Friends of Upper Fort Garry could learn from Brussels
Sun Feb 10 2008
HAD a call recently from a reader who said the Free Press should be ashamed for promoting the construction of a condominium project on the north bank of the Assiniboine River but neglecting to say that so doing would interfere with the Upper Fort Garry site.
Huh? I called back and discovered the complainer had not a clue about the issue. He didn't know that the condo project discussed in an editorial was on Assiniboine, blocks away from the old gate, all that remains of the Upper Fort Garry on Main Street.
But he didn't care that he was wrong. He was convinced that everyone involved in the issue simply wants to put development ahead of history, and that the project that he was unaware of was a part of the conspiracy.
To each his own, I suppose. No doubt his uninformed opinions are not representative of those of most Winnipeggers. But his anger and outrage over nothing, really, seemed evidence that Gordon Sinclair might be right -- the save Upper Fort Garry issue increasingly is not about fact but about symbol.
Well, what about the symbol, the forlorn gate itself, tucked away in a little lot off Main Street, where it has been out of sight and out of mind pretty much forever.
But what's wrong with that? As hidden away as it is, I've been aware of the gate all my life. I've seen it on crests, stationery and promotions for as long as I can remember, and not just because I grew up in Fort Garry and identified with the gate far more than I ever have with Lower Fort Garry, the big impressive tourist attraction at Selkirk that I assure you I have visited less often than I have the little "forgotten" gate.
I went back to the gate recently and found it as nondescript as ever, a portal into what long ago had been a commercial enterprise where some significant political events in Manitoba's history took place, but not that many.
Winnipeg is filled with places where some things of significance took place. By that criterion we should be building interpretive centres everywhere in Winnipeg, starting, perhaps, by turning Main Street into a pedestrian mall lined with "interpretive" kiosks and peopled with actors in period costumes representative of the entire history of the city. And damn the costs. It's history!
The point is that simply because something is of historical significance does not mean that it should to be turned into a Disneyland.
The gate is what it is. The $12 million concept plan for it, however fraught with good intentions and hype, is not. It's an attempt to make more of the gate than should be made of it -- to stick it in our faces and force us to see it for something that it isn't.
I look at the concept plan and what I see is a very contemporary design that will look and feel hackneyed in no time at all. I see an attraction that Winnipeggers will flock to for a season and then lose interest. What was Dieter Brock's sneer abut the attractions of Winnipeg? How many times can you go to the Assiniboine Park Zoo?
To extend the Disney analogy, the original rides at its theme parks are passé in comparison to the new ones. The Wow! factor of the concept plan to somehow transform a gate into a virtual Upper Fort Garry will have a similar shelf life.
The gate is old and out of the way. It can't and shouldn't be made new and brought into a limelight at centre stage, the naming rights of which no doubt are up for grabs. It has dignity and significance in its little corner of Winnipeg, and that should be respected.
Which is not to say that it can't be improved upon. But does linking it with coloured pavements and planters and fake "period" buildings and carefully scripted "factual" story boards and maybe rides in York boats accomplish that? I think not.
What would improve it would be a remake of the park in which it stands. The signage and "interpretive" panels there now are dreadful. Everything shows signs of neglect.
The original idea to link the gate to a residential development, park and market would better ensure the gate's place and significance than a theme park where visitors take a moment to view the gate followed by hours spent in an air-conditioned theatre nearby where artifacts compete with those at the museum for no good reason.
My point is that the gate is special in its small way.
Imagine what a travesty it would be to build a marina with an interpretive centre, restaurants selling ancient fare and offering glass-bottomed-boat rides around the Little Mermaid in Copenhagen harbour. That's kind of what is being imagined for the gate.
Why can't we spruce the place up and create a really nice, quiet place for the gate and let its significance grow with its age?
Ask anyone what is the most iconic feature of the city of Brussels and they will tell you it is not the uber modern and forbidding European Parliament buildings or the palaces or the museums and galleries.
They'll tell you it is the Manneken Pis, a 60-centimetre-tall bronze statue of a naked boy pissing into a pot. It takes up a tiny space in little alley, the same space it has occupied since 1619 -- almost 400 years.
Its significance, and its impact, have grown ever greater over time for the very reason that no one tried to make more of it than it was.
gerald.flood@freepress.mb.ca
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