Current location:	Smack Dab in the Middle of the Blue
Current mood:	inconclusive
Current music:	The Weakerthans - "One Great City!"

Those Dreams Have Remained and They've Turned Around
Having spent the past couple of Canada Days dwelling on fictional Canadian pop stars and Heritage Minutes, I find myself thinking more this year about the vagaries of Winnipeg's specific identity...

Canadians are a needy lot to begin with, constantly depending on external validation to justify their own existence. A Canadian can achieve any form of success you can think of, but they haven't really made it until they've achieved that success elsewhere--usually in the United States.

We celebrate our actors and musicians only when they become American successes, and hold up our authors higher once they're noticed internationally (and often hold up authors as our own when they've moved here from elsewhere, or conversely have left Canada years ago). We don't even feel good about our music unless we can get Barack Obama to listen to it, and it turns out that living abroad actually makes you more Canadian. I agree that being worldly is never a bad thing, but the very fact that we have that back-and-forth debate--how much distance from Canada is enough, and how much is too much?--is quintessentially Canadian.

Winnipeg is a microcosm of that paradox.

Those of us in or from The Peg can be fiercely defensive of our city, and yet there's a part of us that never actually feels good until our feelings are backed up by people elsewhere. (Even the President Obama connection persists...hey, did you know the White House playground structure uses parts from a Manitoba company?) We're so desperate to prove that Winnipeg is incredibly cool that we'll compile a video montage of pop culture references just to show we "exist" outside our perimeter:


(What's that? They didn't seek out enough references? Don't worry, the same company made a second montage.)

I really do love living in Winnipeg and having it as my hometown. I like having people visit, especially in the summer, and I've defended my choice to stay here many times as I've watched the Brain Drain continue and others have argued that I should seek out greener pastures myself.

I can't help but wonder sometimes, though, whether I'm just doing that so I don't end up feeling like a townie.

There are certainly frustrations about Winnipeg culture, beyond the stereotypes about the weather. We seem somehow averse to any significant city development that isn't urban sprawl (as easily evidenced by comparing the Winnipeg skyline to the relatively nearby Minneapolis skyline, considering the latter's similarity in metropolitan population). Much like Hill Valley, once the big mall(s) was/were built out in the suburbs, all of the downtown business evaporated, and we've been unable to bring any vitality back to it, despite constant debates about how that might be done.

It must appear strange to outsiders when something that should be universally appealing, like a national museum devoted to human rights, is still met with complaints from some corners, and there are no less than four different unofficial websites devoted to transit issues in Winnipeg because we can't get Rapid Transit off the ground after decades of talking about it. I'm not sure who these people are, but they come out of the woodwork whenever anything at all is proposed in the city--even something as simple as a restaurant patio or the demolition of an unoccupied building--and complain until things either drag on for years or just stall completely, because some Winnipeggers can never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

Things have gotten to the point now that the arrival of IKEA in Winnipeg is a huge news story--probably because we're just so surprised to see something like that actually going forward locally.

Winnipeg often lives in a culture of nostalgia, which is most likely the main reason this tendency crops up time and again. The city clings to the imagined glory days of the past, wanting to recapture that victorious feeling but somehow also feeling like any significant change to our landscape from what came before would take it away. The clash between this imaginary past and what some imagine for our future leads to a weird sort of stasis, even as we flock to YouTube channels devoted to old local television clips and perpetually pine for a return of the NHL to our market.

Remember how awesome we were back then?

Local artists are well aware of these contradictions, and Winnipeg's love/hate relationship with itself, as a lot of art that's about Winnipeg tends to explore these issues. Perhaps the most well-known recent example is Guy Maddin's My Winnipeg, where Maddin literally creates a mythology out of the city's history, but any time Winnipeg plays itself, there's a constant struggle with the past--how to get away from it without letting go, how to reinvent yourself without leaving the city--and all forms of art that come out of here show evidence of these things we can't stand about Winnipeg but feel are intrinsic to our identity.

We're constantly encouraged to speak up and invite people back, all while we talk about these mixed feelings amongst ourselves, with no true resolution in sight.

I'm from here and I have no idea what the answers are, as I struggle with all of these issues myself on a personal level--the lack of anonymity, the inability to get away from your past, the concern that your ambitions can only be fulfilled by moving away, the knowledge that you'll eventually run into your ex at the worst possible moment because there are only ever two degrees of separation around here. Obviously, I'm one of the many people willing to bitch and moan and sing the praises of Winnipeg, all at the same time.

I know that Winnipeg will always be a part of me, but is that really all there is to this city?