The thing that amazes people about the pair of geese that have made a home in the fountain in front of City Hall is not that they are there, but that they should not be. The geese seem unperturbed by the distinction. They waddle/strut with goosely dignity and unconcern across 102A Ave between the fountain and Churchill Square, pose occasionally for phone cameras. Let people share the space with them.
Usually, Canada Geese, especially in large migrant flocks, are symbols of the wild and of the north. Their coming and going marks the seasonal shifts—just as Wade Hemsworth, who wrote an iconic song about geese on the north shore of the Lake Superior, letting the worker know the end of the season of whatever he had been doing in the north was coming to an end, and that he would soon be going home to spend his money and earn the necessity to come back to the north woods.(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4Z13wmZlsU)
Canada Geese typically are not symbols of city centre, not habitués of concrete and high-rise. So when they set up housekeeping in front of City Hall, the civic living room, they challenge our own sense of the qualities of the places we have created for ourselves. They adapt, and let us know we have to, as well. They accept.
What is a goose in front of city hall a metaphor for? Validation of our choice of place? Parody of our self-important claim to ownership and belonging?
What if the geese had never stopped to smell the flowerless park and swim in the treated water? Would our civic square be any the lesser for it? No. Or at least we would not have that standard of measure against which to judge ourselves and our spaces. But now that they are here, what would it say if the left? That we have created a park unsuitable for geese? That we have revealed ourselves to be unfit neighbours, unamiable hosts? Not worth sharing the space with?
But they do stay--in summers, anyway. And in so doing, maybe the geese are showing us that we need to designate that Square? They might be part of a movement to rename it not for a dead English Prime Minister who never passed through here that have heard, but for something much closer to home. For our home itself, in a way.
The name being promoted, my friend Anna Marie Sewell (a former Poet Laureate for the city) tells me, "would be Wicihitowin Square - after the Cree concept for 'working and sharing together.' Wicihitowin Circle of Shared Responsibility is a long-standing advisory body of reps from Aboriginal community liaising with the City."
Honk on that, City Council...
But they do stay--in summers, anyway. And in so doing, maybe the geese are showing us that we need to designate that Square? They might be part of a movement to rename it not for a dead English Prime Minister who never passed through here that have heard, but for something much closer to home. For our home itself, in a way.
The name being promoted, my friend Anna Marie Sewell (a former Poet Laureate for the city) tells me, "would be Wicihitowin Square - after the Cree concept for 'working and sharing together.' Wicihitowin Circle of Shared Responsibility is a long-standing advisory body of reps from Aboriginal community liaising with the City."
Honk on that, City Council...
