Winnipeg is where you come back to

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/04/2023 (886 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE Prairie cold was beyond bitter, the snow was coming down in buckets and the winds were ferocious on the night of Feb 1, 2022. Not exactly a friendly welcome back to Winnipeg after having spent six and a half years in Vancouver.

So moments after coming down the escalator at James Richardson Airport, I was asking “WTF is wrong with me?” As I sat in the back of the hack, I was starting to recall decades of talk shows I hosted in Winnipeg where that same question was asked and answered by so many guests, and callers. Is there something wrong with us?

Why do we live in a place where, for many weeks, the sun doesn’t even rise until after 8 a.m. and disappears after lunch? Is there something wrong with us? Why are we OK with that? And why do some people who have left for warmer climes keep coming back?

The first time I left Winnipeg, I went to Calgary, and after two years of launching Talk Radio there, I became the host of a U.S. national show based in Tampa. Did I miss Winnipeg, when I was living on the Gulf Coast of Florida? You bet. No, I wasn’t homesick for the scraping of ice from my windshield at 5 a.m. when the wind chill can hit -40, or worse.

What I was missing was friendship: the number and quality of friends I had made in this community were unlike what I’ve encountered in any other place I had lived. And here, we can see our friends almost every day.

On that February night, the howling winds were louder than a train horn, and I was staring into the late-night bleakness. I had to remind myself that I would warm up quickly once I became reacquainted with the friends I had left behind in the summer of 2015. I also had no doubt that it wouldn’t be long before I made some new friends.

In B.C., I used to joke that I made more friends in Winnipeg in five minutes than I made in Vancouver in five years.

It was around this time of year, two decades ago, when the potholes were looking large enough to swallow cattle. And so one morning in April of 2003, I opened my show with “Welcome to Winnipeg, a city with potholes, governed by arseholes” A handful of people called in to tell me how rude and offensive that was. But most had a good chuckle.

In what other city could I get away with that? Having worked almost everywhere, the answer is easy: none. We’re very good at laughing at ourselves. Please, don’t change.

Now that we have renewed old acquaintances, let’s dive into a conversation we need to start taking seriously.

The provincial election is scheduled to take place Oct. 3. Ignore the idea that it might be postponed because of a federal election; despite the fondest hope of Poilievre Conservatives, the next federal election is in 2025. That gives them two more years to tell the greatest country on Earth that it’s broken. So our next Manitoba provincial election is less than six months away.

At the moment, the polls say Winnipeg wants to take a risk on the Selinger-Kinew NDP. The NDP keeps talking about the Pallister-Stefanson PCs. And since nobody else in media is willing to say it, I might as well be the badass and tell you the uncomfortable truth.

In 2015, when I left Manitoba, my neighbours couldn’t wait to kick Greg Selinger to the curb. Now, the polls say they want to take a risk on the same body with a fresher face.

I am not pathologically and ideologically against the colour Orange. I voted provincially for the Orange team in B.C. I respected the governing philosophy of John Horgan. I support the idea of Albertans showing the door to the provincial conservatives known as the UCP and replacing them with the NDP’s Rachel Notley.

But unless and until I am convinced that Wab Kinew has a view of government that’s more inspiring than the Selinger disaster, I think that a vote for the Manitoba NDP is risky business. I look forward to meeting Wab Kinew and breaking bread with him.

I don’t know if he’ll want to meet with me. He may feel that he owns more than enough real estate inside the heads of Winnipeg media and so he may prefer not to have a relationship with me. That was the choice Greg Selinger made.

How did that work out for you, Greg?

Charles Adler is a longtime political commenter and podcaster. His column appears on Thursday and Saturday.