Trevor Herriot is a Regina naturalist and writer. His book, Islands of Grass (Coteau Books) will be released this fall.
Morning coffee, CBC on the radio. "What do the town of Luseland and Marilyn Monroe have in common? We'll have the story right after the news break."
There was only one force I knew who could yank together Marilyn Monroe and that particular town in Canada's heartland. "This has to be Jimmy Pattison," I said out loud, in case my wife upstairs might be (a) within earshot and (b), less likely, wowed by my insight into CBC radio leads.
Moments later the mayor of Luseland, Sask. (population 600), in the Rural Municipality of Progress, was on the radio explaining that Mr. Pattison, one of the wealthiest men in Canada, had purchased the famous dress Ms. Monroe wore to sing Happy Birthday to John F. Kennedy in 1962. Even better, it would be on display for the first time in the Luseland town hall. Mr. Pattison would be sending along his own security staff and the dress would be protected in a bulletproof glass case with GPS tracking on board.
Mr. Pattison, who owns both Ripley's Believe It or Not! and the Guinness World Records, spent $6.1-million on the dress – a flesh-coloured little number that may have caused Ms. Monroe's late arrival at the famous birthday party for she was, by some accounts, sewn into it.
A lot of prairie people seem to know that Mr. Pattison is Luseland's proudest native son, but it came as a surprise to me two summers ago, approximately 30 seconds after I sat down from giving a short speech in honour of the town museum's new whooping crane diorama being unveiled on Canada Day.
I'd been invited by the local museum committee to speak about the whooping cranes that once thrived in pastures in the RM of Progress – a story I was investigating for a new book of photos and essays about grassland. Photographer Branimir Gjetvaj and I had driven through forest-fire smoke to make the event, and we'd walked into the museum 15 minutes late. (No dress to be sewn into; we just missed a turn at the town of Biggar.)
"Thank you, Trevor," the emcee said as I made my way back to my seat. I smiled graciously at the people sitting next to me, delighted at having filled the museum to standing room only. "And now for our main speaker – Mr. Jimmy Pattison!"
A healthy octogenarian rose from his seat near the front to take the podium, smiling like a politician about to make his victory speech.
Within moments, he had launched into his rags-to-riches story – from bankrupt-prone used car salesman in Luseland to the sole owner of Vancouver's Pattison Group, worth $8.4-billion at the time. Toward the end of his talk, he gestured to his wife Mary, and said that after leaving Luseland they planned to stop in at the little church in Moose Jaw where they were married 60-odd years ago. At this, the crowd murmured approvingly. Yes, and in fact he had driven all the way from Vancouver. "I like to stop in and visit at my stores and businesses along the way," he said, and we knew just by the tone in his voice and the pause afterward that he was the best kind of manager: one who keeps his staff on their toes out of concern for his customers and a real pride of ownership.
He was humble and gracious and wise and the crowd loved him – or most of it did anyway. I tried to love him, could feel the pull of admiration and gratitude coming from the good, ruddy-cheeked farm folks who were happy merely to share their origins with Jimmy. "Jimmy, can you tell us about that little boat you have tied up in Burrard Inlet?"
"Well, I guess I could. I only get to go there myself about once a year or so, but it is 150 feet long and has a staff of five aboard. It's great for business meetings; much better than a steak house. The Queen has been on it. Oprah stayed three nights. George Bush Sr. came three times."
He finished off with a surprise announcement. He is donating $100,000 to the museum. Tremendous and sincere applause. The crowd loves him all the more; I try even harder. This is a generous man. He can't be all bad. Oprah stayed three nights.
But now, the Marilyn Monroe dress is getting in the way. It is more than a weird and creepy story from the prairie hinterlands that slides nicely into the time slot at the end of the newscast. It is a cautionary tale about all that is sacrificed in the earth, and in our souls, when we convert beauty, tragedy, community well-being, and the goodness of life into capital.
In the days before Saskatchewan sold its soul to the petro gods next door, too much wealth was always regarded with a good dose of suspicion; ostentatious wealth with outright contempt. It was about believing in pie. If you take too large a piece for yourself, someone else is going to go hungry.
But we no longer believe in such a pie.
We have happily joined the rest of the world of pie-deniers. Having loads of money is a fine thing, magic really. Whether you are making a donation to the Children's Hospital, purchasing a yacht or bidding for the dress of a tragic starlet, money – which comes from hard work and has little to do with using finite resources – can turn almost anything into capital that will pay dividends.
For the few resisters who have kept their co-operative socialist inoculations up to date, though, the mythology of the self-made man is part of a subtle infection blinding people to the human and environmental costs that swirl off in the wake of someone gathering too much wealth into one family.
In July, eye-catching billboards popped up along Saskatchewan freeways, employing Ms. Monroe's colonized image to announce that the dress would appear at Mr. Pattison's new Save-On-Foods stores in the province, before it headed to other stores in the West. And that, finally, might be what rankles most about the display of a dress once worn by a sad woman who, despite the adoration of millions, could not love herself.
As the crowds filed past the glass case enclosing the spooky, almost holographic mannequin, those who were not merely curious may have recalled that three months after Ms. Monroe went home and removed that dress, she died alone in her bedroom of an apparent overdose.
If the self-made man has a polar opposite it is the tragic sexual icon: a woman made and then unmade by the desire of other selves, mostly male; of the wealthy men running the dream industry, the same one that continues to tell us we can become billionaires, too, if we just work hard enough, the same one provisioning the acquisitive little soldier in our hind brains who wants to keep us craving more when so many of us are already taking more than the earth can afford to give.