The Idea of Winnipeg

By David Elias

I’ve always been drawn to stories that contain an element of unconditional love. My favourite movie of all time is Lawrence of Arabia, in which Peter O’Toole’s deeply flawed character displays an equally flawed but undeniably unconditional love for the desert. Movies are one thing, but real places present a greater challenge.  I live in Winnipeg, after all, a city not easy to love at the best of times and many would say not worthy of it.

People who live just about anywhere else are eager to kick the place around if only because it’s such an easy target. It doesn’t take much imagination.  Start with cold, go to mosquitoes, then on to isolation or flat or boring and in no time:  voila!

I grant that in some respects the city is far from praiseworthy, and yet I can say without reservation that I love it unconditionally. I do so for the simple reason that it’s really the only way I can love it. It’s not a place you want to set conditions on.  Something about it transcends individual particulars. The best and worst of them could disappear and my sentiments would remain undiminished. Those who leave here and harken back (always quick to add that they have no intention of ever returning) do so out of longing, not for the place itself, but idea of it.

The idea of Winnipeg involves a maddening paradox that goes something like this: The thing that keeps me here is precisely the thing that, from time to time, compels me to get out. This idea is brought home brilliantly in Guy Madden’s movie My Winnipeg, in which his character teeters on the edge of consciousness while the wonky train transports him out of the city. I can never make up my mind whether the poor man is struggling to wake up or stay asleep but either way, it seems his only hope for escape is to be literally carried out. Clarity will only come with separation.  The Weakerthans express the same paradox in One Great City, where the lyrics trip and fall into each other as they vow simultaneous love and hatred for the city.

Part of it has to do with expectations. There are certain cities I’m almost expected to love unconditionally, perhaps Paris or Rome, but name something I’m supposed to feel strongly about and I’ll do my best to manage the opposite, just on principle. It could be almost anything but usually it’s something politically correct like feminism, recycling, or the fight against global warming. The reason I don’t love them is precisely because I’m supposed to. Don’t tell me what to love.

Just as the default reaction to some locations is supposed to be one of warmth and affection, the very mention of Winnipeg brings an expectation of the opposite.  There’s a sense of entitlement to denigrating the place.  Now I’m all in favour of unconditional hate and my own list includes things like boredom, bullies, and cancer.  I don’t know that I’ve ever actually told anyone out loud to go $%^& themselves, but if I ever met cancer walking down the street I would give it an earful.  The Black Plague, on the other hand, could just as well keep walking, but it gets a free pass only because I’m supposed to hate it.  Don’t tell me what to hate.

It’s possible to make a strong case for my feelings toward the city as delusional.  Look no further than the Seinfeld parents who think their ugly baby is “breathtaking”, or that young woman on You Tube languishing on a sprawling bed (structurally reinforced, I have to believe ), surrounded on all sides by enormous discoloured rolls of her own undulating cellulite, who nevertheless describes herself as “pretty.”  I’m caught between admiration and pity, unable to decide whether holding on to such an idea does her more harm than good.  She seems to have entirely separated her hideous body from her “self”, as if it were something “over there”.  Winnipeg has no such pretentions.  Notwithstanding things like the marvelous turn-of-the-century architecture of the exchange district or the stunning beauty of the Museum of Human Rights, it’s never been about looks.  Leave that to places like Vancouver or Toronto.

I like to entertain the possibility that the idea of Winnipeg exists beyond criticism in the same way my affection for it does.  There’s a certain aspect of the sacred to the idea of unconditional love, that to question it or speak openly against it amounts to a kind of a blasphemy, but let me risk a brief transgression.  Imagine the Bible story of poor Isaac at the altar, about to sacrifice his son, Abraham.  Now imagine that as the action unfolds the angel of God does not appear and stop Isaac just before he brings the knife down.  Then what happens?  He murders his boy and goes back to herding sheep.  That doesn’t really work, does it?  Without that last minute intervention it’s not much of a story.  It only works if he doesn’t actually act on his belief.  This is precisely the story of how to stay in Winnipeg.

When something good happens here it is intensified by the city’s pale underbelly.  A recent incarnation of this occurred with the return of the Jets.  The display of unadulterated joy that burst forth when the team took to the ice that first game back was born of suffering, which forged the celebration into something so sweet and pure the entire country, the continent (and even beyond) sat up and took notice.  Something was going on here that people hardly ever got to see.  What was it all about?  Well, it was about the idea of Winnipeg, that’s what.

Perhaps the place exists, beyond love or hate, in the same way as some other things that have always just been there.  A few that come to mind for me personally are the national anthem of Great Britain, unrest in the Middle East, and Cheez Whiz.  When I was growing up in a farming community in southern Manitoba we sang “God Save The Queen” at the end of every school day.  Not once did I ever get to sing the words, “God save our gracious King”.  I always thought day would come when they would have to change the words.  Then there’s the Middle East, on the verge (or in the middle) of open conflict and chaos for as long as I’ve been alive.  A quagmire of impenetrable antagonism, endlessly open to discussion, impervious to resolution.  And lastly Cheez Whiz, the familiar orange goo that is still only a molecule away from being plastic.  It doesn’t matter that you hate it or love it.  It’s not going away.  Come to think of it there’s always been something about the monarchy (durable, corrosion resistant, and spectacularly dull) that’s vaguely plastic.  The point is, in all three cases the same question arises:  What is there left to feel?

The city has always had a maddening way of insinuating itself into some of the deeper and often unguarded regions of my consciousness without my realizing it, which means the serious and repeated contemplation of leaving is a prerequisite to any hope of staying.  It requires an incarnation of space, real or imagined, that must be maintained, and within which various constructions and demolitions must constantly take place.  I think of it as a variation on the idea of writers who go to live elsewhere, often for years, before they find themselves writing the book about home that has been brewing inside them all along.

Lastly I will insist that if I’m conflicted, if I’m committed to indecision, it is not the same as being resigned.  I have come to think of Winnipeg as a life-long project, a place to work on as much as in, as an idea to aspire to and run from all in the same breath, all in the same moment – at least for the time being.