Manitobans are great at just about everything -- except, that is, for taking pride in their own and telling the world about all their great accomplishments.
Funny -- for a province so great, we sure are terrible at celebrating it.
Paul Armstrong runs a website called ‘Manitoba, eh?!’
And so it's left to local amateur historian Paul Armstrong to do for this province what seemingly no one else -- not government, not schools, not media -- are willing to do: Climb to the top of the mountain and proclaim to the world that Manitoba's not only not boring, it's actually home to a vastly disproportionate number of the world's great people and great accomplishments.
So how does a 68-year-old retired math teacher make Manitoba's case to the world? Well, he sets up a website of course.
Armstrong's site, www.manitoba-eh.ca, is a treasure trove of everything that makes this province great. It's full of great Manitobans you've probably never heard of, people like Charlie Thorson, who helped design such animated greats as Bugs Bunny, Snow White and Elmer Fudd.
It's full of great Manitoba accomplishments, like the fact our "999" system was the first emergency telephone system in North America.
But mostly, the site is just one man's homage to a province he feels is overlooked by everyone, but especially ourselves.
"We do a terrible job promoting ourselves," says Armstrong. "I've sent this same stuff out to MPs and MLAs and they pay it lip service but that's about it.
"I try and I try and I try, but it's just not something people find important. Like I suggested we have rotating billboards or TV slots or whatever it might be to get our message out. Because it's just amazing how few people know about Manitoba and know about the amazing things we've accomplished.
"No wonder they think it's a boring province. No one knows about the fantastic things that have happened here."
As an educator -- he taught junior high math for 30 years in Winnipeg -- Armstrong says our schools need to do a much better job of ensuring our young people know their own history at least as well as they know American and European history.
"I think it should be part of every year's social studies course," Armstrong says. "If more people knew all the fantastic things that happened here, we'd have less young people moving away."
Armstrong says he makes a big effort to keep his website as up-to-date as possible, precisely because he wants it to attract young people, who are maybe a little more intrigued by the latest CD by Chantal Kreviazuk than the accomplishments of an old Manitoba pioneer.
"That's the nice thing about a website, is that you can keep it current."
But as far as Armstrong is concerned, it's one of our older Manitobans who is still the greatest of all time -- Sir William Stephenson, the "Man Called Intrepid" and the inspiration for James Bond.
"People know nothing about the fact this guy was hand-picked by Winston Churchill to run the (British) secret service... and that he helped to maybe end the war earlier. And there's even more stuff about this guy -- on one website I saw a reference to him inventing a forerunner to the television. This stuff just goes on and on. And not just for Stephenson.
"I don't know anyone across Canada with his credentials, much less Manitoba.... And while he didn't accomplish all these things in Manitoba, a lot of the things he did affected the whole world, including Manitoba."
With just under three weeks of voting to go in the Free Press/CBC search for the Greatest Manitoban, Stephenson was in 12th place on Wednesday, a couple hundred votes behind the leader, former Manitoba premier Duff Roblin.
Readers can view the 50 nominees for Greatest Manitoban at the Free Press website, www.winnipegfreepress.com. You can vote for as many nominees as you like and you can do it day after day, with the only restriction being just one vote per nominee per day.
Armstrong says he's been casting all his votes for Stephenson, but says he doesn't really have a problem with whoever wins in the end.
"It doesn't matter who wins or loses this thing," Armstrong says. "The fact that people are becoming aware of these accomplishments of Manitobans is the big bonus of what you're doing. They're getting their mind on this and learning a lot more about it."
paul.wiecek@freepress.mb.ca
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