Sometimes, when I’m out walking, usually around St. Johns Park, through the cemetery, over to the Louis Slotin memorial bench, where I sit, looking out at the river flowing by, or, if it’s winter, at the ice, I think about whether or not there’s a place in Winnipeg – a piece of the ground – that’s ever not been stepped on. Undoubtedly that place would be small, perhaps the size of a footprint, perhaps smaller – for Winnipeg’s history is, relatively speaking for Canada, to say nothing about its occupation pre-settlement, long. Could there be a place where no one’s been?
Let’s say that each footprint leaves a mark, an imprint. A red one. It doesn’t matter whether it’s one footprint or a million footprints, a red print remains. Over time, the land would become redder and redder. How much of it would remain not red? Any of it? Have we stepped everywhere in Winnipeg there is to step?
I’d want to see the untrammeled places – places where no one has ever stepped, where no truck or car or ATV has ever driven, where no plow or forklift has upturned. Not to step on it. Not to turn it red. But simply to see what kind of place it would be. What, for whatever reason, does such a place look like? Forested, no doubt. Covered in thick and prickly brush, most likely. A place that repels us. A place not worth the effort to wade through. A place where it’s better to go around.
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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.
