Not all Flin Flonners are cut from the same cloth, but we do share the common, wonderful experience of calling this great place our home.
As a result, there are certain things that all residents know. In honour of this past week’s Trout Festival, that crescendo of civic pride, I’d like to share them with you.
We know, first of all, that we aren’t even supposed to be here. When an upstart company called called Hudson Bay Mining and Smelting launched back in 1927, not even an optimist wearing the rosiest coloured glasses could have imagined we would still be here in 2014.
We proved everyone wrong, for not only are we still here, we’re thriving – with challenges as well, of course.
We know firsthand that our licence plates wouldn’t read “Friendly Manitoba” if not for places like Flin Flon. You need not be here long before you’re garnering a constant string of hellos and how-are-yas during a trip to the grocery store or bank.
Many of us know what it’s like to look up into the sky, any time of the day or night, and see a giant cigar puffing away, and how the taste of that smoke would stick to your tongue like some kind of toxic peanut butter.
Despite all of that awful air pollution, we can even get sentimental about the absence of industrial smoke four years after the copper smelter shut down.
We know more people than we can count who moved to Flin Flon “for a year or two” who are here 30, 40 or even 50 years later, still loving every minute of it.
We know that the grass isn’t always greener on the other side, for many of us have left only to return to a place that is impossible to forget. This is where we truly belong.
Best in people
We’ve seen the worst of tragedies bring out the very best in people. As our fellow citizens fall on hard times, we see them lifted back up with fundraising socials and chicken buckets stuffed with wads of donated dollars.
On the lighter side, we know that nose-wrinkling look of confusion on the face of a stranger curious about where we are from. “Flim Flam?” they ask, unable to comprehend the two strange words we call home.
We know what it’s like to find mosquito bites in places we didn’t know we had, and to see only a smidgeon of humour in coffee mugs declaring those pests as Flin Flon’s official bird.
We know what it’s like to leave work early (just a little early, of course) on a Friday to head out to the lake, where scenery right out of a painting and fishing worthy of a Saturday afternoon television show await.
We know what it’s like to curse the winter but at the same time welcome it because it is, after all, the only chance we get to see our Bombers in action or zoom across Ross Lake on our snowmobiles.
We know so many other things, like the feeling of wooden sewer boxes beneath our feet, of watching a stray golf ball bounce back onto the course after hitting a rock, and of scanning the rocks for colourful new graffiti.
We are Flin Flonners sharing the Flin Flon Experience, and there’s no place else we’d rather be.
