Winter looms, and the dark comes with it

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 10/11/2023 (701 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Uncle’z Charlie Pizza seems to be gone, but the Dhaba Box has arrived — at least that’s the way it appears from the building’s sign on McPhillips Street at Selkirk Avenue, the visual evidence of the fast-food tree-ring of summer and winter, feast and famine.

The building is the same, the plywood still on two windows, the white PVC pipe belching wet steam.

One Google Dhaba Box review already: “What happened to unclez Charlies pizza.” It’s less a question than a statement.

One dream extinguished perhaps, another begun.

It’s the first day of the half-and-half. A weekend time change has meant it is dark when I leave the house for work on Monday morning, and dark when I get home in the evening.

I’m precisely seven days early for the Ides of November, if you even knew there was such a thing. (The Ides of March have always gotten all the press.)

There’s a caterpillar of No. 30 buses at the McPhillips and Logan stop northbound: the 30, 34, 33 and 36 are all nose-to-tail heading north as they snail up McPhillips, bull-nosing sideways into traffic so they can fit under the rail bridge as the bus lane ends.

Don’t let anyone tell you the walk isn’t different when it’s night instead of day — it is completely different. Inside-out different.

The impassive blank windows during the long run of daylight are now lit from behind: a building below Pacific Avenue with no personality whatsoever now offers a triptych rectangle view, first of a young man in a pressed shirt looking intently at a computer spreadsheet, next of an empty conference room with a boardroom table, mesh-backed, jet-black chairs and two coffee machines, and finally of an empty room full of stacked chairs. A three-act play, perhaps entitled Layoffs by head office.

At the Japanese/Canadian Association of Manitoba, an impassive tall wooden fence is now lit from behind by bright floodlights, so as you walk by, through the cracks between fence palings, you get an old-time, herky-jerky, frame-by-frame movie reveal of a Japanese garden you didn’t know even existed.

A transport truck goes by, the lights of its trailer flicking on and off in uneven staccato, an unwitting advertisement for bad connections.

The tall concrete towers of the grain elevator off to the west have nothing to say, the railway tracks rusty. A single red light flashes atop the towers, warning aircraft of the grain towers’ hulk.

Outside the Grand Royal Legacy — an interesting and arbitrary collection of words — something involved is going on in a low-slung black Honda, surprising events revealed by the high flare of a front-seat cigarette lighter. Three faces, illuminated, all looking your way. Best to look straight ahead.

It is, just right now, falling into as full a dark as a street-lit city will allow.

It is also, just right now, the right temperature to measure the success of streetside attic insulation. The roofs are all quietly admitting their hidden failings.

I see a cat in a window, a brown-and-black dog in a front porch perched as though he’s studying a computer. But he is just watching for me, ready to bark. And bark, he does.

Kids in winter boots walking on both sides of a parent, the distinctive clunk of their oversized footwear familiar, as if only yesterday I had my own exact same pair.

Mornings, only a few houses are waking up: an occasional bright-lit tableau of kids and breakfast, here and there the bundled dog walkers, the single constant guy all in dark clothing on a low-slung e-bike, hopelessly fast, running the stop signs and taking right turns that sweep wide into the opposing lane. I fear that one day he will meet his maker on that turn — or, at the very least, the high hood of an oversized pickup.

Evenings, though, are the preserve of busy houses holding back the night with walls and windows: block after block is short vignettes of lives in motion, families in living rooms, wall-mount televisions winking colour, the sound of someone practising piano, the occasional snatch of angry words.

It is a buffet of life.

And outside, I am black night, I am invisible, I am watching for the unearthly glow of white ice on dark pavement so I can walk otherwise and never give myself away with the hard crunch of heavy steps.

It is so quiet. There is a brush of fine falling snow against the side of my face. Barely a touch. A spray of broken bus shelter glass scatters on the pavement.

The celebration of the Ides of November used to include leading a white lamb along the Via Sacra (the Sacred Way), before its sacrifice to the God Jupiter.

The intersection of lambs and gods seems almost constant, but also always seems to end badly for the lambs.

Best of luck to the Dhaba Box. So long, Uncle’z Charlie Pizza. The clock turns.

Russell Wangersky is the Comment Editor at the Free Press. He can be reached at russell.wangersky@freepress.mb.ca