Sessions Supernatural

There was a time when Winnipeg was the railway hub of Canada, a Chicago North. Trains led commerce east and west and stopped here on the prairie to retool and load up. That’s over. Commerce flies overhead now, and Winnipeg watches the contrails.

It’s less known that Winnipeg, in the early twentieth century, was also a hub of psychic activity. Some think that activity persists to this day. By “activity,” I mean the buzz and garble of the dead. Local filmmakers and artists like Guy Maddin and the late Sigrid Dahle have plugged into an unconscious that can be both creepy and playful, always Freudian: dead fathers, dead sons, something important gone missing. It’s significant that there are more funeral homes in Winnipeg than Starbucks outlets; gothic cemeteries like Elmwood and Brookside are full of our unique prairie history. Especially on Halloween, the city carries a reputation of being haunted. It might just be an economic metaphor: business abandons the place, the...