A few years ago, my friend Scott and I were driving along a gravel road in the foothills southwest of Calgary when he turned up his stereo.

… A darker grey is breaking through a lighter one;
A thousand sharpened elbows in the underground…

“Check out this song, you’re going to love it,” Scott said.

The song was “One Great City” by Winnipeg local sons, The Weakerthans. Knowing I was born in that Prairie town and often spoke of it fondly, Scott started smiling mischievously.

… The Guess Who suck, the Jets were lousy anyway…

I’m sure Scott believed the lyrics, a laundry list of Winnipeg banalities, would be a good and just ribbing for being born in Canada’s answer to Cleveland, the butt of jokes on The Simpsons and The Office.

Hell, even a hip indie rocker knew enough to capture his angst in song.

… And in the turning lane, someone’s stalled again…

Instead of being insulted, I smiled and my eyes stung a little for the nostalgia. I got the joke that Scott missed: it was, and still is, the most beautiful love song written to the city.

And when it plays in bars or at packed Weakerthans shows across Canada, exiled Winnipeggers will link arms, like the Irish when faced with “Danny Boy,” and harmonize over the nasal lament:

… I... hate...Winnipe-e-e-e-g.

And really I can’t blame anyone for not getting the ’Peg. The song’s title was lifted from a tourism slogan for the city, “Winnipeg, One Great City,” that sums up the city’s identity crisis.

As far as I know, the slogan was most often read with an implied question mark. Or maybe an ellipsis. But never, ever with an exclamation mark.

And what made it more confusing was that the “One Great City” branding followed another attempt, “Love Me, Love My Winnipeg”—which had an unsteady edge to it, like a girlfriend demanding, “Love me, love my stuffed unicorn collection.”

Stuck halfway between the established success and stability of the East and the West’s youthful potential, Winnipeg had become Canada’s Jan Brady, the desperate middle child in need of its own voice.    

I’m thinking about this as I wander along the banks of the Assiniboine River in downtown Winnipeg. With the fragrance of lilacs hanging on the humid afternoon air like a sheer curtain, it seems my birthplace’s identity is simply defined, as it always has been, by the brown-red waterways that run through it, capillary-like.

Winnipeg, like the Red and Assiniboine rivers, can be compared to a heroine in a Chekov story: steady, slow-moving, capable of outlandish spectacle (or danger) and slow in revealing her heart.

Coming Home to Winnipeg

I’ve been enticed back to check out the Manitoba Homecoming 2010 celebrations. With the province turning 140 (who has time to wait for 150?), government tourism officials created the year-long event to help increase visits.

The party planners include Travel Manitoba, Tourism Winnipeg and the Province of Manitoba.

Their goal is simple: show off the positive energy and reinvention flowing through Winnipeg and around Manitoba to current residents, visitors and, maybe specifically, those of us who had left.

Locally inspired events have been going all year, and I’m in my old hometown to be a part of arguably the most iconic: The World’s Largest Social.

Socials, a Manitoba tradition, are a kind of fundraiser, usually held in community halls or hockey rinks, with ticket sale proceeds, raffles and drinks raising from $5,000 to $15,000, depending on the number of attendees and the relative size of their wallets and livers.

A Quiet Confidence

With a few hours before helping rewrite the record books, I met up with my friend Doug, who has, despite a few attempts to leave, remained a Winnipegger. As we sit enjoying our coffee and catching up, I mention to him that the city seems different. It has a confidence….

“But not a swagger, never a swagger,” Doug quickly interjects.

I mention rumours of the NHL returning to town (by way of the Jets returning after a terrible relocation to Phoenix), and Doug’s answer surprises me.

“It would be nice,” he begins. “But, you know, maybe losing the Jets was a good thing. Too many people thought that the team was our identity. It’s almost like the city woke up a couple of years after they left and realized that it had moved on from the breakup and it was okay.”

Rising of The Forks

The core of Winnipeg’s revived confidence is located at the wishbone junction of the Red and Assiniboine. Once the site of trading forts, the area is now home to The Forks.

Built 20 years ago, The Forks rose from reclaimed railway land in downtown Winnipeg. Echoing Ottawa’s Byward Market or Granville Island in Vancouver, it was designed to bring people back downtown and to breathe new life into a part of the city that was largely forgotten.
 
The scrubbed warehouse buildings that now house high-end restaurants and shopping, and its pathways, skate park and stages are more than a magnet for visiting creative classes.

They also gave Winnipeggers a reason to see the rivers fondly as a place to meet, stroll or simply contemplate. The grudges of past overflows seem to have been dropped.

But Winnipeg’s new groove isn’t localized to the obvious gentrification. Up once-crumbling Main Street and into downtown, new bars and restaurants have popped up in spaces once leased by business equipment companies or tired offices.

Walking at night in the Exchange District, once a foolhardy endeavour, now feels like early 1990s Seattle, with flocks of the stylishly unkempt moving between clubs to catch a set from the next great indie folk/punk/ska/hip-hop breakthrough.

Studios, coffee houses and boutiques are opening with surreal fervour, run by young pioneers lured by the city’s reasonable rent and the gritty artistic palate.

On Corydon Avenue, I laugh at the Rolaids-worthy combo of three sushi restaurants and an East Indian joint shoehorned on the same block, along with a long-standing pasta place and a gelato shop.

The World’s Largest Social

Leaving the ’Peg’s culinary culture behind, I turn my attention to tonight’s main event. Having arrived at the World’s Largest Social held at the Winnipeg Convention Centre, one of 63 locations throughout the province, I introduce myself to Marnie Strath, who coordinated the event.

She is euphoric, and yet still modest as she describes the concept of inviting people back to Manitoba.

“Your parents still stay here, or you still have friends here. And everybody wants to come back, because there’s something very down-home about this city,” she explains above the din of ’80s music.

“It’s not like Calgary—not that I have anything against Calgary, I have family who live there—but it always seems very transient. It just doesn’t have the same roots.”

It’s true. In the crowd, I see familiar archetypes: jive-dancing middle-agers spin alongside young dudes who do little more than shuffle their feet uncomfortably in an effort to impress mini-skirted dates on the dance floor.

Among the swirling mass I spot “Dancing Gabe,” something of a Winnipeg celebrity for his routines performed at sporting events—what, 15, 20 years ago? The queue to be photographed with him is completely understandable. And patrolling along the party’s periphery is a Big Lebowski look-alike.
 
This diverse gathering of 2,100 in Winnipeg joined 62 other socials held across the province that mid-May Saturday night for a combined 25,000 revellers.

At night’s end, organizers and local media chirped how “we did it.” Others question if there was ever a record to beat.

But that’s beside the point, unless some bur-eaucrat decides to laud the achievement in a slogan on a sign outside city limits.

Even I’d be able to write a protest anthem about that one.