A Prairie Home Disillusionment

Good afternoon.

We live in an iconoclastic age.  Not an age of anti-heroes, but an age that seems to ostensibly be out to dismantle the concept of heroics altogether.  While people who knew these new villains may have a better perspective upon their purported villainy, to those such as myself with a more distant vantage point, the list of erstwhile heroes being exposed and exploded appears random in nature.

Except that it's not random.  People, that is to say women, men, and so on, have been rising up against the cruel, cowardly shadow of sexual harassment and assault and casting a blazing, disinfecting light on this problem that so many have faced in dread silence for so long.  It is a good day.

At the same time, I cannot be happy.

Frank Underwood is done.

The Don Cherry of baseball is done.

Charlie Rose fired.

Pete Rose fired.

Conrad Black is... going to hang around forever, it seems.

One by one, the scythe of sexual aggression is tipping the marble busts of powerful men over to come crashing down off their pedestals.  Some are surprising.  Some are not.  But the reckoning is here, and your very own hero could be next.

Having been born and raised in...

...very rural Saskatchewan..,

...my heroes are these great..,

 ...larger than life people...

...who represented the Prairies...

...on a larger stage...

...both north...

...and south of the border.

People with grit...

...integrity...

...and humility.

And while they weren't all perfect...

...neither were we..,

...but we were all from...

...and of...

...the Prairies.

Which brings me to this beacon of Prairie wisdom and humour:

Garrison Keillor.

There are not many, if any, that have served as a more pure, clear broadcaster of the culture and experience of prairie life than this man has over the past forever.  Indeed, A Prairie Home Companion was a prairie home companion.  In a world of the New York Yankees, the Ottawa Bubble, and Hollywood, you have to be very, very good - better than great - to be noticed above the cultural din created by those places other than home.  And Mr. Keillor managed to do it.

On Canada Day, July 1, 2016, Keillor recorded his final episode of the show, having done it since 1974.  He left as a legend.  Earlier this week, on November 29th, it was announced that Keillor's contract with Minnesota Public Radio had been terminated.  Further, the Prairie Home Companion would be no more and would undergo a name change in an effort to break with the allegedly sordid past.  A lifetime of humour, wit and culture, our culture, blotted.

I've found this latest period in our collective histories disillusioning if nothing else with many questions and no answers.

What to make of this?  It's difficult.  Is he a bad guy?  A really bad guy?  Is the allegation accurate?  Do I have any right to question the allegation?  Does he deserve a fair shake?  Does she?  Can the legacy be separated from the alleged misconduct?  When I was a kid, I went to the Lake Wobegon Lutheran Church, or at least the Esterhazian version of it.  Am I the problem?  Is my culture the problem?  What is the problem?  Is there a problem at all?

Is there a hero left among us?

I've thought long and hard about that and I believe that I have come up with an answer.

Yes.

The man.

The legend.

The Zolf.

Larry Zolf was awarded the highest distinction that a westerner can be bestowed in this country.  In 1966, while working as a journalist for This Hour Has Seven Days, he was bludgeoned over the head with a cane by a Quebecois cabinet minister.  The Minister of Defense, ironically enough.  The incident was filmed, but never broadcast, and I would like to think that, if the film of this incident yet exists, it would make Canada a far richer place to be made public.  His jousts with politicians of all stripe, his literary pokes and prods of people in positions of power are magnificent, and just watch this interview filmed on December 6th, 1964 that featured intrepid young reporters Zolf and his scrappy little sidekick Pierre Trudeau against the arch-nemesis of Confederation, René Lévesque.  This is pure, essential Canadian history at work, folks.

Mr. Zolf passed away in 2011, which was a shame.  It wasn't announced at the time anywhere that I was looking, so I didn't actually hear of his passing for a good six or eight months after the fact.  When the news hit me, I was sad.  Not shaken or shocked or anything hyperbolic like that, but genuinely sad.  I took some time, a fair amount of time, actually, to read his CBC columns.  I read all I could find and was impressed both by his rambly style, his guts and the pictures he painted of Winnipeg.  Larry Zolf was not only a national treasure, but more importantly a Prairie treasure.  Fortunately, his daughter..,

...the lovely and talented Rachel Zolf..,

...if you haven't yet been initiated, is likewise a phenomenal poet, writer, scholar, educator and so on. Some mighty fine genetics in this family.  Please, look her up and have a good read.  While she may not actually be from the Prairies herself, hey, no one's perfect.  The Trudeau family?  Well...

...you win some, you lose some.

Mr. Zolf has left us now for six years.  I wish him, his legacy and his family well.  My point is this: should someone pop up out of the ether and claim some sort of impropriety by Zolf the Elder, whether it is made up, legitimate or devistating, how would I feel?  I know of his body of work and of his talents, but I cannot say that I knew the man at all.  Can I still appreciate the work while at the same time respecting the victim?

I suppose the answer to this would be to listen to the victim.  What do they say and what do they think?  I don't think that we do enough of that.  For all of these people who have been fired, I know their names, but I don't know the names or faces of their victims.  I would like to know.  If someone accused Zolf of impropriety, I would to hear the victim's story so that I may better judge for myself what the legacy should and ought to be.  I just hope that, for his sake, I never have to.  I like Zolf as a Prairie hero.  He wore the mantle well, and it would do us well to dust off the mantles of our heroes once in a while to ensure that they are remembered.  They've earned it.

But tomorrow is a new day and a new bust is wobbling on its pedestal waiting to fall and litter the ground with more formerly heroic rubble.

Already I can tell that the idea seems to be that the cure for the pain of seeing your heroes fall is to not have heroes at all.  Truth, counter-truth, anti-truth, fake truth.  Who needs heroes when no one is a hero?  Or rather, why have heroes when everyone can be convinced no one is a hero?

This is a bad idea, for the same reason that we say that it is better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.  I prefer my heroes to...

...not...

...be clad in black marching down the street in disguise.  This is not heroism.  Heroism does not hide.  Heroism gets bashed over the head with a cane.  Terry Fox did not hide his face.

No, there is yet room for heroes in this age.

There are many empty pedestals.

Thank you for reading.  Good night.