinosaurs roamed. Then the climate changed. Imagine, for the purposes of this essay, if it had not. Imagine that modern-day enterprising Albertans took advantage of the fertile environment to grow bananas. Not just ordinary bananas, but the most succulent and delicious of fruits, and organic to boot. Imagine, further, that this new industry sprouted in a world hopelessly addicted to bananas, global production spiraling ever upward to satisfy the insatiable appetites of banana-mad earthlings. Imagine that, with time, the output of Alberta’s wondrous plantations swelled to 5% of global banana p...