If Buildings Were Vegetables...

be+gin (bi'gin) vb.   1. to start or cause to start (something or to do something).   2. to bring or come into being for the first time;  arise or originate.   3. to start to say or speak.

If buildings were vegetables, would we keep our cash at the Credit Onion?

When I first toyed with the idea of writing a blog, I had a different sort of beast in mind altogether. It was maybe 2005, a summer in which grasshoppers ranged across the prairie and thundered into Saskatchewan’s largest city like buffalo from some other year. Whether they were blown in by the furnace winds that seemed to drag everything in from everywhere that summer, or whether their sheer numbers would not allow a swiss-cheese hole to form around Saskatoon’s borders, I’ve no idea. I only knew that every damn direction in which you walked downtown, these things would fly up like so much moon dust and pepper you in the face.

Gawd, I hated Saskatoon.

I hated the very sidewalks. Many of them seemed to be more suited for ankle-turning hiking expeditions than walking to the office.

I hated its decaying centre, that ever-shrinking downtown core in which I worked. I hated the abandoned Bay building. I hated the abandoned King George hotel (which I was certain could be improved only by application of a match—not that someone didn’t try). I especially hated the bus mall, that giant misstep of civic planning just kitty-corner from City hall.

I even hated its culture, those weird diamond-in-the-rough gleams of talent that seemed to glitter unexpectedly from cowpie fields. Authors, actors, musicians and artists, talented people all, so what the hell were they doing here?! For that matter, what was I?

Most of all, though, I hated the crime. Saskatoon has always been in a heat with Regina for the title of Crime Capital of Canada, though I can’t remember if that was a year in which we won. We’re # 1 this year, but we may have been # 2 back then. But it seems we tried much harder.

So I envisioned a blog, a dark, blood-stained, graffiti-coated, broken-window, burnt-out hulk of a diatribe aimed at my very own city. Aimed at stupidity. I even went about and collected photographs, to document these travesties. And I broke out the HTML.

I started the page—“SaskApathy”, I called it—loading it daily with rants and rages and shards of appalling news. Truthfully, I didn’t have far to look. One week in particular brought out headlines in the Saskatoon Star-Phoenix that would have made the gangland jungles of L.A. blush. Ah-hah, I thought, evidence of further degradation. I’d listen to the police scanner online, something you could do back then, and the hair went up on the back of my neck. I realized that the daily news didn’t report on half of it.

How the hell, I thought, can a place so utterly flat go so amazingly fast downhill?!

“SaskApathy”, however, lasted only a month. It only ever existed on my own computer’s hard drive. Why, I wondered, hadn’t I published it yet? Surely I had enough to begin. Was it the work of maintaining it that made me hesitate? Was it pity for Saskatoon? Or was it something else?

The main answer: it was depressing the hell out of me. Beyond that, however, I was starting to see a change. The economy was changing, of course, and that had something to do with it. All of a sudden, the focus was shifting away from Alberta, and onto…Saskatchewan? Besides, what had I expected all this bitching and complaining to accomplish? It flew in the face of the many people in this town who genuinely strive to make things better.

I decided to do something different. I’ll not bore you right now with the path I took to that decision. I’m not even sure where it’s all going, but I’m going to try and do something nice for a change. I’m going to focus more on what’s going right. Maybe the rest will fall inline, now that we’re “SaskaBoom”.

I intend to provide some insight into one man’s view of Saskatoon. Along the way, I hope to show some glimmers of recent changes to the “ex-pats” who are still away. And for those who’ve never been, maybe I’ll throw some light on the burning question “Why would anyone want to live where the temperature falls to minus forty?”

I’ll still rant, of course. But hopefully I’ll do it about both the good and the bad.

Back in my grandmother’s day, newspaper columnists (remember them?) would throw a virtual “rose” to credit the good guys, and an “onion” to the bad. So that’s what I’ll do here.

Hence, the Saskatoon Credit Onion.