MUNDARE, ALTA. — The beavers in Canada, it turns out, aren’t thrilled about being shown up in their own backyard.

“Big” is one of those words that gets pinned on Canada often, along with bigger and biggest; large, larger and largest; as well as gigantic, humongous and “That’s skookum, eh?”

There is a logic to it. The country is the second largest on the planet (behind Russia), and at just 3.3 people per square mile, Canada ranks in general population sparsity with the likes of Australia, Libya, Namibia and Iceland (and, apparently, a British Petroleum shareholders meeting). Fewer people, more room: Makes it seem even bigger.

Alberta — a place so sprawling that it was a natural stand-in for Wyoming and Montana in “Brokeback Mountain” — is about 20 per cent larger than France, but has a population (3.7 million) less than Los Angeles.

Not surprisingly, Alberta has a disproportionate wealth of biggest objects. The specific items that Alberta’s citizens decided to build oversized versions of, however, might seem a little surprising.

A leisurely trek across the province might bring you face to face with the world’s largest oil lamp in Donalda, the largest wagon wheel and pick in Fort Assiniboine, and the largest softball in Chavin. On the entire planet no objects fitting those descriptions are larger.

There’s even a song by a Ukrainian Canadian folk-fusion band, the Kubasonics, called “Giants of the Prairie,” an ode to oversized landmarks throughout Alberta and neighbouring provinces, including a verse about the massive garlic sausage in Mundare.

“Now in Mundare, Alberta there’s a new totemic sign,

“For Ukrainian sausage lovers, it’s like a sacred shrine.

“We bow down low before it, we gaze at it in awe,

“It’s a 14-metre fibreglass and steel kubasa (kielbasa).”

Alberta’s giants are not without controversy: The town of Falher claims the World’s Largest Bee — a monument about the size of a compact car — although the folks in Tisdale, Sask., claim the World’s Largest Honey Bee, a 5.5-metre-long monster ideally situated around the corner from Canada’s largest 7-Eleven (which might be home to the world’s largest Big Gulp).

It’s fair to say that Alberta is a bit fixated about the size and ranking of things — not unlike the majority of travellers. Almost any list of the world’s 10 most notable or popular attractions probably includes two or three that are the planet’s biggest — the London Eye, St. Peter’s Basilica, the Grand Canyon, the Great Wall of China.

The drive to build the largest of anything is a common theme in history, although in big cities, the superlative is typically reserved for structures and civic projects. But in small towns, the obsession gets murky. Is the world’s largest badminton racket (in St. Albert, Alta.) a type of civil mascot meant to bolster small-town pride, or a blatant and crass attempt at siphoning tourism dollars from other popular badminton destinations?

My only memorable experience with small-town giants was the “Big Galah” in Kimba, South Australia, where the 7-metre statue of an orange-and-grey cockatoo marks the halfway point of Australia’s cross-continental road. (Of course, it also helps bring visitors into the Halfway Across Australia Tourist Gift Shop, where the winged giant “nests” in the parking lot.)

The bird’s record-setting mass and disarmingly silly grin forced my wife and me to — beyond all reason — take our picture with it. (Tip: wide-angle lens.)

Theoretically, Alberta has enough giant statues (and few enough side streets) that you might be able to use those for navigation.

“Goin’ to Bow Island, eh? Take this road from the world’s largest mallard duck (in Andrew) past the turnoff for the world’s largest Ukrainian Easter egg (Vegreville) and keep south, past the signs for the world’s largest dinosaur (in Drumheller) to a right turn at the world’s largest golf putter and you’re there.”

Whatever the real reason for the oversized obsession the trend is not lost on Mother Nature and the beavers of northern Alberta.

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Within the same province as the world’s largest statue of a beaver (in Beaver Lodge, Alta. — yes, really), naturalists announced in April that they’ve located a beaver dam so big that it can be seen from space. The beaver mega-metropolis is nearly a kilometre long, almost the length of nine football fields. It almost seems like the beaver community is mocking the human-made 8.5-metre-long statue.

The obvious question: Why did it take so long for anyone to notice something that big?

Seriously, it’s a pretty big place.

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