Stone Diaries, The - Carol Shields [32]
Winnipeg in the year 1916 is an agreeable place. One can live a decent life in this city—despite its geographic isolation, despite the war across the ocean. Even the long hard winters are cheerfully borne by the complacent, generally law-abiding population, and indeed winter brings a benign, clean countenance to the raw look of wooden buildings and laissez-faire planning.
Increasingly, though, the city is growing mannerly. A series of wide, new boulevards has been proposed, and an immense new legislative building in the neo-classical style is underway. Ground was broken back in the year 1913. The vast amounts of stone required for this ambitious undertaking have kept the Tyndall Quarry working full-tilt and the stonecutters steadily employed and well out of the Kaiser’s reach. Churches now stand on many of the downtown corners, sometimes two or three different sects represented at one crossing. ("Let us hope God has a sense of humor," quipped a well-respected Baptist pastor at a recent civic meeting.) These churches are made of stone, as are the many fine banks and insurance companies, also the well-known Wesley College and the new Law Courts. Scanning the municipal horizon, you can’t help thinking: isn’t this astonishing! A stone city rising up out of our soft prairie loam! (An eminent Chicago architect, on seeing the blocks of polished Tyndall stone, declared that American builders would be clamoring for the material, were they but to lay eyes on its beauty.)
During the winter season Winnipeg offers a variety of theatrical productions, skating parties, balls, and dinners. In the summer the well-to-do flee the heat for the Lake of the Woods, and the less privileged make do with day trips to Victoria Beach or to various other interesting attractions of the region. Among the young people, those, say, between eighteen and twenty-five years of age, a railway excursion to the village of Tyndall has become exceedingly popular of late. The cost of a train ticket is moderate, and the young people, picnicking on sandwiches and bottles of cold tea, grow very merry. The ladies greatly outnumber the gentlemen during these war years, but the gender imbalance, far from dampening spirits, produces an oddly exhilarating effect. Many bring along bathing costumes, since the old abandoned part of the quarry provides a sunken cube of clear, cold water which is ideal for swimming. But it is really Goodwill Tower they come to see.
To be sure, getting to the tower requires an energetic halfhour’s tramp along a country road, and then a further stretch to the east, down a dirt trail. But this exertion is part of the day’s pleasure for these lively young people. They are full of ginger and fizz, invigorated by fresh air and the relief of having escaped for a few hours their more sober responsibilities in the city, not to mention the horror of a war being fought across the sea.
Across the low-lying fields the tower can be easily spotted.
"There it is," someone will shout. (For some of them this is the second or third visit.)
When the sun is high overhead the tower appears white; later in the afternoon it takes on a blue-gray softness.
Always, one or two of these young people will break into a run.
First man there is a starving bear. They reach the low stone cemetery wall, scramble over it—never mind the gate with its rusted hook—dodging the gravestones and stands of thistle. There! At last! They pat the tower’s bumpy sides, which are surprisingly warm from the sun’s rays, and clamber up and down its stepping