The Icelandic connection - 01.06.2010, Síða 49

Vol. 63 # I
ICELANDIC CONNECTION
47
Book Reviews
My Winnipeg
by Guy Maddin
Coach House Books, 191 Pages
Reviewed by Susan Claire Johnson
Happyland seems like a mythical
place which Guy Maddin has dreamt up
to meet his story telling needs. And thus
as I sit in my house in Wolseley on a
street between Aubrey and Dominion,
reading about the former home of
Happyland Amusement Park, I feel com-
pelled to go to the computer and Google
‘Happyland.’ Yes actually, it did exist,
right where the author said...I saw the
historical postcard pictures of it on a few
websites. Ironically I’m reading Maddin’s
book in the physical context of his story.
Another interesting twist is, located
in my dining room, there is a piece of art
created by Jennifer Hamilton, the great
great granddaughter of Thomas
Glendenning Hamilton a ‘distinguished
Winnipeg medical doctor and politician,
(who) held at his home elaborately docu-
mented seances in the hope of contacting
his dead son’ (p. 63).
The art piece is an old Ouija board
which has painted upon it a pair of hands
covered by what appears to be puffs of
white clouds. I mention this personal
information, to illustrate Maddin’s
unnerving ability to connect the reader to
‘Pegger’ stories in a way that makes one
feel at home in his book. Not that every-
one owns a piece of art they can literally
connect to Maddin’s stories. However
everyone can be a part of the collective
unconscious of Maddin’s childhood sto-
ries and thus resonate with the emotions
emulating from snippets of his anecdotes
about hockey, winter, fur coats and purs-
es, the painful and joyful experience of
one’s evolution into adulthood.
Throughout ‘My Winnipeg’ are sto-
ries that make you feel like you are talk-
ing to an old friend. You’ve known them
for a long time you are very well familiar
with their characteristics and despite
hearing their stories over and over again,
you haven’t grown tired of them. As with
old friends there is always an expected
amount of gossip. And one responds with