Manitoba Markers Month: Brandon Gets Its Wish (and, Please Rise for the Singing of...)

Yes, Manitoba Markers Month marches on here at Slurpees and Murder, but first things first.



Uptown Magazine! Nobody drowns and nobody dies!

It may seem like a long time ago now that the looming spectre of a national identity crisis darkened our great and proud land, but in fact it was just within the last couple of weeks that the debate about our national anthem rose to life and then immediately died again.

I kept close tabs on that quick and dirty kerfuffle, as a matter of intense national interest -- from the initial Throne Speech, announcing governmental intent to review the wording of O Canada, all the way through to the ensuing scrambling governmental concession that okay whoa hey whoa whoa we don't need to review the wording or anything.

To formally draw the matter to an official and definitive close, I present to you esteemed colleagues the Final Report and Recommendations of the Federal Joint Steering Committee for the Recalibration of the Canadian National Anthem. I expect these recommendations to be implemented immediately, and exactly as written, so once you've all risen and removed your hats for the singing of our new National Anthem we can get on with the important business of the day.

So! Today's important business of the day: ruining intraprovincial relations.

We here at Slurpees and Murder do our best to accommod... actually, I'm the only one here, let me try that again. I do my best to accommodate reader requests, and it was reader Patrick Johanneson who filed the second request of Manitoba Markers Month. His request, as a Brandonite (and seconded in principle by fellow Brandonite Grant Hamilton), was simply thus: "we need some wheat".

Of course! Far be it from me to ignore the just and reasonable demands of our province's second-largest city! And that plaintive cry, that clarion call, "more wheat" -- is that not, truly, the noble ideal that all good Brandon citizens strive for?

To find the answer to this question, we take you now, live, to downtown Brandon:



Ha ha ha ha, aww, Brandon, you know I love you. I'm just joshin'! I'm just foolin' with you. When you call your city the Wheat City, and you call your hockey team the Wheat Kings, and you call your community paper the Wheat City Journal, and you call your annual rodeo the Wheat City Stampede, and you call your golf course the Wheat City Golf Course, and you put wheat all over your city flag, I think you have to expect a tiny bit of teasing every now and then.

I mention your flag in particular because I added the flag to that picture last, as an impulse decision to fill up the remaining space on the paper, and then after the whole thing was done it ended up being easily my favourite part of the drawing. I wasn't as pleased with the way the facial expressions came out this time around, but man, get a load of that flag! Of course, if I'd thought of the flag in the first place I probably could have just done the damn thing by itself, but you know what they say about hindsight.

(Completely unrelated side note: the Brandon Folk Festival announces its full lineup this Thursday, so watch for that. That's always a charming way to spend a July weekend, and Buffy Sainte-Marie is already confirmed for this year, so I'm looking forward to seeing how it shakes down.)

Manitoba Markers Month continues! There are still a couple suggestions in the queue, and I fully intend to get on the next one a lot faster than I did for this last one, so feel free to drop a comment below if there's anything you're burning to see amateurishly rendered in indelible ink. I'm not guaranteeing I'll get to everything, but it's been fun to try so far!