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Friday, April 23, 2010, was a big day in Vulcan: Spock was finally coming home.
In truth, it was Leonard Nimoy’s first visit to this Star Trek-crazed town in rural Alberta, Canada. The man best known as “Spock” was greeted by thousands of adoring fans, many of them wearing Vulcan-style pointy ears and Star Trek uniforms. After serving as honorary parade marshal on a starship float, Nimoy unveiled a bust of Spock at the space-themed Vulcan Tourism & Trek Station. “I’ve been a Vulcan for 44 years,” Nimoy told the cheering crowd as he flashed his trademark “Live Long and Prosper” Vulcan salute. “It’s about time I came home.”
 “Leonard has great affection for Vulcan,” says Pat Wisener, owner of the Vulcan Funeral Home and a longstanding member of V.A.S.T. (the Vulcan Association of Science & Trek, which has spearheaded the town’s promotional efforts). “He told me that his childhood home and many around it had been bulldozed in Boston, so he felt orphaned. So once he heard about Vulcan and our ‘Spock Days,’ he had a new hometown—and that coming here in April was like coming home for real.”
Nimoy’s visit is just the latest achievement in a rather strange tale of whimsy, marketing savvy, and attraction management success. The reason: The town that is now known as the “Official Star Trek Capital of Canada” only gained this moneymaking status by out-of-the box thinking, dogged determination, and a sense of humor that won the heart of Nimoy and Star Trek fans from across the globe.
How Vulcan Became Spock’s Hometown
The town of Vulcan, Alberta (population 1,940, up 10 percent from 2001), sits on the flat Canadian Prairie about an hour’s drive from Calgary. It was founded in 1915 and named Vulcan in honor of the Roman god of fire. “At one time, a million bushels of wheat flowed into Vulcan’s towering grain elevators from neighboring farms, and onto passing trains,” Wisener says. But those days are long gone. Only one of the so-called “Prairie Skyscrapers” remains in town, and the town’s business base has been in decline for decades.
 By 1990, things were getting desperate in Vulcan. Businesses were going broke, local schools were closing, and the population was trickling away. In response, the local Chamber of Commerce got together to brainstorm ideas to revive the town’s fortunes. “Some people suggested that we build a heritage museum to attract tourists, but then it was pointed out that every small town seems to have a heritage museum,” says Greg Dietz, owner of Invisible Fence of Western Canada and a founding member of V.A.S.T. “Then someone mentioned how Trekkies liked to have their picture taken by the town’s cement sign that said, ‘Welcome to Vulcan,’” Wisener adds. “That got me to thinking: Maybe there’s a way to work with Vulcan’s link to Star Trek and get people to stop by for Star Trek-themed events here.”
The Vulcan Chamber of Commerce members agreed; perhaps “to boldly go where no Canadian Prairie town had ever gone before” could help generate some tourist dollars. So V.A.S.T. was born, and the quest to turn a dying farm town into Canada’s Star Trek capital began.
“It seemed a natural,” Dietz says. “After all, people who called me from out of town were always saying, ‘You live in Vulcan, eh? So do you have pointy ears?’ And I’d reply, ‘Yeah, so what’s it to ya?’”
Early Days
The decision to turn Vulcan into a Star Trek attraction started slowly, mainly because there was very little money available to fund the project.
“The town and chamber gave us a budget of about $1,000 a year for the first five or six years,” Pat Wisener says. “So we had to use our money very carefully. Some of it went to host celebrity Star trek guests and locally made Star Trek uniforms; others to painting Start Trek-themed murals on buildings in town.”
“I read in the Calgary Herald that a space sci-fi movie was being made locally,” Dietz says. “I got in touch with the reporter who wrote it, in an effort to contact the film’s producers to see if we could buy the props. The reporter was intrigued, and she started asking me questions about Vulcan. The result was that we got a front-page story in the Herald, and things began to take off.”
Stellar Milestones
 In 1993 Vulcan hosted its first Star Trek convention. Branded as Star Trek VulCON, the event attracted Trekkies from all over Alberta. The Star Trek fans wore their uniforms in town, which the locals supported by wearing their uniforms, as well.
Two years later, V.A.S.T. and the town paid a local welder to build a large, accurate replica of the Star Trek Enterprise 1701-A space ship (original movie version). Located at the entrance to town, the FX6-1995-A (FX6 being Vulcan’s airport designation; 1995 being the year the model was built) became a focal point where Star Trek fans could have their pictures taken. “It was something to get people to stop by and perhaps buy some gas or get something to eat,” Wisener says. “And it worked: People came to Vulcan to see the FX6-1995-A, and once they came they did stop in for a while.”
Now that people were stopping, the town needed something to make them stay longer. The answer was the Vulcan Tourism & Trek Station, a building designed to look like a spaceship that has just landed. Here visitors could look at Star Trek displays drawn from local collections, buy Star Trek merchandise from uniformed staff, and be directed to other local highlights such as Vulcan Lions Park (featuring a space-themed waterpark), the 18-hole Vulcan Golf & Country Club, and the Star Trek Walking Tour of Vulcan. This last attraction includes the murals, Vulcan Post Office with a Trek Station postmark, and the Vulcan Cemetary “where, beneath a handsome and unique gravestone carved in the shape of the Starfleet insignia, a Trekker has gone on to explore the next Frontier,” says the tour brochure. (To see the brochure and other Vulcan Star Trek attractions online, warp to www.vulcantourism.com.
As Vulcan increased its Star Trek attractions, it garnered more media attention and more visits by Star Trek fans, including its first Klingon wedding in 2004. Three years later, the town and province of Alberta hired GestureTek Technology to build “The Vulcan Space Adventure,” a dark ride inspired by “Mission: Space” at Walt Disney World’s Epcot. According to www.vulcantourism.com, “Players are cadets at Starflight Academy, where they are tutored by a character who bears a funny resemblance to one of the original Captains of the Starship Enterprise. Starflight Cadets pass through a set of ‘swooshing’ doors, and start the game off in training mode when all of a sudden a RRRRrrrrrred Alert!!!! is called, the Admiral Namuras of the Argon Invasion Fleet attacks, and the fun begins!”
The hook to the game is GestureTek’s control technology: Players can aim and fire torpedoes within a “control frame,” similar to the hand gestures and swoops Tom Cruise employed in the 2002 film “Minority Report.” Since they get to do this within a wraparound spaceship bridge, the “Vulcan Space Adventure” is a big draw for Trekkers. The game has since been reinvented to provide a completely different experience for future guests..
 In 2008, Vulcan scored another first: It unveiled a plaque mounted in a red stone to Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry during VulCON: Spock Days/Galaxyfest weekend, with the honors being done by Eugene “Rod” Roddenberry, Gene’s son and an active force in today’s global Star Trek community. “I very much appreciate this tribute to my father, who would be humbled by the continued popularity of Star Trek in big cities and small towns around the world,” Rod Roddenberry said at the time. The unveiling was a big draw.
In 2009, Vulcan did not succeed in convincing Paramount Pictures to hold the world premiere of J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” film in town, despite Leonard Nimoy’s active lobbying. “We just didn’t have the theater facilities they needed,” says Wisener. “But Paramount was kind enough to host 300 of our residents—chosen by lottery—at a preview screening in Calgary two days before the world launch. And we got a lot of press as a result of this story, which is always good for tourism.”
This brings the story back to Nimoy’s visit to Vulcan in 2010. “Leonard was speaking at the Calgary Comic and Entertainment Expo that weekend, and when he heard that he was within an hour’s drive of Vulcan, he insisted on coming,” Wisener says. “He’s been great to Vulcan. He even lent us his own personal pointy ears to put on display for a year.”
As for Nimoy himself? He was genuinely delighted by Vulcan’s enthusiasm and dedication to Spock, which included the bust unveiling, and then receiving the key to the city—and Vulcan’s transporter coordinates. “Wait ’til Bill Shatner hears about this!” he exclaimed.
The Voyage Continues
Today, V.A.S.T and the people of Vulcan are looking forward to the 2011 tourist season. 2010 was good to them, with an estimated 26,500 visitors coming to this onceignored town. Granted, the road to Star Trek success—the town has even signed a licensing deal with Paramount— has had its bumps. “For instance, we initially paired our Star Trek event with our rodeo weekend,” Wisener says. “That was a mistake: Costume-wearing Trekkers and cowboys just don’t mix.”
As for the future? Both Wisener and Dietz would like to see a Star Trek-themed hotel open up in Vulcan. “Right now, there aren’t many accommodations locally,” Dietz says. “But imagine if we had a Star Trek-themed hotel in Vulcan! That would give us a place for people to stay and have conventions right here. That would be really great for business!”
“All we need is someone with deep pockets,” Wisener adds. “It may seem improbable to dream about such a person opening a Star Trek-themed hotel in small-town Alberta. But hey—no one ever expected us to become the Official Star Trek Capital of Canada, and yet here we are.”
James Careless is an experienced freelance writer with credits at Business Week, NBC News, and NPR. (Despite claims to the contrary, he does not yelp like a terrified beagle on roller coasters— unless they are very fast.)
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