One Great City!

In the summer of 2000 my mother, father and I drove to British Columbia across Canada. One of our stops was a week-long stay in Winnipeg. This was a decent experience at the time, but now that I think back, I can imagine how living in Winnipeg would profoundly impact my life – it would suck. I can vividly remember/imagine the mosquitoes swarming from the swamps around the city, forming a huge hand shape, picking me up, carrying me back to their lair, and sucking me dry. I was in Winnipeg during summer. Summer is, I have heard, the best season in Winnipeg.

Ideas of place, positive and negative, have been floating around in my head since Steve told me about a course he was taking with Dr. Bartholomew: A Christian View of Place. My favourite places in the world are camp, and a soccer field that is often on my way home, where I can sit under the mulberry tree and pray. I shouldn't speak of my least favourite places, for fear of offending someone, but I can post the lyrics of an interesting song by The Weakerthans, a band from Winnipeg. (N.B. the correct spelling of “grey.”)

One Great City!

Late afternoon another day is nearly done
A darker grey is breaking through a lighter one
A thousand sharpened elbows in the underground
That hollow hurried sound of feet on polished floor
And in the dollar store the clerk is closing up
And counting loonies trying not to say
I hate Winnipeg

The driver checks the mirror seven minutes late
Crowded riders' restlessness enunciates
The Guess Who suck, the Jets were lousy anyway
The same mood every day
And in the turning lane
Someone's stalled again
He's talking to himself
And hears the price of gas repeat his phrase
I hate Winnipeg

Up above us all,
Leaning into sky
Our golden business boy
Will watch the north end die
And sing 'I love this town'
Then let his arching wrecking ball proclaim:
"I...hate...Winnipeg"

The Weakerthans express something to me in this song that deserves explanation to the wider world. “One Great City!” sticks out on “Reconstruction Site” because of it's ballad form, which differs from the four chord rock format they side with on the rest of the album. One thought immediately struck me as I listened to the album: This song is encore material. I can picture them rocking out in small clubs in Winnipeg while they gained a reputation, playing all their radio-friendly pop-rock, settling down with an acoustic guitar for the encore, and starting into... “One Great City!” I can picture the working people of Manitoba, having drunk themselves into a state where they can enjoy their surroundings, being a bit confused and perplexed as to what to do. They have spent their whole life in Winnipeg, raised their families there, laughed and cried and bled there, and have done their best to make the most of the situation. But as the band comes into the chorus, the tipsy crowd sings along with gusto: “I hate Winnipeg!” Deep in their heart, they know that Winnipeg is everything to them, and yet, by focussing on the facts of their situation, they are one in their hatred of their surroundings. Because of the effort it takes to live there, they know Winnipeg is home, and yet with the band playing, their emotions high from the rock show, and with their friends and colleagues, they raise the chorus high: “I hate Winnipeg!” The song addresses the only reason for anyone to love Winnipeg: to destroy it. (Please understand that “Winnipeg” is becoming representative of much more than itself in this blurb, in fact, it no longer represents itself at all.) The Golden Boy, the businessman, sings to himself “I love this town” while his wrecking ball proclaims otherwise: “I hate Winnipeg”

This is what life on earth is like. We laugh here, we cry here, we live and die here, and we come to know God here. Everything we learn has come to us here. Although our eyes are fixed on Christ, our eyes are still of earth. Although we long for God's kingdom, and our hearts are on things above, our hearts and our longings are still expressed in terms of earthly things, and they are themselves of earthly stuff. When we are powerfully led to do so, we crucify our flesh, and the things of the sinful world that cling to us. We join the chorus “I hate myself, I take up my cross and I follow You!” Yet, in our hearts we know that we're still of the earthly stuff. We're still waiting to move out of this mosquito-infested town. The only ones who really love the earth are the ones who rape it to make money, and as they proclaim their love for the earth, they actually end up killing it. The great efforts of the earth suck – our only famous band rips off its name from a better one, our hockey team gets bought out and moved to the desert, and everything we do amounts to nothing, because we're foreigners, outsiders, and we're in a place where it's freezing cold for most of the year. This is the great paradox presented by The Weakerthans: We're not where we should be. Sometimes we are where we want to be, because earth is the only thing we know. We can be led to the point where we realize that this place is not enough, that there's got to be something better, and where we sing along in the encore, but we're still stuck.

God, end this. Send your Son back soon, and get us away from the mosquitoes, the failings, the loneliness, the emptiness. We're weary of this place, and we want to come home.