The Tyranny of Tyndall Stone

Walking through Winnipeg's Exchange District, Jay contemplates the heavy permanence of the city's architecture and the unsettling impermanence of his own future, all while trying to keep up with Leaf's relentless quest for hidden art.

It’s not the heat that gets you, it’s the history. That’s what I’m thinking, anyway. Every brick in this part of Winnipeg feels like it’s been baking since 1912, soaking up a century of summer afternoons and radiating it back at us. It’s a physical weight. Leaf, of course, seems immune, her beat-up Blundstones practically skipping over the cracked pavement of the alley.

"See? I told you there’d be one here," she says, pointing up. Her voice echoes slightly between the brick walls. "Peerless Products. What do you think they made?"

I squint, shielding my eyes. The ghost sign is barely there, a faint white spectre on the weathered red brick, three storeys up. The typography is ambitious, full of serifs and flourishes from a time when signage was a craft. "Peerless? Probably something deeply mediocre," I say. "Socks. Tinned beans. Something you'd never brag about."

"Cynic," she laughs. "I bet they made dreams. Or, like, industrial-strength soap that could clean anything. The kind of soap that could scrub the regret out of a Tuesday morning."

"That's a big promise for soap."

"It was a different time," she declares, as if she was there. She frames the sign with her hands, a director composing a shot. "Think about the guy who painted that. Up on a scaffold, sun in his eyes, probably getting paid a nickel a letter. He paints 'Peerless Products' and for a hundred years, it stays. He’s gone, the company is gone, the soap is definitely gone. But the letters are still here. Isn't that wild?"

It is wild. It’s also suffocating. All this permanence. These warehouses built on the promise of boundless prairie grain, these stone banks with their stern façades. They were built to last forever. I’m twenty-two and I’m not even sure what I’m doing next Tuesday, let alone building a legacy that will fade gracefully on a brick wall for a century. My own future feels like a ghost sign that hasn't even been painted yet.

---

We walk out of the alley onto McDermot Avenue. The air is thick with the smell of hot asphalt and something vaguely sweet, maybe from a bakery vent nearby. A Winnipeg Transit bus hisses past, its air brakes sounding like a weary sigh. For a city grid, the Exchange is designed to get you lost. Streets curve when they should be straight, and alleys open into hidden courtyards full of dumpsters and defiant weeds.

"The problem with you," Leaf says, bumping her shoulder against mine, "is that you see the end of things. I see the fact that they happened at all."

"The problem with you," I retort, "is that you think a half-empty glass is a great start on a new art installation."

"Exactly! It's all about perspective. You see a faded sign, I see a story. You see a crumbling warehouse, I see a thousand windows, each with its own little square of sky." She grins, a flash of genuine, un-ironic delight. It’s infuriating. And it’s the reason I’m out here sweating through my t-shirt instead of polishing my CV in my air-conditioned apartment.

She suddenly grabs my arm and pulls me into another alley, this one narrower, darker. The shift is immediate. The traffic noise dies, the air cools. And the wall explodes with colour.

It’s a mural, but that word feels too small. It’s a universe. A giant, spray-painted bison made of constellations gallops across the brick. Its horns are crescent moons and its eyes are swirling nebulae. The detail is insane, every dot of spray paint a deliberate star. It’s so vibrant and alive it makes the century-old buildings around it feel like fossils.

"Whoa," is all I can manage.

"Right?" Leaf breathes, her eyes wide. She steps closer, running her fingers just above the painted surface, not quite touching it, as if feeling its energy. "This wasn't here last month. Someone just… did this. For everyone. For no reason other than to make a dark alley beautiful."

"It won't last a hundred years," I say, the thought slipping out before I can stop it.

She looks back at me, her smile not faltering. "Doesn't have to. It's here now."

### A Question of Entry

We stare at the cosmic bison for a long time, until our eyes adjust to the gloom. Deeper in the alley, there's a steel door, painted black and plastered with peeling posters for bands that broke up years ago. A heavy-duty padlock holds it shut, but the hasp it’s attached to is pulling away from the rotting wood of the doorframe.

Leaf walks over to it, tugging gently on the lock. The wood groans. "This is part of that old theatre, I think. The one that’s been empty since the nineties."

I know the one. Rumour is the seats are still in there, covered in dust, waiting for an audience that’s never coming back. My historian brain buzzes with the thought of the architecture, the silent stage, the decay.

"Peerless Products lasted a century," she says, looking from the door back to me. Her eyes are daring me. "The space bison might last a year. How long do we last?"

She gives the lock another, harder pull. There’s a splintering sound.