Something amazing happened the other day. Something more amazing than rhubarb pie or a mosquito-free day in summertime. Winnipeg was in the news! It wasn't a big headline, and it wasn't on the front page, but spotting the words "growth" and "Winnipeg" in the same sentence of a major Canadian newsmagazine was enough to make me flip straight to the article.
But before I was able to grasp the whole headline, I was distracted by the featured photo. It told the quaint little story of a photographer - lets call him/her Terry Ontario, or T.O. for short - who took to the streets one dull, dirty, late-winter mid-afternoon and knelt down at a Portage Avenue meridian just before the gleaming CanWest and Trizec towers. The photographer snapped a shot of a decades-old rusted jalopy pausing its turn for a pedestrian crossing the street. A precariously unhappy, slouched-over pedestrian carrying grocery bags and garbage. So it wasn't the most positive picture. But what about the headline? My eyes drifted up to read Winnipeg Faces Exodus Despite Growth.
But what about our renaissance? What about the MTS Centre? The Hydro tower? Condos in the exchange! And Rudy Giuliani! Surely we took a cue from the American hero himself! Why are we still going wrong?
Because it's cover-up. It's nice make-up. It's window dressing. And, Mr. or Ms. Decision-Maker, if that is your real name, while some of these moves make some attempt at restoring a bit of our civic pride, they go little distance in addressing the underlying chronic cultural malaise of this city.
What's that? As Canada is to the United States, Winnipeg is to Toronto or Calgary. We have an inferiority complex. We're insecure. And the things that motivate Winnipeggers to move away are the same things that motivate Canadians to move out of the country. We all seek legitimization.
The exodus of our youth is a great, if not disparaging, indicator of this. We have all the enthusiasm in the world to build this place up, live here and love it. But we know that our credentials will mean nothing until we make it somewhere else first.
That must explain why even our leaders look to the mayor of a city that we have nothing in common with for inspiration. Geographically, culturally, economically, Winnipeg has absolutely nothing in common with New York. Giuliani's cameo does nothing but feature our insecurity. We have institutes of urban studies in our city. We have resources here. Young, intelligent people who are eager to put their skills to use. Why don't we endow them with the experience they need and give them some tiny incentive to stick around?
We're so down on ourselves that we don't believe our own graduates or our own professionals have anything to offer simply because their credentials were earned here! The cure for our insecurity is not just self-congratulations and window dressing -- it's actually believing in our best and brightest.
So while the elites of the city move to a nice new condo behind the concert hall, and while our decision-makers swap self-congratulations, the exodus will continue. Oh, except for one or two. A couple of us so enjoyed dissecting pigs in biology that we were thrilled to hear of the new OlyWest factory. Maybe we'll end up working alongside a few gangsters from the Mad Cows, if only someone would consider pointing them in that direction. But I guess we should leave that to... the police...
The rest of us will take to the oil sands out west, business opportunities in the east, or academic opportunities in the United States or Europe. We'll be settling some extreme, almost implacable frustration.
But before I was able to grasp the whole headline, I was distracted by the featured photo. It told the quaint little story of a photographer - lets call him/her Terry Ontario, or T.O. for short - who took to the streets one dull, dirty, late-winter mid-afternoon and knelt down at a Portage Avenue meridian just before the gleaming CanWest and Trizec towers. The photographer snapped a shot of a decades-old rusted jalopy pausing its turn for a pedestrian crossing the street. A precariously unhappy, slouched-over pedestrian carrying grocery bags and garbage. So it wasn't the most positive picture. But what about the headline? My eyes drifted up to read Winnipeg Faces Exodus Despite Growth.
But what about our renaissance? What about the MTS Centre? The Hydro tower? Condos in the exchange! And Rudy Giuliani! Surely we took a cue from the American hero himself! Why are we still going wrong?
Because it's cover-up. It's nice make-up. It's window dressing. And, Mr. or Ms. Decision-Maker, if that is your real name, while some of these moves make some attempt at restoring a bit of our civic pride, they go little distance in addressing the underlying chronic cultural malaise of this city.
What's that? As Canada is to the United States, Winnipeg is to Toronto or Calgary. We have an inferiority complex. We're insecure. And the things that motivate Winnipeggers to move away are the same things that motivate Canadians to move out of the country. We all seek legitimization.
The exodus of our youth is a great, if not disparaging, indicator of this. We have all the enthusiasm in the world to build this place up, live here and love it. But we know that our credentials will mean nothing until we make it somewhere else first.
That must explain why even our leaders look to the mayor of a city that we have nothing in common with for inspiration. Geographically, culturally, economically, Winnipeg has absolutely nothing in common with New York. Giuliani's cameo does nothing but feature our insecurity. We have institutes of urban studies in our city. We have resources here. Young, intelligent people who are eager to put their skills to use. Why don't we endow them with the experience they need and give them some tiny incentive to stick around?
We're so down on ourselves that we don't believe our own graduates or our own professionals have anything to offer simply because their credentials were earned here! The cure for our insecurity is not just self-congratulations and window dressing -- it's actually believing in our best and brightest.
So while the elites of the city move to a nice new condo behind the concert hall, and while our decision-makers swap self-congratulations, the exodus will continue. Oh, except for one or two. A couple of us so enjoyed dissecting pigs in biology that we were thrilled to hear of the new OlyWest factory. Maybe we'll end up working alongside a few gangsters from the Mad Cows, if only someone would consider pointing them in that direction. But I guess we should leave that to... the police...
The rest of us will take to the oil sands out west, business opportunities in the east, or academic opportunities in the United States or Europe. We'll be settling some extreme, almost implacable frustration.
2 Comments:
Amen! It was so weird moving here from a tiny little town with a "we're just as good as anybody else, and we'll prove it!" attitude, to this crazy city with a chronic inferiority complex. I don't get it! Winnipeg is one of the few Canadian cities that is still affordable to live in, and that could have a lot to offer young people. Instead, like you mentioned, we have to leave this city for a minimum of 2 years in order to be taken seriously. I don't get it! Unless this attitude changes, we will have to leave, because I for one do not want to keep my low-income job just because, even though I have earned an honours degree, I somehow haven't "proved" myself yet, and am not worthy of a better lifestyle. Give me a break. Winnipeg has the reputation of being a service city, and until the changes, the migration will continue.
I love Winnipeg. True it is one of the only city's still home price good. I amgine Sasketwan is pretty good to. I'm also going to be leaving Manitoba to go out west.
To Kelowna, BC. Not for employment our oil fields. For snowboarding, love the mountains. I believe God is guiding me they're. Don't know why we dis are university's.
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