Capturing our potential

An ode to Winnipeg and nostalgia

In political campaigns and social movements in particular, it is important to inspire a groundswell of support. This support can be hinged on a volatile issue of values or founded on the basis of sustainability. If you give enough people reason to fear that their values and, by extension, their lives as they know them, are at stake you will be half-way towards accomplishment.

I have recently grown acquainted with the poetry and short stories of Dorothy Parker, the satirical, socially courageous writer and sole female member of the Algonquin Round Table.

The Algonquin Round Table was a group of prominent writers, critics, actors and above all voracious wits that would meet for an early lunch at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City almost every day between 1919 and 1929. They called themselves “The Vicious Circle” and as the hours lengthened and, I imagine, the alcohol began to subdue them, these gentlemen (and lady) entertained themselves by attempting to out-wit one another.

Dorothy Parker’s writing accomplishes what is only achieved by the greatest humorists in that by depicting life, she seamlessly combines a feeling of liberation with the profound misery of fatalism. By accepting that there is no ultimate peace, no final wisdom, we are liberated from the often unfounded notion that everything will turn out right.

The liberation springs from comedy, from irony.

The liberation springs from comedy, from irony.

Upon the death of Parker’s husband (writer Alan Campbell) in 1963, an acquaintance asked if there was anything she needed at such a mournful time. Parker responded: “Get me a new husband.”

The acquaintance expressed some disgust at the audacity of the remark to which Parker sharply said, “So sorry. Then run down to the corner and get me a ham and cheese on rye and tell them to hold the mayo.”

A witticism is judged by its ability to resonate beyond perfunctory laughter. A spontaneous utterance of humour and depth is rare.

I have spent countless hours, aided by long-winded conversation and obscenely expensive drinks, analyzing those rare moments of insight given by the funny and the somber alike. And very few establishments, aesthetically or personally, facilitate my hunger for alcohol and good conversation.

Those that do are all grounded in the cosmopolitan hub of Winnipeg’s downtown.

I firmly believe that every city requires a place that is centralized from the shortsighted aspirations of suburban life and which caters to progressive youth, to sexual and intellectual exploration, and to the old, tired, curmudgeonly misfits of some lost generation. The existence of such a place should not be contingent on whether or not the ideas or experimentation have any practical application. The place should exist for the cerebral and the individualistic, regardless of what the naysayers make of it.

Increasingly, however, downtown Winnipeg is becoming not a place where people live and thrive, but a ghettoized region they are obligated – even scheduled – to visit.

Action on inner city development will happen after, not before, we realize its personal necessity.

The sustainability of the inner city district is tantamount to the sustainability of my intellectual curiosity. I desperately want, therefore, to sustain it.

Ethan Cabel is a University of Winnipeg student.

Published in Volume 63, Number 26 of The Uniter (April 2, 2009)

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