It's that time of year when night after night there seems to be a movie on TV designed solely to get all of us crying our eyes out.
They're called classics for a reason. It's a Wonderful Life, The Muppet Christmas Carol, and, of course, Corner Gas: The Movie.
Wait, Corner Gas? Yeah Corner Gas. There were no Christmas ghosts or angels in the movie spinoff of the folksy Canadian sitcom (although, awesomely, a robot versus werewolf fight), but CTV gave it a primetime spot about a week before Christmas, broadcasting it across Canada head-to-head against the big Christmas movies.
The Corner Gas movie doesn't have anything to do with Christmas — in keeping with the sitcom, it doesn't really have much to do with anything — but that didn't prevent me from feeling some seasonal mistiness as I tuned in.
It wasn't the stirring, Jimmy Stewart-esque performance of show creator Brent Butt that got my emotions running. It was, in fact, the opening credits. As they rolled by, the camera cut to a series of beautiful aerial shots of the wide-open Prairies.
Power lines. Grain elevators. Small-town crossroads. And whooo boy, the canola. I'd deck the halls with that yellow crap any day.
By the time the little montage was finished I was swimming in a field of emotions. And no, I wasn't delirious or drunk. Well, maybe a little drunk — it's kind of a mandatory thing
for watching Corner Gas. Pilsner, anyone?
Folks who didn't grow up on the Prairies won't really get this. (The grain-fed nostalgia, I mean, not the Corner Gas movie itself. Although city slickers probably won't really get that either.)
I grew up out there on the flatland, and seeing those shots took me right back to those wide and wild lands. Those images got me thinking. I spent all of my childhood Christmases in Alberta and Saskatchewan, and though I've lived on the West Coast for 10 years now, five of them on the North Shore, I still feel the pull of the Prairie winter at Christmastime.
Now that I have kids of my own I'm torn even more. In the past we've taken them on the often treacherous trip over the mountains to visit family, but this year we stayed in North Van. My kids are growing up with traditions completely different than mine. They're much more likely to be holding an umbrella than a toboggan on Christmas morning. They're North Shore kids. And, the odd canola flashback aside, I'm becoming a North Shore kid too.
There was one event, something that happened this year, that made me feel more North Shore than ever. I imagine many others feel the same way. It was the memorial for Tim Jones. I didn't think my then three-year-old son would be able to sit quietly for what was bound to be a long ceremony, so I didn't bring him along. But he needed to know what I was doing and where I was going. (He always needs to know. He's like a worrisome father and I'm his teenaged son.)
I told him that we were celebrating a strong man who meant a lot to this community. I didn't know just how much Tim Jones and North Shore Rescue meant until I arrived at the parade and saw the sidewalks of Lonsdale Avenue packed four or five deep. As I later waited in a parking lot to watch the service on a big screen, I kept running into people I knew. Some, like me, were relative North Shore newcomers, while others had grown up with Tim Jones, played on the same high school football team. All of them made me feel welcome.
It seemed like a quintessential North Shore moment, minus the uncharacteristic sunshine. We all shielded our eyes from that sun when the NSR helicopter took off to take Jones up for one last trip into the North Shore mountains.
Back at my house my son, who is now four, has a toy helicopter he loves. Last week — just a day after Corner Gas got my Prairie roots stirring — my son was zooming his helicopter around the house, rescuing his toys from perilous predicaments.
"Guess who I am," he said. "Tim Jones!"
My younger son, not yet two years old, got an umbrella for Christmas. He freaking loves umbrellas. And the boys go absolutely crazy for sushi. Not much call for sushi in Saskatchewan. I guess old traditions fade while new passions start to blaze. As we head towards another new year, here's hoping we can all remember where our roots are planted while at the same time look ahead to mountains waiting to be climbed.
Aw heck, here I am getting all mushy again. Too many movies I guess.
Where's the damn Pilsner?
Happy New Year, and all the best in 2015.
