Winnipeg, oh how I love thee.

Quick administrative note: One I don’t even believe I have to make but here we are. I wrote most of this, and planned all of it, months before the current shitstorm of US/Canada crap started up. It’s all scary, messed up, and wrong as fuck. So, yeah, this was meant to be a letter, and a silly one at that, to a place I love and just a bit of fun. But now it threatens to read like “An American trying to suck up to Canada” which, I mean it isn’t not that, but it was that before any of this, is my point.

I am from, and spent my first 38 yrs (mostly) in NY. I have lived in Portland, OR since. But you know a place I love? A place I truly adore and root for?

Winnipeg.

Am I from Winnipeg? No. Have I ever been to Manitoba? Definitely not. Do I feel I spiritually align with the area? That’s ridiculous. Yet here I am, the embodiment of Winnipeg pride.

But why?

Could it became I truly, and deeply, love the films of John Paizs? You could make an argument for it.

Might it be because I honestly think Richard Condie’s The Big Snit is one of the funniest animated shorts ever produced? Maybe, I suppose to an extent.

Winnie the Pooh was named after the town, that might be a clue, but who can say.

Hey, technically Anna Paquin was born in Winnipeg (but raised in NZ) and I do love True Blood as we all know.

Thom Allison, Pree in Killjoys, also a Winnipegger. Bif Naked, too.

But no, none are these are why. Confusion Corner isn’t why. The Halfway Tree isn’t why.

Naw, it’s not a thing, or group of famous people. It’s just…Winnipeg. First of all, both Manitoba and Winnipeg are just fucking fun to say. You know they are. They’re fun.

Say both.

See?

Fun.

Plus Winnipeg has kinda of a crap reputation in a buncha places (and if you use the comments here to talk shit about it or use one of the crappy nicknames just know your comment will be sent to spam, so enjoy that) and I do tend to align myself with places that get a lot of shit and unite around being a good place regardless.

But I do wonder if it is just some undefinable thing, a strange, impossible to pinpoint love out of nowhere that has caused me to become Winnipeg’s Number One American Fan. It just is. It’s just reality now.

To which end, why even write this? Because it’ll get cached by search engines and people looking for Winnipeg things will end up here and go “Hey. I, too, love Winnipeg. Right on.” And feel a bit better about their day.

This is for them. The Winnipeggers, the Manitobans, the fans of Sawing for Teens.

And this is for me. Because I can’t stop laughing at the sheer silliness of this post, even though every word of it is true.

But, you know, such is life. In Winnipeg. I guess. Since I’ve never been there.

Yet.