A welcome down-to-earth slice of Minnesota nice

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/08/2024 (418 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Standing in the rain outside what was then the Walker Theatre with friends, my teenage self struck up a conversation with another group which had travelled from Minneapolis for the show.

Older and cooler than my group, these 20-somethings were looking for a ride to an after-party. In my adolescent naiveté and Manitoba friendliness, I offered them a ride.

Life has moments like these: moments whose importance can only be seen in hindsight, invisible roads and pathways which only reveal themselves once we’re partway down them.

In my case, that night at the Walker has become a 25-year journey strewn with friendship and adventure, road trips, concerts and pre-internet shenanigans that shall remain unspoken of. Our Minnesota friends have hosted us in their homes, they’ve shared laughter on our porch in Winnipeg and they’ve become an adopted family we delight in seeing once or twice a year.

In the early months of the pandemic, already reeling in isolation and uncertainty, their city burned in the aftermath of the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

We rallied the group again, this time by video link from each of our locked-down homes. Reaching across closed borders and through tear gas and plague, we checked in with one another, expressed solidarity and hoped for a time when we could be together again.

And it was on that late-night video call that we tuned in together to a 1 a.m. press conference with Minnesota’s governor, Tim Walz.

On some social media stream a couple of months earlier, I had first seen Gov. Walz as he was holding an outdoor press conference in the first terrifying weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A woman in the back of the crowd, holding her preschool-age son, raised her hand to ask a question. She broke into tears, wanting to know how she could keep her job if daycares were closed, and how she could keep her family safe in the wake of this unknown threat.

Gov. Walz left the podium to answer her question eye-to-eye, and he said he didn’t have all the answers, that no one did and that his family was also struggling. He promised he’d find answers and he’d communicate them as soon as possible.

During this time our own premier, Brian Pallister, had responded to a similar question with this advice: “The government can’t save you. You have to save yourself.”

Walz’s response was shockingly, nakedly human, and a reminder leadership takes many forms.

When the conversations here at home turn to our neighbours to the south, the humanity and concern of Minnesotans like my friends, and like Gov. Walz, give me comfort the modern world is not yet entirely circling the drain.

So when Walz was touted as a finalist for the role of vice-president of the United States a few weeks ago, I reached out to our Minnesota friends once again, to express my hope a new kind of leader might finally take the helm and remind us what it is to be human and also what it is to share responsibility for the life we co-create.

There is a hunger for normalcy that has been growing since the pandemic began, and is now becoming too strong to ignore.

There is a hunger for normalcy that has been growing since the pandemic began, and is now becoming too strong to ignore. This re-humanizing of leadership erupted here at home, too, and for similar reasons.

When photos of Premier Wab Kinew changing a car tire went viral a few months ago, it was in celebration a glimmer of humanity in our leadership.

The internet was briefly overrun with images of Kinew Photoshopped into other helpful situations: removing bannock from the oven, milking a cow, making taco salad.

While silly, these moments are the result of our hunger pangs: the manifest longing for a normalcy we have long felt bereft of.

Simple acts of friendship, compassion and honesty seem rare nowadays, but in that reality a new narrative and quest for stability are beginning to take shape. A movement is rising to eclipse the weirdness of the last few years.

Unexpectedly, I’ll get to see my Minnesota friends next month.

I was partway through writing this column when one of them phoned me and, with the same broad Midwestern accent becoming so familiar via press conferences and rallies, gave me the sad news our original Walker Theatre group had lost a key member.

And as I drive south for the funeral, along a highway familiar to many of us, I’ll be thinking about the choices we make and the paths they lead us down, and hope for a world where acts of friendship, generosity and humility ripple outward beyond borders and politics to remind us all of our joyous, connected, complicated humanity.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca