Bumping home in the cab. Broke my toe, and since it's -40 out, no way I'm walking home. Tried that yesterday. Two & a half miles home, in that cold. Thought I'd "test the foot." Somebody should test my head. Anyway, cab rides can be interesting.

I'm headed out of the old industrial North End, down the big boulevard to the Legislature, past the park there, the one with the little statue of William Stephenson. Hometown boy. His story starts small, seemingly not enough to warrant a statue. World War One, just another kid who signs up, gets gassed. But at least he stuck it out. Came home, started his own hardware business, based around some can opener he'd seen in England. Did well, made some money. Typical "little guy does pretty well" story. Not worth a statue though. Even a little one.

But when World War Two rolls around, he becomes something else entirely. A Man Called Intrepid. Churchill's representative to FDR. The guy who helps create MI5, the OSS & the CIA. Part of the whole story around breaking the Enigma code, he also sets up Camp X to train the Allies' secret agents, saboteurs, commandos.

And is apparently the guy Ian Fleming says he built James Bond around.

But in this town... no 007 hype. Even though Stephenson was real, helped win a real War, against real Baddies.

Most of us live in nowhere towns like this, or nowhere parts of bigger towns. And no matter where we are, we tend to think of ourselves as everyday, normal, people. Little people. The Media & the Politicians & the Rich & Powerful like to support us in that self-image. Once every 4 years they preach that it's all about the little people in the small towns, but after that... it's 24/7 for the Big Boys.

Bumpbump, bumpbump, BANG... pothole. No way to ever stop these streets from frost-heaving, I guess. People here complain about the roads, and the cold, same as anywhere else. But they know they're well off not to have to face the cold head-on, full-blast, like earlier generations did. Hard to imagine, the Ukrainians & the Mennonites, the Germans & the Poles, the Brits & the French, who'd spilt so much of each other's blood, coming here, living together. Wintering in sod houses on the open Prairie, or freezing cold shacks in the cities. But when you're little people, and you live half-buried in the ground & half-exposed to a Nature that big, that raw, it humbles you a bit. You learn how to keep your head down, to pull together. You leave the old shit in the old country's latrine.

And you learn how to wink. Like, if you're a guy lucky enough to be named Homer, and with the good fortune to be born halfway between Moose Jaw & Swift Current, and the treble true blessing to be Mennonite - well, you know that's pretty much a one-way ticket to Forgotten-town for you. But if you work hard, and you're patient, and you give your kid a better name, like Matt, maybe someday he'll get lucky, and get to make cartoons on TV. And then he can slip a wink inside the jokes he tosses into all those little towns & little peoples' homes. Like so -

This is what I'm thinking about, bouncing along in the cab, through this funny little town. Funny little city, I should probably say. 730,000 people, that's the size of places like Scranton, Youngstown, Syracuse. This one perhaps most notable for the fact that it's the world's coldest capital city. Yep, Moscow & Stockholm & Anchorage & Ottawa are cold. But this place is colder. Not unexpected, when you're 6 hours drive North of Minneapolis, 3 hours North of Fargo. They hired some hotshots to re-brand the region a few years back. Some wit/arse suggested "North of North Dakota." The branding experts from NYC didn't smile. But we did.

This past week though... -40 windchills, every day. -40 being where Celsius & Fahrenheit meet, nod stiffly, and snowshoe on in silence. Too cold to take off the gloves & shake. Cold that makes your breath freeze & fall to the ground. Cold that makes your eyes water, then flash-freezes them shut. This year, I've learned this kind of cold makes new fillings hurt like hell. Nice touch. Coupla years back, it fell to -70 Fahrenheit with the windchill. Walked to work in it, 2 and 1/2 miles each way, just so I could say I did it. 

Ummm... "I did it?" About as smart as "testing the foot."

Now what I hope you're thinking at this point is, "Wow. Not many rich people, powerful people, sexy people, smart people, are gonna rush to a town like that, right?" Right. But it does make the place a good test-zone for what human beings - regular little people - can do for themselves.

And obviously, for starters, they have to find ways to amuse themselves in the mornings. Stupid Coffee Tricks (0), for instance. Bump bump bump goes the cab, banging through those freakin' pot holes. And I pass a place once where another little fellow from this town used to live. Who fought a different kind of war than Intrepid.   

Back in the 1919, this kid - named Tommy - was up on a roof. Watching the RCMP charge into the marchers in the General Strike, club swinging. He saw two of the workers get killed. After, they jailed a lot of 'em too, and deported even more.

Young Tommy trained as a boxer. Got pretty good. Became a champion. But he had a big brain, and a bigger heart, and more than anything, was drawn to the fight outside the ring. So, he went off & became one of those Social Gospel Ministers. Baptist, funny as that sounds today. Then took a couple more degrees, started preaching, working as an activist.

After a while, the seemingly broken workers formed a new party, and he became its leader. Led them into government, the 1st democratic socialist party to govern in North America. Did lots of fine things. Balanced the budget. Paid off the debt. Created public utilities. Paved roads. Put in sewer systems. Created the country's first public auto insurance system. Brought in a Bill of Rights.

But the phrase Tommy Douglas was best known for was, "Beware the little fellow with an idea." And this little fellow had an idea - universal health care, or "Medicare." They introduced it, in a poor Prairie province, back in 1961, fought off a bitter Doctors strike - plus opposition from the entire North American medical establishment - and saw it through. Once it was proven to work, and proven popular, it was picked up nationally. And has since saved hundreds of thousands of lives, and hundreds of billions of dollars.

A few years back, Canadians voted the "Little Fellow" the Greatest Canadian of all time. 

You may not know him, but you probably know his family. Here's his Grandson, Kiefer Sutherland, in a role you probably haven't seen before - introducing a clip of Tommy Douglas telling a story. One he often told, to rally the other "Little Fellows." Appropriately enough, about a place called Mouseland (1).  

This town's full of those kind of little stories, stories of little people. Like the battle for women's right to vote, won here in 1916, then nationally in 1918, led by Nellie McClung. Or like Harry Colebourne, the soldier who fell for a bear that'd been captured by a hunter, bought it & cared for it, named it after his hometown. The little bear eventually found its way across the ocean to the London Zoo, was nicknamed by the adoring visitors, one of whom was a boy named Christopher. Who, in turn, named his own teddy bear... Winnie. The Pooh.

Or the two kids, a boy & a girl, who grew up out here in Nowhere. Both had polio as children. When he left his teens, he became depressed, because it meant he was now too old to get into his favorite hangout. And so, not being able to hang out with his band, he turned to writing songs on his own. One song, lamenting his lost youth, he named after the club. Apparently, there was a lot to lament. 126 verses worth(2). Here's the 4 he kept.

In the way of these things, the girl wrote a song in response, explaining afterward, "I thought, God, you know, if we get to 21 and there's nothing after that, that's a pretty bleak future. So I wrote a song for him, and for myself, just to give me some hope." The song was eventually picked up & made into a hit by a third girl, who'd also come from the Prairies. Born Cree, orphaned, adopted, raised on the East Coast, and named Buffy Sainte-Marie.

Which is actually where I started my day. With the Cree - Native Americans. People known here as "Aboriginal" or "First Nations" - Cree, Dakota-Sioux, Ojibway. The city is now 15%, and for those under 20 - Neil Young's age when he left Sugar Mountain - well, Aboriginals are 25% of the population. These young people, some are born here, but many come in from remote reserves in the North. So they've experienced cold. And experienced leaving & losing their homes. But a lot more besides.

They have twice the experience of dropping out of school & being unable to read. Have 10 times the experience with HIV. And 5 times more of suicide. And diabetes. 4 times more of being in prison. And unemployment. And immeasurably more with the destruction caused by Residential Schools, and alcohol... and gangs and crack and car theft and teenage prostitution and murder and sniffing and homelessness. Which is, perhaps, more experience than any human being should have to face.

Which is why I was up in the North End today. There's a project up & running there. Simple enough on the surface. You probably have one like it in your area - retrofitting low-income houses. Just insulation & basic repairs & new furnaces & front steps with no holes in them & painted fences & son on. There's 59 men & women now doing the work - should be 150 come Spring - almost all Aboriginal. 

You start by making the houses warmer, save energy, cut fuel bills. But by insulating the basement, you also create more living space. Not so important to those of us who use basements to store stuff. But for these families, that space means room for a bed & a heated place to stay, for the kids coming down from the reserve.

I also got to spend some time meeting the workers today. Their lives had mostly been like trying to climb out of the bottom of an ice-covered pothole. Tough to get out. Tough to get traction. We went in through the office, back into the old warehouse they've rented. You see them all, on their lunch break, training, studying, moving insulation & lumber, measuring, cutting, practicing on the equipment. Studying bookkeeping, carpentry, basic literacy. They'd step outside for a quick - cold - smoke. Then back to the books. Then, break over, back to insulation & lumber & building.

Chatted a bit, watched a bit, talked about it after with my buddy who runs it. About one worker in particular. A little guy, I'd noticed him holding a ladder. Co-founded the Posse gang, he did. Had faced charges of extreme violence, arsenals of guns in his home. He & his buddies had taken all the sins, lined 'em up, and knocked 'em down. Daily. For years. 

'Til he decided to go straight. And took 20 of his friends, other gang members, with him. They had all wanted to go, wanted to change, but the only way they could get enough protection to go was to leave as a group. Mutual protection, from the world, from the others left in the gang. He's learned to read now. Done well. Moved up to become a Supervisor. Moving up & into a career as a carpenter.

Yes, these are little stories. And little numbers. Which, we'd been told again & again by the bureaucrats, wouldn't amount to much. Unless... you're one of those 59. Or one of the ones whose home now has room to sleep one more kid.

My buddy runs the organization now. He & a couple of co-workers had helped build it. But I hadn't seen him in months. We did the tour, talked to people, then sat & jawed in a North End greasy spoon. Gorgeous painting of Lady Diana - with angel wings - hanging over our booth, we ate & talked, while some old German guys shuffled around the pool tables, laughing & ragging each other as they played. 

My buddy's just a little guy. Son of a butcher, but in one of those weird twists, he was also raised a pacifist. Mostly because his Granddad was one of those old Social Gospel preachers, decades back. Back in the day of Tommy Douglas.

And somewhere between the Gospel & the butcher's shop, my friend's probably gotten just the training he needed. Because if you've worked with him, or played hockey against him, you'll instantly learn one thing. He may be just a little fellow, but he's also... relentless. Gets hold of something, he's never letting go.

We call him "the Wolverine." Which, to close an earlier circle, I looked up in Wikipedia. "The Wolverine (Gulo gulo) is the largest land-dwelling species of the Mustelidae or Weasel family." You see... there's many types of these Little Fellows.

And that girl? The one who had polio, and befriended the depressed young songwriter, and wrote her own song in reply? Joni's always worth a listen. Let's play the Circle Game (3).