The 'Peg

We spent exactly 2 years in Winnipeg - August 30th 1966 to August 30th, 1968. And honestly, that was 2 winters too many :-)

I'm probably going to devote a lot of 'ink' to those years. They were the most memorable of my childhood. It seemed like all my emotions were amplified (probably a 'hormonal' thing)... It was bittersweet - at times the happiest I'd ever been - at times the loneliest... But on the whole it was the best of my childhood...

First - a bit of background about Winnipeg:

It's bigger than most people think. At the time the population of the metro area was over 500,000... There was a lot going on during those 2 years - including the Canadian Centennial celebration and the Pan American Games...

It is the flattest place I've ever seen. Get up in a building and look out the window - there's nothing bigger than an anthill as far as the eye can see... That means that there's nothing to stop the wind - it blows from the north all winter long.

The days are ridiculously short during the winter and ridiculously long during the summer.

It gets cold there... The averages are 7°F colder than Fargo, North Dakota. Way colder than Anchorage, Alaska... It's one of the 3 coldest city of it's size on earth... I'm talking -40°F with 20 knot winds. There will be more about that later...

You really didn't need a car there... You could get anything delivered (not just pizza). You were never more than a few blocks from a bus stop and the buses ran regularly all day long.

While we were in Winnipeg music became my life... And from that standpoint Winnipeg was a great place to be. It was home to the Guess Who and Neil Young (of the Squires), and later Bachman Turner Overdrive.
But there were lots of other bands who were just as highly regarded - like Logan Avenue Comfort Station, The Mongrels, The Fifth, Gettysbyrg Address (yeah - that's the correct spelling), and Sugar and Spice (featuring the 3 Murphy sisters - I'll have more to say about them later).
There was no shortage of venues. In addition to the usual dance clubs there were numerous community centers and even high schools that booked "top notch" bands (like the Guess Who)... There was even a weekly dance show on TV called "Teen Dance Party" that featured local bands. Yeah - I guess there wasn't much else to do during those long, cold winters :-)

And lest we forget - that was when Hendrix, Cream, The Doors, Steppenwolf and Iron Butterfly burst upon the international scene (to name only a few)...

It wasn't just the music... The world itself changed in some fundamental and irreversible ways during those years... And that's the backdrop for what follows...