How elaborate a wake-up call is necessary?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 30/03/2024 (579 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On a typically cold mid-February day in 1942, the Second World War landed quite literally on our doorsteps.

German aircraft streaked over the Winnipeg skyline, dropping bombs on the bridges.

Uniformed Nazi soldiers marched in formation down Portage Avenue, while the CBC airwaves were commandeered for German propaganda.

German tanks guarded checkpoints in and out of downtown, and in Charleswood, Nazis stopped a Winnipeg transit bus to search the passengers.

Main Street was quickly renamed “Hitlerstrasse” and the front page of the Free Press proclaimed Hitler comes to Winnipeg, with full-page photos of the invasion within its pages.

Winnipeggers had been warned the Nazis were on the way, but the scale of the co-ordination was unprecedented, astonishing and terrorizing to citizens. Winnipeggers wept on the grounds of the legislature.

Outside Carnegie Library, armed soldiers guarded a pile of burning books. An apartment on Osborne was looted for furniture and the mayor and premier were locked up at Lower Fort Garry, which had been repurposed as a penal camp.

The Union Jack was brought down and the chilling Nazi flag was run up the flagpoles.

But these “Nazis” were RCAF reservists and volunteers. Their costumes had been borrowed from Hollywood. The burning books had previously been selected for discard, and the Luftwaffe planes and German tanks were repainted Canadian military equipment. The munitions dropped on bridges were just smoke bombs, and the politicians were eventually released from imprisonment.

This was “If Day” — an elaborate drill, enacted as an over-the-top plea to boost Victory Bond Sales to fund the war effort.

As implausible as it seems, this co-ordination of hundreds of people, infrastructure and resources was undertaken to increase the immediacy of the need for civilian action against the war, to urge them to consider “What if?”

The tactic worked. Winnipeggers opened their wallets and bought more than $3 million in Victory Bonds. If Day was reported in international newspapers, and other cities launched their own versions, though none as elaborate or far-reaching as Winnipeg’s.

How, now, might we react to such a visceral rendering of world events?

We live in an era of cascading crises that seem to have similarly begun to scratch at our door. The wars, invasions and occupations, the climate, the emergence and re-emergence of disease, the slow simmering of neo-fascism that laps at our southern border. How might we respond if any of these were brought directly onto our streets?

A strange unease has hung over us these winter months. We waited for our yearly deep freeze that never came. We skated on a much shortened river trail for mere days instead of months. We rarely needed snow shovels before mid-February.

We waited for a season that used to arrive like clockwork, but was altered and delayed almost beyond recognition.

Without fanfare and Hollywood costumes and explosions, this year nevertheless brought us a glimpse into a “what if” future again for Winnipeg.

A river that barely freezes in winter. Summers with days too hot to enjoy. Beaches closed due to algae, invasive species and E. coli. The devastation of our century-old urban forest. Months on end with smoke-filled streets. Hundreds of people displaced to Winnipeg by fire and flood.

Like our predecessors waiting for a staged invasion, we’ve known something ominous is coming, but like them, we haven’t anticipated the swiftness or severity with which life could change.

And yet, there is still a marked lack of urgency. There are no concrete directives to stave off this crisis, no bonds to buy this time.

Most of the possibilities for salvation now lie with leadership, and yet their hands are often tied by the need to feed the economy. Like the pile outside Carnegie Library in 1942, what needs to burn this time to get our attention?

What if you’ve already skated on the river for the last time? What if you’ve already had your last swim at the cabin? What if you’ve already seen the last monarch butterfly? What if the crisis we thought we had time to plan for is already upon us?

If we can recognize the threat already among us, and if we can mobilize collectively and globally, and if our leaders take some creative risks, we might be able to appreciate the ever-shortening window of time we have to make the changes our planet demands.

Because unlike If Day, this is not a drill.

rebecca.chambers@freepress.mb.ca