After the Revolution of ’25 – so-called because it began in 25 cities across Canada in 2025, of which Winnipeg was one; also called the Canadian Revolution, after it spread to the rest of country, although that name quickly fell out of favour – which saw, in Winnipeg at least (it was a different situation in each city), the rise of The Comedienne – who also went by Quinn or The Clown or Jester, in some circles – who oversaw the systematic and purposeful breakdown of ordered society, the consequences of which New Winnipeg is still dealing with today.
It started small, as all revolutions do. It only needed a spark to ignite what turned into a blaze that engulfed every building, every institution, every home in Winnipeg. And that spark occurred when Smoky Tiger played Times Change(d) and debuted a song called Sht Just Aint Right, which soon became the anthem for a wave of anarchy and destruction that washed over the city, that flooded its rivers, that, as its fires burned, gave rise to thick, billowing clouds of smoke.
The Legislative Building was burned, hollowed out, its treasury raided and torched in a symbolic show of anti-capitalist excess. The Law Courts, too, burned, and its tiger-stripe-like flames were fanned toward the Archives, which disappeared to something less than a husk of its former self; the Eaton’s building, the Manitoba Hydro building, the Canada Life Centre, even the Canadian Museum For Human Rights – they all went up in plumes of noxious smoke.
Statues were indiscriminately toppled: Queen Elizabeth (again), the Cenotaph, Taras Shevchenko, the Holocaust Monument; the 1919 streetcar was righted; and even Louis Riel and Father Noel-Joseph Ritchot were pushed off their bases.
It was all too much for Winnipeg: the public service, weighted under its own heavy burden, collapsed, and so there were fewer and fewer firefighters and paramedics and police to contain the flames. By the time the food supply-chain networks collapsed, lawlessness was the only rule. 7-Elevens were excavated of their wares. Houses were raided by roving bands of vigilantes, stealing what little food they could find, items – weapons – they could use.
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To read the rest of this review — and more by Steve Schmolaris — visit his website Bad Gardening Advice.
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Steve Schmolaris is the founder of the Schmolaris Prize, “the most prestigious prize in all of Manitoba,” which he first awarded in 1977. Each year, he awards the prize to the best album of the year. He does not have a profession but, having come from money (his father, “the Millionaire of East Schmelkirk,” left him his fortune when he died in 1977), Steve is a patron of the arts. Inspired by the exquisite detail of a holotype, the collective intelligence of slime mold, the natural world and the suffering inherent within it — and also music (fuck, he loves music!) — Steve has long been writing reviews of Winnipeg artists’ songs and albums at his website Bad Gardening Advice, leading to the publication of a book of the same name.
