Mostly because I haven’t owned a television in years, it’s taken me this long to get around to watching Corner Gas. I grew up in southern Saskatchewan. That alone should have made me an instant fan of the idyllic, nothing-happens-but-life comedy set in small-town Dog River (Rouleau) SK. It’s only now, holed up for the pandemic in a rental place in England with a flat-screen TV and a subscription to Amazon Prime, that we’re watching the six seasons of the CTV hit that first aired in 2004, produced by and starring Brent Butt.
There are no spoiler alerts in what I’m about to say. I haven’t seen the whole series yet, so I might be surprised by what’s to come. But so far, I love the show. It’s fun – and funny. It’s also tweaking my academic side. As a non-Indigenous person and a Canadian, I’m watching Corner Gas while at the same time working on several academic articles and peer reviews about decolonizing settler attitudes. I can’t help paying special attention to two characters in the show, Sergeant Davis Quinton, played by Lorne Cardinal, an award-winning Nêhiyaw (Cree) actor, and Paul Kinistino, owner of the Dog River Hotel and Bar. The latter was played first by playwright and actor Mark Dieter of Peepeekisis First Nation, and later replaced by the character of Phil Kinistino (played by Erroll Kinistino of Ochapowace First Nation). The last few episodes I’ve seen have been especially fun for the nuance and playfulness Cardinal is bringing to the character of Davis, who is becoming one of my series favourites.
In an article in the Anishinabek News, Keith Corbiere describes how as an Indigenous viewer the character of Sergeant Davis Quinton offered him a role-model different from the Hollywood trope of the stoic, silent “screen Indian.” From my non-Indigenous perspective I can add that Davis equally subverts the “strong silent cop” trope I grew up with as the son of a one-time small-town police officer in Swift Current, just down the highway from Rouleau. 
As an academic, I’m intrigued by the choice made by Butt to cast the roles of Dog River’s police officer and hotel/tavern owner with Indigenous actors. Perhaps this was accidental, but I doubt it. It strikes me as subversive, and positive. As Butt would also have experienced, in the small prairie towns in which I grew up both those roles were more often in conflict with Indigenous persons than embodied by them.
So far at least, Corner Gas never mentions the Indigeneity of two of its major characters, and occasionally of extras in the crowd scenes. It seems intent on a “normalization” of Indigenous presence in the fictional Dog River. As Cardinal said in an interview in 2004 in Windspeaker: “you don’t hear the flute or the eagle scream when I come onto the screen.” In a novel I’m putting the finishing touches on, I try in a similar way to incorporate the Wəlastəkwewiyik (or Maliseet) peoples of the St-Lawrence without focusing on them, normalizing the positive interactions between non-Indigenous characters and the Maliseet, and so tacitly recognizing Indigenous resurgence and presence.
In a quick library search and again on Google I found almost no reference to Corner Gas in relation to Indigenous issues. It would be interesting to know whether Indigenous actors, directors, and producers feel the historic sitcom’s portrayal of active Indigenous presence in southern Saskatchewan/Treaty Four territory is a positive step in decolonizing our Canadian attitudes, or a utopian portrayal of harmony that is ultimately troublesome to real-life 21st-century concerns…especially when Indigenous groups were “cleared” from those plains by Canadian government action in the 1870s. I imagine Lorne Cardinal has some thoughts on that. In the meantime, during this Covid-19 outbreak and in a time of social-distancing, I’m enjoying being a late-comer to Corner Gas’s fan-base.
a destination where on a clear day you can see Ireland, England, and the Isle of Man, Arts & Crafts art and architecture, 
scones with jam, the moors, you’re more likely to be soaked in cold rain than baked by unending heat, 
Robbie Burns, and…I didn’t even mention A.D. Rattray’s Whiskey Experience in Kirkoswald!
Today was a vertiginous day. It’s the perfect word, although I had to look it up. Vertiginous has two meanings, both true today: extremely high and steep, and suffering from vertigo. I don’t know how the Scots do it. We had just passed through a short section – the worst – where the path was within two metres of the edge and a stumble could easily topple you down 200-feet onto the rocks. A couple ambled toward us with a dog tied to the woman’s waist. When we said hi, she cheerily told us “he has to be tied up. He’s a naughty dog and we had to call the coast guard to fetch him a couple weeks ago.” Hmm.
At the church in the ruins of Whithorn Abbey, no one was there to greet us. But the doors were open. Inside was Ninian, the fifth century saint, in stained glass, and a desk of pilgrim stuff. “Welcome to all pilgrims” said a little sign. “Please accept our certificate.” I wasn’t going to take one. We walked nine miles today, and overall already quite a distance. However I didn’t come as a pilgrim, but as a researcher and walker. 
Christine and Ken, despite being not as officially religious as me, picked up a copy, filled it out, and got me to sign on with them. That made it feel somehow like a group recognition. 
Was the certificate the sign of our “arrival” at the end of the pilgrimage? Not really: tomorrow we go to St Ninian’s Cave, where stone fragments of fifth and sixth century altar pieces have been found. Maybe it’s there. From the cave we walk our final 11 miles around the coast to the Isle of Whithorn. The destination there is really the Steam Packet Inn, a pub overlooking the harbour. Not especially religious, but tasty.
The endless looping stonework knots are reminiscent of Ireland and of Lindisfarne, brought to Whithorn in part by Norse Christians out of Ireland. From the back of the museum I walked into the crypt where a line of Bishops were buried, and finally into the grotto that once held St Ninian’s bones. I admit: this felt like more of a destination than anywhere else. It felt like a holy place. The fact that whatever bones were there were lost during the Reformation doesn’t bother me much. 21st century western pilgrims aren’t fixated on a saint’s body, but more on their own. And mine, especially my ankles, have felt the distance. 
On the subject of Ninian: I’ve long had a semi-teasing argument going with Sara Terreault, who teaches pilgrimage and Insular (Celtic) Christianity, that St Ninian never even existed, but was a made-up figure. Not that I held that firmly, but I knew it was a good way to tease her. I will have to come up with something else. The presence of the Latinus Stone, 
with a name in both Latin and the local Celtic language indicates Christianity at Whithorn by about 450 CE. Although there may be little hard evidence of Ninian, there is so much circumstantial reference, in addition to Bede’s account, that one has to accept that a late Roman-age Briton helped introduce official Christianity to what is now Scotland. Even the cab driver who brought us home tonight knew the whole story and could provide the arguments, in addition to other interesting tidbits. As his BMW sped by within inches of stone walls he pointed to them and told us that French Prisoners of War from Napoleon were forced to build them for the Scots. 
When we first arrived, this dog, who lives at our B&B, couldn’t wait to find out who the visitors were. 
somethinggrand 