See the construction-paper hearts? That means love.

I guess that we live in an interesting time: people are shaking off the idealistic dreams of their grandparents (maybe even great-grandparents) and looking at what’s left in the gray light of dawn.

The problem with any time of dogmatic belief– and that is what I believe the last 80 or so years have been– is that it ends in a sort of flight from reality, as the notions that people have come to live by are turned on their heads. The flight continues until it’s just too painful.

“Painful flight” are the two words that sprung to my mind as I read Marjorie Kehe’s Christian Science Monitor review of Jennet Conant’s A Covert Affair:

It’s [A Covert Affair is] also a useful reminder that, in the America that finally emerged from the Cold War, the Childs are still beloved icons, while Joseph McCarthy endures only as a symbol of shame.

I’m not reviewing Jennet’s book today. I’m reviewing two others: Julia Child’s My Life in France, and The Haunted Wood, by Weinstein et alia. The first is a glowing, self-congratulatory, PR piece written by someone with a lot to hide; the second provides a glimpse into what Julia was hiding.

There have been a lot of ‘revelatory’ books over the past couple of decades. I’m thinking of books like The CIA and the Cultural Cold War, Blacklisted by History and, to a certain extent, The Haunted Wood. I’m not saying that any of their authors are heroes, just that these books deal with information that is painful for America’s elite. And naturally, some intellectuals have flown from the consequences of this information, since it challenges their cherished beliefs about themselves and the people they admire.

I knew someone who worked for one of the preeminent news channels in New York City. When Blacklisted by History came out, his station chief– who was Jamaican, not American– refused to cover it because, well, McCarthy was the bad guy and that’s that.

With all that’s happened over the past 40 years, Mr. Jamaica’s attitude is no longer tenable.  Governments have come and gone; and more contenders are vying for a slice from a shrinking pie. That means somebody’s going away disgruntled and sacred cows will fall.

Which brings me to the Childs.

It’s time to face the fact that the Childs worked for an illegal organization, the OSS. Why do I say illegal? Because both Churchill and Roosevelt overstepped their power and went behind the back of their respective governments when they collaborated secretly with Bill Stephenson (a businessman/British spy) and J. Edgar Hoover to form their personal espionage apparatus.

For all the murkiness surrounding espionage, no one has challenged that Stephenson was a British agent and the FDR relied on his advice when he put Donovan, Stephenson’s buddy, at the head of the OSS. Let me rephrase that: FDR relied on a British spy to set up the clearing house for US intelligence. In his biography, Stephenson claims he even had special instructions regarding his spy-work in the USA: he was to drum up the resources that Churchill needed for war.

I’d hate to deal with the counter-espionage fallout from those OSS hires. Maybe that’s why Angleton went crazy.

The Childs worked for the OSS– Julia worked directly for Donovan– in full knowledge that what they were doing was to be kept secret from the American public to prevent interference from Congress. According to Stephenson, the OSS’s war-time doings were kept secret until the early 60s, when Kim Philby’s defection threatened to blow the whole story wide open. Why still hide 20 years after this ‘benevolent’ organization was disbanded? Because the OSS, far from being humanitarian-good-guys, had undermined the balance of powers and rule of law to implement Churchill and FDR’s private goals. That’s treachery.

It gets uglier, because Stephenson’s boys were tasked with digging dirt on Americans who opposed British interests. This encompassed making up rumors and fabricating evidence of spy plots. (Sorta like McCarthy.)

The Haunted Wood has added a new dimension to the OSS story, gleaned from Soviet information sources. From its very beginning, the OSS had a close working relationship with the NKGB, which was the USSR’s foreign intelligence service. Julia’s boss, William Donovan, was the key player organizing this partnership; though it appears that OSS’ers gave the NKGB more information than they got in return. The NKGB side had contempt for the amateurishness of the OSS. As you might expect, the collaboration allowed the NKGB to ‘penetrate’ Donovan’s organization. (Read about it in Chapter 11.)

The NKGB/OSS partnership was kept secret from the American public too, on the advice of J. Edgar Hoover, because he knew that making it official would invite interference from Congress. That pesky rule of law again.

So instead, the NKGB/OSS  partnership was kept informal– and personal:

That month, the USSR’s Ambassador to the United States, Konstantin Umansky, informed the NKVD of a recent private conversation with Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau. He quoted Morgenthau, an FDR confidant, as asking “not on behalf of the American government but on my personal behalf to give me and Roosevelt the heads of German agents in the US… (1941)

The OSS: secretly commandeering government resources for personal vendettas. That’s what despotism looks like, and didn’t we get rid of Mussolini, Hitler, etc. because they were despots? The answer-on-the-street is usually affirmative. So why keep Stalin? We had capable generals ready and willing to march on Moscow.  Weinstein’s book sheds some light on the thorny reasons behind that ugly history.

Did Paul Cushing Child’s illegal work stop once the OSS was disbanded? It seems not. According to Julia, in 1954 Paul was an important US propaganda operative:

His title was exhibits officer for all of Germany, which meant he was America’s top visual-program man for the entire country. His job was to inform the German people about the U.S.A., and once again he was organizing exhibits, tours, and cross-cultural exchanges. Because of the geopolitical/propaganda importance of Germany, which was right smack up against the Iron Curtain, his department had a budget of ten million dollars a year, more than the combined budgets for all of the USIA’s other information programs around the world.

Paul worked with the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) to bring its exhibits to the German public. All this at exactly the time the CIA was (in secret from Congress) working with MOMA to promote a non-Communist left agenda in Europe.

And what about Paul? Was he promoting the same agenda? According to Julia, at least one French politician thought so:

Counsul General Heywood Hill– whom Abe Manell called ‘Hill the Pill’– took Paul to meet the local préfet, Monsieur Paira. Wreathed in a cloud of smoke behind a rococo desk outfitted with three important looking telephones, Paira, a jowly Corsican, opened the meeting by attacking the USIS for attacking the Communists instead of informing French people about the U.S.A.

(The USIA was formerly called the USIS.)

The chances are good that Paul followed his old OSS contacts– and their money– into the non-Communist left foray that Francis Stonor Saunder’s book made so famous. Yet another secret operation kept hidden from Congress to avoid the rule of law.

I see a pattern here, and it isn’t one that makes me love the Childs. Who were this couple?

To answer that question, you have to read between the lines of Julia’s book, but not much. They’re the type of people who laugh at the French for sucking up to aristocrats, but change their cat’s name from “Minnette” to “Minnette Mimosa McWilliams Child” when they find out the feline’s a rare breed, not just a mutt. They’re the type of people who travel war-ravaged Europe eating, oblivious to the malnutrition around them. They detest money and privilege, but seek it out wherever they can. They’re hypocrites.

What strikes me most about this couple is their incongruity. Roald Dahl and his wife, Patricia McNeal, made a show of their ‘perfect marriage’ to the press; Julia is eager to do the same.  Julia presents herself as a doting housewife, she presents Paul as her rock, and inspiration, and teacher, and indulgent husband. When Paul speaks in his own writing, however, he comes across as someone who’s settled for money. Paul is creepy. For instance, he wrote to his twin that Paris with Julia pleased him, because it reminded him of having lipstick on his belly-button. In photographs, Mr. Child’s eyes have a touch of the same human kindness shown by Goebbels and Richard Perle. (Remember that meme?)

Paul is more interesting than Julia. He seems to have done a bit of everything at one time or another. An American, Paul grew up with his widowed mother in France– a place he disliked at the time– then started to travel the world because he didn’t have money for college. (Work that one out.) Paul, at different times, was a stained-glass-window artisan, a low-level Hollywood employee, an OSS agent in Sri Lanka (then British Ceylon), a something on a China Sea command ship in World War II, a War-Room designer for the British General Mountbatten, a USIA propagandist/State Department affiliate, a cocktail-socialist,  a photographer, a dandy, a parasite off Julia’s money. Take your pick, he seems to have.

Julia’s memoir starts with her and Paul barreling towards Paris in a huge American car along a road built by the US Army Corps of Engineers. That’s a perfect metaphor  for Julia’s life. Barreling toward prestige at the taxpayer’s expense.

But don’t think that means she likes America, quite the contrary. She despises Pasadena, California (where she’s from), and falls deeper and deeper in ‘love’ with France. She adores France… until the day she decides that France is too much like Pasadena, and moves permanently to Cambridge, MA.

Why does Julia hate the place where she is from? Well, it’s filled with Republicans, Nixon-voters, housewives, people who are only concerned with their own comfort… her father.

Julia’s relationship with her father is the most interesting relationship in her book. Her father really got under her skin, ostensibly because he hated her for not marrying a Republican banker. I’ve heard many Cambridge-types lambast their enemies as “GOP” when they don’t want to talk about about why they really don’t like a person. In Julia’s case, her Dad thought that she and Paul were dangerously isolated in their socialist milieu, and that they had lost touch with their homeland.

Consider Julia’s choices from her father’s perspective: his daughter meets an older man while doing work that she can’t talk about. This older man is a bon vivant who likes lipstick on his belly-button and has no money. Daughter Julia is homely, uncultured, nearing spinsterhood, yet has money. She’s also naive and dangerously idealistic. What could Paul possibly see in Julia? thinks Pop McWilliams, and with good reason.

Were Paul and Julia isolated and out of touch?

Decades of secrecy,  subversion and disregard for democratic principles while claiming to uphold them can turn people a little weird. Lies turn people weird.

The wheels fell off for Paul and Julia when Paul’s close friend and OSS colleague, Jane Foster, got wind that she might be nabbed for spying for the USSR and fled the USA. Paul and Julia kept in contact with her while she was on the lamb, which didn’t look good for USIA’s top exhibitions man. But there were other problems. According to Julia, one of his associates reported him as a sexual deviant. Completely untrue! the indignant wife cries. Whatever the truth is about Paul’s pants or his loyalty, in 1959 he was pulled from Germany and sent to Sweden, then retired in  a rush: just months before he could have secured a $3000 per month pension.

Why the rush, Paul? Perhaps we’ll never know.

This series of events precipitated a ‘wounded’ period in Julia’s life, where she felt the evil forces of the GOP, McCarthy and Nixon were in an unholy alliance against her. She undertook to fight these forces of darkness however she could.

Let’s read an excerpt from an anti-McCarthyite letter that Julia Child wrote, of which she is particularly proud:

In Russia today, as a method for getting rid of opposition, an unsubstantiated implication of treason, such as yours, is often used. But it should never be used in the United States… I respectfully suggest that you are doing both your college and your country a disservice… In the blood-heat of pursuing the enemy, many people are forgetting what we are fighting for. We are fighting for out hard-won liberty and freedom; for our Constitution and the due processes of our laws; and for the right to differ in ideas, religion and politics.

Maybe, Julia, your work for Donovan, your husband’s propaganda work, the very probable espionage work of your beloved friends, have done your country a disservice. Maybe, in the blood-heat of getting your own way, you’ve worked to undermine freedom and the due process of law.

Whatever you think of FDR, the US and it’s allies during WWII or Soviet Russia, it’s worth keeping in mind concepts like “the balance of powers” and “rule of law” are not just pretty words on a piece of paper. These concepts are valued because without them, there’s little difference between an American President and a European Dictator. So even if you’ve got powerful friends, your opinions still need to be vetted by democratic bodies like Congress and the Senate BEFORE they’re acted upon. That’s what living in a democracy means. Hiding behind “the need for secrecy” is like a cancer patient refusing to take his chemotherapy, because “this could weaken me for a little while.”

And thanks to books like The Haunted Wood, we now know all that secrecy actually made the OSS easier to penetrate by really virulent organizations.

I’m not saying that intelligence operations are incompatible with democracy, but they ARE incompatible IF they are given completely free reign to do what they want. The only real check on them is a free media and working Congress, which is a whole different Gordian Knot.

I can kind of understand why Julia would adopt a siege-mentality toward Pasadena and her dad; then toward Washington D.C. and the “McCarthyites”; and finally toward France. With McCarthy, the congressional investigations into the OSS and CIA spending, the FBI (and even CIA, thank you Angleton) investigations into Soviet espionage, Julia  saw FDR’s pink edifice crashing down around her. She understood that the USA was not, yet, her private game reserve. So naturally, she set up fort in the Peoples’ Republic of Cambridge.

For readers who are unfamiliar with US politics and geography, Cambridge Massachusetts is like that very sheltered, damp spot in your garden where all sorts of strange fungi can flourish. And Julia flourished there; the rest is T.V. history.

We have a problem in the USA: we’ve come to believe our own propaganda. You can disapprove of demagoguery. You can disapprove of propaganda and political-witch-hunts. But you can’t disapprove of these things and still support the Childs, because the Childs are just another flavor of McCarthyites– and that may even be too kind to Julia and Paul, because I don’t think Senator McCarthy ever took up service for a foreign operative– wittingly or otherwise. But sadly, I believe these ethical distinctions will be forever lost on the good comrades of Cambridge, MA.

When it boils down to it, Julia did not love her own people. Did she feel that they denied her something which she deserved? Did she feel out-of-sync, being homely and mannish? Or did she just crave belonging to something ‘special’– irrespective of what that ‘something’ was? I guess it doesn’t matter now, because like her father, she’s dead. Eh bien, l’affaire conclue.

I loved the back to basics Bond that Dalton created on screen, even if the stories were a tad weak given the political climate at the time.  I did struggle with the Brosnan editions finding them a bit too close to Moore as I matured.  Yet I was in the theater every opening weekend.

I know I made a bold, almost outrageous statement saying that Skyfall is the single best James Bond movie of all time; but it’s one I am going to stand behind for several reasons.

The first being the camera work and direction by Sam Mendes.  The Imax version that Darlene and I were treated to courtesy of the Winnipeg Free Press was absolutely stunning.  From the car and motorcycle chases of Istanbul, shown in stunning glory,  running across the grand bizarre full speed is breathtaking.

The dark Blade Runner-esque skylines and neon of Shanghai, the opening sequences on the Dragon Barge in Macau were simply breathtaking.   That alone makes it one of the best 007 movies of all time.

The next point is more central to the plot, we see that James Bond is human.  He’s a beat up aging man not on that happy side of thirty something anymore.  He’s ragged and grey bearded.  He suffers and struggles to maintain his rating as a double zero agent.  You feel for him as he works and fails, his addictions have cost him a steady hand, he shakes and sometimes fails to hit his mark. But this all work in the favor of the movie to establish who James is as a person and not just a iconic figurehead.

Javier Bardem plays the role of a uniquely suited rogue agent once under the care of Judy Dench’s M.  The homoerotic undertones of his character play off the raw sexuality of Bond in unique ways.  But never forget that he is out for revenge on the spymaster that gave him up to a foreign power for endless torture.

Gone are the campy gadgets and silly hidden bases in volcanoes, this is a striped down 8 cylinder full bore version of bond at his best.  Even though a very young Ben Whishaw is appearing as the Quartermaster of gadgets he manages to pull of a surprise or two with a nod to the past Bond films as well.

There even is an surprise appearance of an old Connery acquaintance that really brings the tone of then move up more than a few notches at a very dark and dangerous time in the film.

In the last act we learn more about James Bond as a boy, growing up in the moors of Scotland.  An orphan of young age who lost his parents in a climbing accident.  Albert Finney rounds out the last final segments as a bridge to the adolescent James and his growing anger into manhood.

From the bustling city of Istanbul, to the Blade Runner shots of Shanghai,  breathtaking scenes in Macau and unbelievable action in London.  The humanity of James the child, and brutality of Bond the man.

I see no reason not to score this the 23rd film in the bond treasure trove a solid  4.5 out of 5.  The only reason I am holding back the extra half is hoping for more in the next Daniel Craig installment.

As always Bond Will Be back.

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Well I am happy to say that the latest James Bond production Skyfall will be no different and even a bit better as Darlene and I will be attending the Winnipeg premiere courtesy of the Winnipeg Free Press.

Free Press movie reviewer Randall King recently published a Bond trivia challenge in the pages of the weekend edition of the Winnipeg Free Press and I am the happy winner of that competition.

Even though I am a geek of some long-standing, I must freely admit that I found the questions very challenging.  I first probed my mind for the easy questions, the song whistled by the janitor in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (the theme from Goldfinger);  to the most obscure asking about James’ witty comeback lines and motivations for the femme fatale bond girls. YIKES!

In any event I must have scored well or been given extra points for showing my work, as I included not only the movie but also character names and actors names for all that I could uncover.  In all it probably took me longer than the movie to come up with the quiz answers but being able to count myself among the first in North America to see Skyfall is priceless.

PLUS as readers of my blog you all will get a great review on Thursday so you all can judge for yourselves if you want to plunk down some coin and see Daniel Craig as James Bond shoot up the silver screen in his 23rd film.

So stay tuned same Bond time, same Bond Channel people.

Here’s a taste to make sure you come back for more.

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• SKYFALL Trailer 2012 – James Bond 007 Movie – Official [HD] (wealth-structuring.com)
• LISTEN: Adele’s Skyfall Song Is Here, In All Its Big, Brassy Glory (huffingtonpost.co.uk)
• Double O Seven (fakethemoment.wordpress.com)
• James Bond Skyfall Distressed Leather Jacket (unfinishedman.com)
• Get to Know the New Bond Girl: Bérénice Marlohe (fabsugar.com)
• Ben Whishaw on playing Q in Skyfall: ‘I don’t even have a computer’ (telegraph.co.uk)

For the back story on Stephenson before World War 2 please read the my earlier posts – William Stephenson the quiet man that would inspire 007 and James Bond, Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler – The Canadian Connection.

The morning of May 18, 1940 as recorded by Randolph Churchill: “I went up to my father’s bedroom. He was standing in front of his basin and was shaving with his old fashioned Valet razor. He had a tough beard, and was as usual hacking away.

‘Sit down, dear boy, and read the papers while I finish shaving .’ I did as told.  After two or three minutes of hacking away, he half-turned and said: ‘I think I see my way through.’ He resumed shaving.

I was astounded , and said: ‘Do you mean we can avoid defeat (which seemed credible), or beat the bastards (which seemed incredible)?’

He flung his razor into the basin, swung around, and said: ‘Of course I mean we can beat them.’

Me: ‘Well I’m all for that, but I don’t see how you can do it.’

By this time he had dried and sponged his face and turning around to me, said with great intensity: ‘I shall drag the United States in.’

The TRUE Intrepid. By Bill Macdonald. Page 69

We pick up the trail on Stephenson at the outbreak of World War 2, Stephenson is installed in New York City by Winston Churchill (newly appointed British Prime Minister) in a covert role to gather information, spread anti-Nazi propaganda, and by any and all means drag the United States into the war with Germany.  He is to report to Churchill and his staff directly, circumventing any official channels as the British government and aristocracy are full of Nazi sympathizers.  Intrepid is his newly minted code name his code number becomes 48,000.  48 for the number of States at that time, 0 marking him as the head of organization, and 00 being code for highly classified.

Stephenson, by this time a millionaire business tycoon with a rapidly obfuscated past, and funds to expedite the enterprise himself is perfect for the job.  He will avoid leaving a paper trail that leads back to Churchill.

Working under the guise of British Passport Control officer in the United States Stephenson sets up shop on the 36th floor of Rockefeller Center.  He begins to assemble his closest allies predominantly fellow Canadians that he knows are loyal to the Crown.  Tommy Drew-Brook, Ben de Forest (Pat) Bayly and Australian Charles (Dick) Ellis are among the first to come on board with Stephenson.

Communications expert Pat Bayly was tasked to develop a secure means of transmitting data without relying on British or American channels; as both were thought to be compromised at the time.  The result was twofold the cypher machine known as the Rockex machine.  Named slyly after the Rockettes dancers who practiced on the roof of Radio City Music hall next door to Rockefeller Center.  The other development was the establishment of a breakthrough in global communications known as Hydra at Camp X, more on that later.

The Rockex Cypher Machine.

The Rockex, was a discovery in cypher technology at the time, it was the only cypher encoding machine that did not create peaks and valleys that traditionally signal the five most used letters in the English language E,T,I,O,N.  Taking what he had learned in early 1941 Bayly designed a machine that used all 26 letters of the alphabet an equal amount of the time; thus giving no hint to letter frequency.

Canadian newspapers run ads for clerical help needed in New York City.  The respondents almost exclusively young unmarried Canadian women reply to the ads and are screened relentlessly by RCMP agents.  Once in New York the women are billeted together and told very little of what they are to do.

The small groups of women are told not to associate out of their groups and are paid cash for their work.  RCMP agents in New York also follow their every move.  Only the most trusted ever learn the truth of what they are doing in New York and who is employing them.  It was also around this time that a young British Naval intelligence officer was tasked by Churchill to become a link to British High Command and BSC.  His name was Ian Flemming.

A wartime photograph of a young Ian Flemming.

With a basic infrastructure in place Stephenson begins to bring in like minded Americans to Britain’s cause.  His first contact was General William (Wild Bill) Donovan, a friend believed to be met in World War 1.  It was through his direct contacts with Prime Minster Churchill and General Donovan that Stephenson gained access to President Roosevelt.

Roosevelt  although pro-British in the fight against Nazi Germany has no choice but chose to stay publicly neutral early in the war effort.  Although behind the scenes Stephenson, Donovan and Roosevelt begin to negotiate the “Destroyers for Bases” swap between the United States and Brittan that would see “surplus” destroyers traded for land on English soil around the globe in which to give the U.S. a foothold should it get dragged into the war.

One of Stephenson’s  early adversaries in the U.S. was J. Edgar Hoover the head of the American FBI.  Hoover had no great love of Stephenson and being one to uphold the letter of the law refused to allow a “foreign” intelligence agency to run in the United States without direct presidential approval.  This approval was negotiated with the warning that any communication between British Security Control (BSC) and the FBI was to be between Stephenson and Hoover exclusively.

With a small cadre of agents in place Stephenson set about gathering intelligence and planting misinformation.  No embassy or person was off-limits to BSC, worldwide safe-crackers and break in specialists were recruited.  Often forged and documents were left in place of the ones taken as to further confuse the an undisciplined enemy or to get a potential ally on the side of Stephenson and the British war effort.

Anti-Nazi propaganda included targeting pro-Nazi groups in the united states and isolationists. Members of these groups were targeted and harassed relentlessly.  In September 1941 isolationist Senator Gerald Nye while speaking in Boston thousands of handbills were handed out attacking him as a Nazi lover and appeaser.

BSC forged map of “Nazi South America” Nothing deceives like a document.

Most famously on October 27, 1941 only months before America enters the war President Roosevelt gives a speech claiming to have in his possession a Nazi map of South America carved up into 5 vassal fascist states. It has come to light that this map was a forged document courtesy of Stephenson and BSC forgers.  If Roosevelt knew of its origins or just played ball with BSC is unclear however it began to galvanize the American people and prepare them for war with Germany.

Authors Note:  I had hoped to have this done in one easy to read section, but due the complexity of Sir Stephenson’s life and our evacuation last night think it is better that I chop the last piece in two.

I am working on the evolution of Camp X and the rather surprising involvement of Roald Dahl.  So please stay calm the best is yet to come.

Camp X from the air. 1943.

Last spring D and I made the trip out to Whitby, Ontario, for an early Doors Open Toronto event at Intrepid Park.  It was May, one of those days that aren’t cold really or warm, but blustery and dull, with a flat, pale sky, and quite a bit of mud.

There are no doors to open at Intrepid Park, because there’s nothing there but a concrete memorial, a few shell holes, and a grassy mound. It’s a nice park, with viewpoints from which you can look along the coast of Lake Ontario toward the downtown skyline, which looks delicate and almost translucent at that distance.

Once, a long time ago, the land that is now Intrepid Park was known as Camp X, a training and communications centre for Allied intelligence during the Second World War.  Though there are few traces, our local “Spy School” as collected some attractive legends.  There’s William Stephenson, the Manitoban Spymaster who went by the code name “Intrepid.” Ian Fleming is supposed to have spent some time there (though he probably didn’t), as well as Roald Dahl (who really did). Igor Gouzenko was there, in the first hours of the Cold War.

Hydra. 1942.

So was Hydra, the radio transmitter through which Allied operatives communicated, collecting coded messages there before bouncing them across the Atlantic to Bletchley Park.  Before Pearl Harbour, Hydra also allowed the officially-neutral US to communicate, unofficially, with the UK.

The weird thing about Camp X is that, while it was on Canadian soil and conceived, purchased and managed by the Canadian William Stephenson, it could not be officially “known” by William Lyon Mackenzie King, our wartime Prime Minister.  Lynn Philip Hodgson, the gentleman who led our tour through Intrepid Park, told me it was because the operation could become a political football, batted back and forth between parties in the House of Commons, and that would have damaged its strategic work. Elsewhere I have heard that this secrecy was necessary was because the camp constituted a violation of Canadian sovereignty, which only makes it more interesting.

I am a literary scholar, not a military theorist nor an historian, and I think about Intrepid Park as a cultural text to be read, as a strangely elided site of memory, as well as a bit of Canada’s military geography.  Therefore, I find it most interesting for what it says about our strange relationship with space and communications:  at Camp X, Canada wasn’t a place, it was a medium, something through which people and information passed on their way somewhere else.

Which is something like what Northrop Frye says in his “Conclusion to a Literary History of Canada,” origin of many popular aphorisms regarding the nature of Canadian literature (including both the “innocent as a mating loon” comment and “the garrison mentality”).  Frye tells me that in the early years of its colonial history,

Canada began as an obstacle, blocking the way to the treasures of the East, to be explored only in the hope of finding a passage through it.

Frye, being a scholar of literature rather than geography, makes a connection between Canada-as-obstacle to Canada-as-Medium. His argument begins with explorers finding their way through a lump of rock between Atlantic and Pacific, but it ends with contemporary theorists of communication—both Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan—suggesting that Canada’s peculiar role as obstacle to European imperialism has forced us to think more carefully, more consciously about how we speak and listen across distance, whether spatial, cultural or temporal.

And then it’s hard for me not to think further of Camp X, and of Canada as a medium, a neutral place for empires to meet and speak secretly, before they go somewhere else more important. What mattered about Camp X wasn’t the place, so much as what and who passed through it.

So what’s left behind, after Great Powers leave?  At Intrepid Park we have the shell-holes on the test range, and we have the enormous mound of concrete, the post-war bunker that was demolished and then buried when the site was decommissioned in 1969.  We have a gap in Canadian memory, something we couldn’t officially know because it would have been inconvenient, politically, to admit its existence.  We have events that occurred on our soil, but not within our control.  What we are left with, then, is a stretch of grass and trees on the shore of Lake Ontario, and the slabs of concrete that are now re-emerging, as the land around them settles.  We have stories, urban legends, even a possible appearance by Ian Fleming.

Explosion at Camp X. 1943.

The Frye essay I mention above includes this question regarding the nature of Canadian identity:

It seems to me that Canadian sensibility has been profoundly disturbed, not so much by our famous problem of identity, important as that is, as by a series of paradoxes in what confronts that identity. It is less perplexed by the question “Who am I?” than by some such riddle as ‘Where is here?’

The question Where is here? recurs in all my attempts to understand Anglo-Canadian literature, and I think of all my writing as location work. Camp X seems like one of the places I could imagine an answer to that question, or at least explore what Canada meant as a fragment of empire, as a post-colony, as a temporary communications hut, as a link between British and American intelligence operations.

Taken from freshome.com

Manitoba Theatre Centre founder John Hirsch who was a war orphan from Hungary

Sculptor Leo Mol who came to Canada from Ukraine in 1948

Politician Stanley Knowles who immigrated to Canada from Los Angeles with his parents in the early 1900s.  Intrepid war hero William Stephenson, Winnipeg’s own James Bond, whose parents were immigrants from Iceland and Scotland. 

and comedian David Steinberg born in Winnipeg to Romanian immigrant parents. 

The purpose of the course Winnipeg Fact and Fiction was to introduce a topic about Winnipeg history and then suggest one or two companion novels that might shed an interesting perspective on that theme.  Our teacher Roland Penner got it wrong when he recommended Fredelle Maynard’s book Raisins and Almonds as his top fiction pick reflecting the Winnipeg immigrant experience.

Raisins and Almonds tells the story of a young girl growing up on the Canadian prairies as the child of Jewish immigrants from Russia. The first problem I have with Roland Penner choosing this book is that it’s not fiction, but Maynard’s memoirs. Secondly, although there are a some pages in the book devoted to life in Winnipeg the majority of the stories are set in the small Canadian prairie towns where Fredelle’s family moved in hopes of finding one where her father’s mercantile business would be successful. 

Someone in the class asked Roland if he could recommend fiction books that would represent the Mennonite immigrant experience in Winnipeg and he said there weren’t any. He claimed since Mennonites settled primarily in the rural areas of Manitoba, if there was any fiction about their immigrant experience it wouldn’t be set in Winnipeg. He was wrong. 

Dora Dueck’s novel This Hidden Thing, winner of last year’s McNally Robinison Book of the Year award, is definitely fiction and is set almost solely in Winnipeg. It tells the story of young Mennonite girls who came to live in Winnipeg to work as maids in the homes of wealthy people in order to help pay the money their families owed to the Canadian Pacific Railway. The CPR had financed loans to make it possible for Mennonites to come to Canada from Ukraine.  Maria, the main character in Dueck’s novel, spends almost her entire life in Winnipeg after immigrating from Ukraine as a teenager.  

Penner is also wrong when he says there weren’t many Mennonite immigrants in Winnipeg. By the 1920′s six Mennonite churches had already been established in the city and by the 1950′s there were 7000 Mennonites living in Winnipeg. 

I’d like to find out if there are any other novels set primarily in Winnipeg that reflect the experience of Mennonite immigrants. 

Now imagine just for a second that all of these things have a basis in fact and that the man at the center of it all was a real person who inspired the greatest fictional spy of them all Ian Fleming’s Commander James Bond of the Royal Navy.  You would think that I’d been staring at my computer screen just a tad long, wouldn’t you?

Well friends gather round and I’ll continue the story of William Stephenson.  In my last installment I told you all the story of William’s birth in turn of the century Winnipeg, Manitoba, his exploits as a child and his daring as a World War One fighter ace.

The rest of the story picks up back in Winnipeg with a can opener that William had stolen from the Commandant’s quarters while he was imprisoned in a German POW camp.  The design was revolutionary for the time leaving a clean edge on the can lid where other models of the day simply hacked off the top leaving a sharp jagged edge. Since North American patent law did not recognize German patents, William registered the device in North America and went into business forming the Franco-British Supply Company with friend Charles Wilfrid Russell in 1919. Soon after the young business men incorporated the company as Stevenson-Russell Ltd. raising money through selling shares in the community.

The post war period was hard for business and Stephenson-Russell was failing by 1922. William lost face in the Icelandic community he was raised in by not paying back the debts he had incurred while trying to grow the company.  He fled to England while members of his extended family set up a hardware store with the remains of the failed venture.

William Stephenson sends the first image via radio. July 6, 1924.

It was there that everything started to click for William claiming patents for the latest in radio technology, including the forerunner of the fax machine and grandfather to the television.  A radio device that could send a photographic image via radio waves.  Making his fortune was only the start; he branched out into building projects including the Lion’s Gate Bridge project in Vancouver, Sound City Films at Shepperton Studios in London and the building of Earls Court Exhibition Center in 1935.  He also was influential in aircraft design, General Aircraft Ltd. a company owned by Stephenson developed a twin-engine monoplane that could climb and fly with only one engine and won the King’s Cup air race with an average speed of 134 mph in 1934.  The ST-10 powered by two 90 horsepower “Niagara” engines.

A sketch of the ST-10. ( Found Here )

Needless to say with William now hobnobbing with the movie stars, writers and British politicians including one Winston Churchill.  However the child who was born into Winnipeg poverty never became an elitist.  William sought out ways to improve society and was quoted as agreeing with Winston Churchill that “The destiny of mankind is not settled by material compunction.”

Winston Churchill

With that ideal in mind William traveled to India and began to underwrite projects to help the poor in those areas recruiting with him a bevy of Canadian engineers and experts in development and construction.

His travels in the late 30′s would also change the course of his life forever bringing him into contact with the beginnings of Nazi Germany.  Although the historical records are vague on this period of William’s life one thing is for certain there was an effort beginning to erase Stephenson from the public record.  His trips to Germany as a business man took him into the heart of German developments in a time where the British elite were not looked upon as enemies but as friends to the growing Reich.

It is thought that as early as 1933 Stephenson had access to German factories and aircraft facilities as one of the leading builders of monoplanes in the world at the time. It is quite conceivable that William was relaying information and photographs back to England to warn them of what was happening in German factories at the time.  In fact Desmond Morton, a civil servant and neighbor to one Winston Churchill, began making reports to British Intelligence (MI6) about the increase in German aircraft development.  Thus establishing a very likely chain of Stephenson, Morton, Churchill.  Stephenson gathered the intelligence, Morton interpreted the information and Churchill as a political animal raised the alarm.

While those in the British government friendly to Nazi Germany and Hitler continuously underestimated the growing threat Churchill backed up by Stephenson and Morton behind the scenes hammered the National Government in Parliament.  Government estimates of the day had Germany producing one hundred aircraft annually while figures given to Churchill quoted figures of one hundred and twenty five a month in 1934.

Adolf Hitler 1933

We must remember that at this time in the 1930′s the elite of England rather liked a young firebrand in Germany that swept away the Kaiser and returned the heart of Europe to an industrial and profitable powerhouse.  Germany under Hitler was expanding and expansion means business opportunities.  We must also remember that the aristocracy in England had tight family ties with all of the royal houses in Europe.

In this way William Stephenson was vital to an ever powerful Winston Churchill, who could see the growing threat that Nazi Germany posed. Thus the relationship was formed, a Canadian businessman outside of formal channels and independent of means.  Stephenson and his fortune and ability provided Churchill the perfect means to gather intelligence beyond the knowledge of parliament and form his own means of defense for Great Brittan.

Posing as a representative for British passport control in America, Stephenson opened a small office in New York City with the expressed goal of controlling British subjects on US soil.  His covert mission however was to gain the ear of American President Franklin D Roosevelt by any means possible and drag the United States into war.

His Codename for this mission was INTREPID.

William S Stephenson – The man called INTREPID (Found Here)

Part One: William Stephenson the quiet man who would inspire 007

Part Three: William Stephenson, Roald Dahl, and Ian Flemming: The Birth of James Bond 007

This weekend I spent with my darling daughter who lives a couple of hours out of Winnipeg.  It was her 14th birthday last weekend so I took the chance this weekend to spend a fun filled day with her bowling and generally having a good time.

In any regard that got me thinking about my own situation, as many of you may know I am an adopted son to my late father and globe-trotting mother.  It’s the only life that I have ever known so please don’t feel badly for me.  I really couldn’t have asked for better parents and the childhood that I had was a very happy one in most regards, but there has always been a hole in my heart that I have never been able to fill.  The one left by my birth mother when I left her arms and was taken into foster care.

Are You My Mother by P. D. Eastman

There was a story that my mom (Florence) used to read to me as a child, it has to this day remained one of my favorite stories and I know it almost word for word even though I haven’t seen a copy of the book for well over 30 years.  It’s name is Are you my mother, it follows the plight of a little baby bird who as I recall falls out of the nest one sunny day and wanders about asking everyone and everything “Are you my mother?”.

From Are You My Mother by P. D. Eastman

I guess reading that story to me was her way of letting me know that it was OK to be different from my younger brother who was theirs by natural birth.  Growing up I was always an inquisitive child, I would often wander off while my mother was shopping (in a time and place where it was still safe to do so) and talk to anyone I could find in the stores we would frequent.  Mostly I would talk to cute women as my mother would frantically run around the store in search of her wayward son.  Inevitably I would end up dragging the poor hapless woman that I had latched onto up to the front counter where my mom would be in a tizzy waiting for my return.

Who do you think you are? Television program title sequence.

With the advent of television programs like Who do you think you are?, which research a celebrity’s family tree going back hundreds of years it got me to thinking about how I see my true family history.  It begins and ends with me.  I do have some basic information on my birth family but any attempt thus far to dig deeper into my roots on this earth have thus far come up empty.

I have spent countless hours in the libraries using resources like Ancestry.com only to come up with nothing.  I have registered with the Government of Ontario Family and Children’s Services to have my name placed on a reunion registry but that requires both parties reaching out for the Government to act on our behalf.

To make a long story short I have tried everything but going through the Ottawa phone book and cold calling people who share my last name.  Then I got to thinking I have a website that is seen by hundreds of people every day.  Maybe one of them knows who I am?  Maybe one of them has access to resources I do not have.  Maybe one of them knows Oprah or Ellen?  Long-shot I know but hey nothing ventured nothing gained.

Are YOU my mother?

My basic birth information is as follows, for obvious reasons I cannot disclose everything but someone out there has the other half of this puzzle maybe we can complete the picture together.

The story goes that in the late 1968 or very early 1969 my mother was a young twenty year old stenographer and typist working in the  Ottawa/Hull region of Ontario possibly for the Police or Government Service.  She may have had a tryst with someone working in the service and produced me in the process.

I was born in September of 1969 with the given name Shawn Logan at the Grace Hospital in Ottawa, Ontario.  I spent approximately 6 months in foster care before I was placed with my adoptive parents Ken and Florence Ogden of Fort Frances, Ontario.  I caught a bad case of the German measles at around 4 or 5 months old and this delayed my adoptive parents from claiming me sooner.

I believe that my birth mother’s family name was also Logan and that they lived in the Ottawa/Hull region.  She did have a number of brothers and sisters and her family would not have been able to care for me as one of her brothers was injured in a workplace accident thus depleting their resources.  I do not believe that her family knew of her pregnancy but I could be wrong on that count.

I do not have any information on my birth father’s side of the story, which leads me to believe that he may not have known about the pregnancy or he had interests to protect other than my mother.

Well there it is my history laid bare for the world to see, if you have any information my e-mail address is listed above.

Have a good week everyone!

Bob

The Times of London October 21, 1962

It is accepted that Canadians are quiet people, we are not full of random boast or ecstatic praise without good meaning.  This post is an example of a quiet man  who made it to the very top of the silent services before there was a silent service to speak of.

Nothing deceives Like a document. – William Stephenson

William Stephenson was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba to immigrant Icelandic parents just before the turn of the 20th century.  Orphaned by his father at around the age of three, his widowed mother had little choice but to surrender one of her children to an extended family of other Icelandic immigrants.  Historians on the subject often over look this fact and in many sources have quoted an incorrect birthday and indeed an incorrect surname.  Sources have him attending a high school that never existed.  It seems that either the researchers did not attend to proper diligence or the trail has been intentionally made confusing.

Born with an incredible memory, William and his adoptive siblings would play memory games.  Someone in the group would move or remove an item from a room.  Without fail young William would spot the offending piece.

The turn of the century was a boom time for early Winnipeg, a teenage William had a part in apprehending a killer that was on the loose.  While working for the Great North West Telegraph Company as a delivery boy he spotted wanted killer Jack (Bloody Jack) Krafchenko.  Remembering his face from a wanted poster he contacted police and Krafchenko was subsequently arrested.

However bloodthirsty Kraftchenko was he, none the less, had quite the following as a heroic Robin Hood type character in the community.  Thus young William learned well the value of secrecy as police covered up the fact that a young boy had fingered a murderer all the while Kraftchenko’s friends and a number in the community looked for “The Rat” who had outed him.

With the outbreak of World War One William enlisted into the service of the British Empire on January 12th 1916 using the false birthday January 11, 1896.  He was placed with the 101st Winnipeg Light Infantry and saw action in France almost immediately suffering in a German gas attack in July of 1916.

William spent the next year convalescing in Britain where he used his brain to the fullest.  Studying the newly found discipline of powered flight, he also studied navigation and engine mechanics.  When released he applied to the air corps and was accepted as a pilot in the 73rd squadron February 1918 .  This transfer would prove to be very fortuitous as he would meet Tommy Drew-Brook the man who would become his right hand in fighting the Nazi’s in World War 2.

Sergeant William Stephenson

Flying a Sopwith Camel in March of 1918 Stephenson was attacked by two German fighters and his plane was severely damaged.  He landed the out of control airplane and was nearly killed in the process.  He emerged from the wreck and immediately “Mad as Hops” jumped into another camel and shot down two enemy flyers almost immediately.  From that day onward he was a force to be reckoned with in the air.

Although there is some controversy on how many enemy fliers that Stephenson shot down it is believed that he took anywhere from 12 to 26 victories.  Including shooting down Lothar von Richthofen the brother of Manfred von Richthofen also known as The Red Baron.

For his efforts against the German forces in World War 1 Stephenson was awarded the Military Cross and the Distinguished Flying Cross in Summer of 1918. He was known as a friend to the soldiers in the trenches using his twin machine guns to harass the Germans on the ground often waggling his wings as he flew low over the trenches.

” You always know when Steve is over. He comes right down to say hello and never forgets the boys on the ground when things are hot.” Remarked a fellow Canadian ground soldier who was no stranger to the horrors of the trenches.

However his aggressive flying style was also what eventually landed him in a German P.O.W. Camp.  Downed by friendly fire, catching a French reconnaissance plane by surprise the gunner fired instinctively.

Tommy Drew-Brook writes in a letter to Montgomery Hyde the details of the incident.  “The unfortunate French observer saw this machine out of the corner of his eye, spun his gun and fired a burst into Bill which killed his engine and put one bullet through his leg.  He landed just in front of the German front line, crawled out of his machine, and headed for our lines, but unfortunately a German gunner hit him again in the same leg and that stopped him and resulted in him being captured. Bill did not bail out over German territory.  We didn’t have parachutes.”  The True Intrepid – Page 41.

For his heroism William was awarded the Croix de Guerre avec Palme by the President of the French Republic, noting “It is sincerely hoped that this gallant Canadian is unhurt and, at worst a prisoner.”

While interned at Holzminden , Stephenson apparently took great pleasure in sneaking about the camp. Some tales have him pilfering items from the camp commandant’s office including a picture of his wife and a can opener that would propel William into business following the war.

Stephenson escaped the camp in September of 1918 and eventually made his way back to his home town of Winnipeg where we will pick up the story next time.

Authors Note: Although I have referenced many sources in this posting my main source for research has been the book The True Intrepid. William Stephenson and the Unknown Agents by Bill Macdonald.  Without this book my sharing of this story with all of you would not have been possible.

Part two: James Bond, Winston Churchill and Adolph Hitler – The Canadian Connection.

Part Three: William Stephenson, Roald Dahl, and Ian Flemming: The Birth of James Bond 007

As this plaque on his sculpture indicates, William’s code name was Intrepid when he worked for British intelligence in New York during World War II. A book about his life titled A Man Called Intrepid was a best seller and later was turned into  a TV mini-series starring David Niven and Barbara Hershey. 

Orphaned as a young child and then adopted, William was fascinated with Morse code as a teenager and was good at boxing.  He served as a pilot during World War I and was shot down and captured by the Germans. He managed to escape after three months and won several medals for bravery. Stephenson went on to study at Oxford University. 

William accomplished many significant and impressive things in the next couple decades. After teaching at the University of Manitoba he moved to Britain where he invented the process for sending photographs over the wire electronically, purchased a radio manufacturing company that made him a millionaire before he was thirty, and then diversified into film, coal and oil refining, the steel industry, television and aircraft production. He helped to found the British Broadcasting Corporation. (BBC)

He obviously wasn’t looking for a job when Winston Churchill asked him to become the head of British security in New York coordinating counter-espionage efforts together with the Americans. He hired hundreds of people to work for him, many of them Canadians and he paid for their salaries out of his own pocket. He set up a school in Whitby Ontario that trained more than 2000 covert operators including Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond books. 

The sculpture of William Stephenson on Memorial Boulevard, was created by renowned Winnipeg sculptor Leo Mol and was unveiled by Princess Anne in 1999.

 I found a clip from the film version of The Man Called Intrepid on You Tube. I’d like to get a copy of the entire thing and watch it. I had no idea the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s James Bond came from Winnipeg.

Shows include the comedy of Paul Mecurio!  David Baker!  Marina Franklin!  William Stephenson! Brian Scott McFadden!  Sherrod Small!  Mike Britt!  Adam Cozens!  Dustin Chaffin! Big Jay Oakerson! and more!

Emmy Award Winning writer for The Daily Show Paul Mecurio will be closing out both out 8:30 and 10:30pm shows on Friday

To make a reservation call (212) 861-9386

See you tonight!

We’ve got two heapin’ helpings of podcast on our hands!  This week, Jon Fisch, Dan Allen and special guest co-host Moody McCarthy sit down to interview Comic Strip favorite, the great William Stephenson!

William shares his stories from his days working around the city (in every sense of the word) and dives into everything Comic Strip, from making an informational video regarding rules of “the light,” to our famous 50 hour stand up marathon show he hosted solo, to once actually getting banned from the club!

William is a staple here at the World Famous Comic Strip Live! and has been seen on HBO’s The Chris Rock Show, Def Comedy Jam, the film Pootietang, and most recently was a featured performer on FX’s new hit sitcom Louie.

Check it out!

Part One | Part Two

Keep listening to and supporting great New York City stand up comedy! And as always keep your bookmarks locked here at Eighty-Second & 2nd!

Laughs were plentiful and the memories made were priceless as a boat-load of comedy fans took in the spectacular views and hilarious stand-up comedy that only the Sunset Comedy Cruise can produce.

Relive some of the magic from last night!

Host of the nights festivities William Stephenson greets guests as they check in prior to boarding the cruise.

Just in the nick of time! Comedian Vic Henley makes it to Pier 40 with minimal time to spare before kick-off!

Comedian J.J. Ramirez looks out over the water prior to the Sunset.

The eastern tip of New York’s beautiful skyline.

Comedians Sherrod Small and William Stephenson relax while Jordan Rock enjoys a night out on the water.

Comedian Sherrod Small entertains the sold-out boat with his high-energy brand of humor.

Comic Strip favorite Jermaine Fowler also took the night off so that he could check out the nightlife on the famous Sunset Comedy Cruise.

Jordan Rock admires Lady Liberty herself.

The weather is amazingly, the drinks are chilled and the fun out on New York’s famed Hudson River is going to go down TONIGHT!

The Comic Strip Live’s Sunset Comedy Cruise, a staple of New York residents summer calendar is kicking off from Pier 40 tonight at 6:30!

The announced line-up for this evening’s comedy cruise:

From HBO’s The Chris Rock Show and the new FX Network show Louie William Stephenson!

From NBC’s Tonight Show with Jay Leno and the new hit movie Bruno, Vic Henley!

From ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! and VH1′s Best Week Ever, Sherrod Small!

And from the feature film The Latin Legends of Comedy and Comedy Central, J.J. Ramirez!

For more information on how to be a part of tonight’s cruise, call Jan at 212-861-9386.

The cost is $25.00 per person plus a two-drink minimum.  Save $5 if you use the code “BLOG” when you call. (Dinner is optional, $8.00 per plate.)

After coming up to the stage at a raucous ovation, Charlie dived into material ranging from his times overseas to adventures with friends to his thoughts on The Dog Whisperer. It was an incredibly entertaining set and as promised, Charlie did not disappoint. One fan who was lucky enough to grab a few minutes with Charlie after his set was moved to tears by Charlie’s kindness and personable attitude towards his fans.

We were thrilled to have Charlie come by last night and hope to see him again soon.

Charlie with comedian friends Steve White (left) and William Stephenson.

To see Charlie the next time he comes to the club, be sure to keep a daily eye on our schedule.

“Despite the frigid temperatures and the biting insects, despite plagues of grasshoppers that stripped the landscape clean in the mid-1870s, hordes of immigrants arrived from eastern Canada, the United States, Britain and many parts of Europe after 1870. All were in search of new opportunities and a better life following Manitoba’s entry into Canadian confederation that year and the City of Winnipeg’s incorporation in 1873. Almost overnight, mosquitoes or not, Winnipeg was the gateway to North America’s ‘Last Best West.’” — from Crossroads of the Continent, Barbara Huck, editor

Transitions

Where rivers meet, you can be sure that people will gather in great numbers: to trade; to exchange stories, customs and traditions; to seek a common security — and to thrive. In Winnipeg, the city by the Forks, the rivers in question are the Red and the Assiniboine.

And for thousands of years they came to the forks of these two prairie waterways — and they continue to do so. They come for many reasons: this is the gateway city to the Great Plains of North America; a place where perspectives change; where things begin anew; where strength of character and self-determination are bred in the bone. This is also where history, art, and culture are distinguished by turning points.

I too came to Winnipeg, a city I had always known about vaguely, but for whatever reason was not sufficiently motivated to actually visit. But now I realize what I might have missed. Mea culpa Winnipeg.

Preparing the land

Somewhere between two and four billion years ago (give or take a few million), monumental planetary forces, tectonic shifts, and grinding glaciation created a landscape that today is the Red River Valley — stretching for hundreds of kilometres. At its heart’s core is Winnipeg.

In many ways this tabula rasa and immense flat plain was the ideal canvas on which pivotal moments in Canadian history would be painted. It is a landscape of extremes in terms of climate, but also one on which both subtle and bold brush strokes can be applied. This is a landscape that has an inherent duality: formidable challenges and hard-won victories. And both reflect the sense of freedom engendered by this expansive, no-holds-barred, and unbounded land. The First Nations and Métis people came to know this emancipation well, and multitudes of immigrants from far and wide also discovered that in Winnipeg opportunity and freedom of expression take on a whole new meaning.

This is a part of Canada where a unique sense of space and heightened perception were instilled in the landscape over a very long period of time. Imagine an immense body of water — the great Lake Agassiz — covering the almost 650,000 square kilometres of what today is Manitoba in the wake of the implacable but retreating glaciers. Then consider the ceaseless drainage of that lake until two principal rivers remained; each wandering at will across the vast lake bottom. What had originally been the North American craton — and this continent’s geological core — would become flat, boundless, and liberated terrain.

And there at the geographical centre of North America, you will find the city of Winnipeg.

A paragon of urban virtue

Given the immense clearing away that these geological forces created, I am not surprised that what today is Winnipeg would become the great meeting place on the verge of the Great Plains as well as the breadbasket of North America. Anthropologically speaking, homo sapiens sapiens does tend to follow the trails of other species: bison, beaver, caribou. We are opportunists. And so to cut to the chase (the pun is intended), this continental corridor became the way and the means. And to some extent it was quite simple marketing, a kind of outsourcing.

Stylish felt hats in Europe meant beaver pelts, and the great North American fur trade over which nations would do battle, also extended to the forks of the Red and the Assiniboine which was an important trading spot for First Nations people as early as 6000 BCE. Much later, the Europeans would arrive, and an eventual monopolistic merger of giants like the North West Company and Hudson’s Bay Company (“Canada’s Merchants” and the largest commercial corporation of its time) would prove the economic feasibility of doing business way out here in the midst of nowhere. These abundant natural resources/riches would continue to arrive here, brought by many thousands of indigenous people who followed the centuries-old river and land trade routes. The eventual route to the markets of Europe would of course be through Hudson’s Bay. And what today is Manitoba was part of the Hudson’s Bay watershed and of the royal charter granted “the Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson Bay.”

Abundant resources of course would mean continued westward expansion, colonization, the inevitable clash of cultures, a “national dream” of a transcontinental railway uniting east and west, a major rebellion, military might and the imposition of the forces of the state, a new northwest police force, and — despite boom and bust times — an economy that would eventually build a one-of-a-kind city on the Canadian prairie.

And when you visit Winnipeg for the first time, I think there is no better way to get a full sense of this great flow of events than to do an orientation walking tour of first The Forks, and then the Grain Exchange District.

At the former, you will come to a better understanding of the simple but significant importance of the confluence of the Red and the Assiniboine. And at a time when our cities are often struggling to regenerate themselves in order to avoid the trap of mindless megalopolis and retain a human scale in their communities, you will also learn a lesson in urban renewal at The Forks.

Many cities have rediscovered their waterfronts and spent great sums of money to revive them in order that they become re-integrated into the city and — here again is the key Winnipeg theme — meeting places for citizenry. Well, Winnipeg has a waterfront too, and after much insightful design, money well-spent, and political commitment The Forks have been redeveloped in such a way as to be both an integral, people-friendly part of contemporary Winnipeg, as well as a tangible archive of western Canada heritage.

A National Historic Site, The Forks is also a significant archeological site where evidence of aboriginal camp sites have been found from as long ago as 6000 BCE. In the 1700s, it was one of the most strategic locations in the West in terms of the fur trade. By the 1800s steamboats were making their way north from the U.S. By the 20th century it had become a large railway junction. But when new marshalling yards were built outside the city, the municipal authorities (and other committed citizens of Winnipeg) began to restore this very important site, as part of the revitalization of the downtown core.

Also a National Historic Site, Winnipeg’s Grain Exchange District is another example of how a city can stay true to its architectural heritage and integrate it with some of the most stunning modernist architecture I have seen in my recent travels.

Known for its terracotta and cut-stone architecture (and the exquisite details you will find everywhere you look in this core area of the city), Winnipeg at one point was nicknamed the “Chicago of the North” because of the “skyscrapers” built in the Chicago School style at the turn of the 20th century. As the economic and financial heartbeat of western Canada (because of its importance to the global wheat and other grains market), the Grain Exchange District is still home to some of the finest examples of this style of architecture. I say “still” because not only were they not torn down, but they have been restored and refurbished. For students of architecture, design, and urban planning especially (amateur or otherwise) the walking tour of the Grain Exchange District will reveal clearly why the “everything old is new again” principle of urban development is critical to the health and well-being of any city.

And in the restored downtown area of Winnipeg, you will also get a lesson in the successful integration and juxtaposition of architectural styles. The slide show “Architectural Winnipeg” will, I think, prove my point. However, I want to draw your attention to one particular architectural gem in Winnipeg, and that is the Esplanade Riel Bridge (the image at the top of this page). Opened in 2004, the bridge links Winnipeg and St. Boniface but symbolically it also serves as an eloquent reminder of how this city epitomizes the cultural alliances and connectivity at the core of the Canadian “vertical mosaic.” As the historical evidence in Winnipeg manifestly shows, this part of the Canadian ethos is always a work in progress.

Space and self-expression

I will leave it to a meteorologist to explain the climatic conditions that create the extraordinary light of this landscape, and how its quality and intensity amplify vision and perception. However, I must acknowledge its astounding clarity and the sense of spaciousness it produces in combination with a limitless sky and unrestricted topography. Landscape does indeed shape culture, and as numerous residents I interviewed suggested, this openness is a major element in the culture of Winnipeg.

This is further supported by the fact that in Winnipeg today there are over 100 ethnic groups and over 80 languages spoken; and it is home to the largest concentration of French-Canadians west of the Great Lakes.

I am also not surprised therefore that Winnipeg has become a major arts destination. There are so many stories to be told and no shortage of media in which to tell them.

Whether you “read” the stories of Winnipeg through the medium of the visual arts, music, dance, architecture, or ethnography, you will encounter common themes and issues: the frontier experience; the struggle for self-determination; the validation of the alternative and individual vision; the collective sense of self; the intellectual courage to affirm universal concepts within a distinct and dynamic geographic context. And perhaps most importantly, Winnipeg is a clear illustration of why the arts are an industry that not only has a direct impact on “the bottom line” but also on the city’s quality of life.

To sum up this part of my tribute to Winnipeg, I will borrow words from Thin Air: the Winnipeg International Writers Festival.

In the spirit of self-confidence and self-awareness that I experienced everywhere in Winnipeg, the Thin Air website gives 100 reasons why people should support this venture. Here are my favourites:

Thin Air:

(a) believes in a literate society;

(b) is caffeine for the spirit;

(c) inspires kids to read;

(d) captures the imagination;

(e) indulges dreamers;

(f) is having a long-term affair with the library;

(g) is a a perennial adventure;

(h) can change your mind.

For more on the arts and Winnipeg, see the Recommended Websites below.

The cusp of Canadian history

Increasingly travellers (baby-boomers especially) are allowing themselves the luxury and time of engaging in historical travel, and exploring the universal issues inherent in the “stories” of other cultures. As the world, in one sense, has indeed gotten smaller and as global crises seem endless, travellers are getting some solace and perspective from the shared experiences they find in historical travel.

Universal historical issues are very much part of the Winnipeg consciousness. As the gateway to North America’s “Last Best West,” Winnipeg is also the point of departure for exploring some of the most important historical events in Canadian history; history that did not happen without struggle and sacrifice.

Born in what was then called the Red River Settlement, Louis Riel, “The Father of Manitoba” is one of the most important and controversial figures in Canadian history. Emerging as leader of the Métis people, he also was the leader — both spiritual and political — of the 1885 North-West Rebellion, which was a turning point in the evolution of this nation. He still provokes controversy today; described variously as a patriot, traitor, hero, freedom fighter, or mad man. This period of time in Manitoba and Canadian history is a complex one; very symptomatic of quintessentially Canadian “issues” and of the birth pangs of what today is a very multicultural nation.

The Manitoba Museum of Man is one of the principal archival institutions in Winnipeg that is also full of narrative. Visually and aesthetically it has been deemed one of the best in the world. It is also a very interdisciplinary institution whose traveller-friendly displays will engage you on an intellectual, emotional, and philosophical level. This is one of those museum experiences that really make you ponder the nature of the human species. In addition, this is an example of the new breed of museum that creates thoughtful interaction, creating an awareness of the levels of human history and layers of meaning in “the last best west.” The dramatic and splendid mural of an Ojibway creation legend by First Nations artist Daphne Odjig at the entrance to the galleries is worth the price of admission in itself.

As a city, Winnipeg is also an historic and heritage site of many different events. One of these was also a defining moment in Canadian history, the Winnipeg General Strike. These dramatic events (may 15 to June 29, 1919) would pit unionists against non-unionists, citizen against citizen, workers against media moguls and other power brokers, and ultimately the federal government against the strikers. As Joe Schlesinger, one of Canada’s most respected journalists has said, “History hurts.” And there have been painful moments in Winnipeg and Manitoba’s past — the Great Depression and the “Dirty Thirties” hit Winnipeg hard — but even these bad times had the eventual effect of creating a collective mindset that emphasizes self-determination and the rewards of hard work.

A Canadian literary icon

Winnipeg also has always been fertile ground in terms of literature. One of Canada’s best known authors on the international scene is Gabrielle Roy. She is also one of the most recognized in terms of awards for her writing. Until recently she was the only Canadian writer to ever win the prestigious Prix Fémina. As a winner of Canada’s Governor General’s Award on three separate occasions and as the first woman elected to the Royal Society of Canada, she is one of our most prominent literary figures.

Gabrielle Roy’s work is also highly autobiographical, blending the fine art of story-telling with her own personal experiences growing up in St. Boniface. And although she spent most of her adult life outside Manitoba, her writing always brought her home to tell the story of the French-Canadian and the Francomanitoban experience.

She has legions of fans around the world for whom her childhood home in St. Boniface is a literary pilgrimage place. The house has been lovingly restored on Rue Deschambault. The street name is also the name of the collection of short stories (in English Street of Riches) that for decades has been studied widely in Canadian schools, especially by students of French as a second language. The prairie landscape and the immigrant experience in Canada’s West are principal themes in her work, but it is the intimacy of her style and narrative voice that has made her one of the most respected authors worldwide. For those of us who have a special place in our hearts for this profound writer, a visit to her home is also an experience in being chez soi.

“One knows less about one’s own destiny than about anything else on earth.” — Gabrielle Roy

A prairie hub

A quick glance at a Google map of Winnipeg reveals why it is a city that is centred in what once was known as “The New World.” (Zoom out and you will see what I mean.)

And as you can see, Winnipeg is also the point of departure for numerous meaningful travel experiences near and far in the province. For example, a day trip to the town of Steinbach to the southwest and its Mennonite Heritage Village will introduce you to another part of the Manitoba cultural tapestry.

Winnipeg is also centred in a metaphysical sense: this is a city where an enlightened awareness of human society is both text and context.

To view two short videos about Winnipeg, click on the links below.

(a) A stroll through The Plug-in Institute of Contemporary Art

(b) La Vieille Gare restaurant

Recommended Reading

(a) Crossroads of the Continent: A History of the Forks of the Red and Assiniboine Rivers, Barbara Huck, editor

(b) Pelicans to Polar Bears: Watching Wildlife in Manitoba, by Catherine Senecal

(c) Au pays de Gabrielle Roy, by Annette Saint-Pierre

(d) Street of Riches, by Gabrielle Roy

To view the slideshow “Architectural Winnipeg” click here.

You may be surprised to know that…

Yes … Winnie the Pooh gets his name from Winnipeg.

The Man Called Intrepid (the inspiration for Ian Fleming’s hero 007) was William Stephenson; and born and raised in Winnipeg.

Winnipeg is home to the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network, the first national First Nations Peoples television network in the world.

The same architects who designed Grand Central Station in New York (Reed and Stern and Warren and Wetmore) designed Winnipeg’s Union Station.

In 1970, the number-one top selling single in the world was “American Woman,” by Winnipeg’s The Guess Who.

In part because of its cultural diversity, Winnipeg has one of the highest number of restaurants per capita in North America.

Recommended Websites

Destination Winnipeg

Travel Manitoba

The Winnipeg Art Gallery (The largest collection of contemporary Inuit art in the world)

The Plug-in Institute of Contemporary Art (Winner of the Special Prize at the Venice Bienniale in 2001)

Contemporary artist Dominique Rey

The Manitoba Museum (The Michelin Guide gives the museum its top star rating.)

The Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra

The Royal Winnipeg Ballet

Manitoba Theatre Centre

Winnipeg Fringe Theatre Festival

Jazz Winnipeg Festival and

Dig! magazine

The Forks

The Gabrielle Roy House

The St. Boniface Museum

St. Boniface Cathedral

Fort Gibraltar

Ô Tours

Riel Tourism Bureau

Routes on the Red

The Festival du Voyageur

La Vieille Gare Restaurant

Eating Winnipeg

The Folk Arts Council of Winnipeg

The Steinbach Mennonite Heritage Village