The two blocks of Main Street between Inkster and Matheson are no more important than any other two streets in the city. In fact now, as it was when Sheldon Oberman was growing up there, you can drive by and not even notice it. You may recognize a couple of landmarks, like the north end Salisbury House or Chapman's Pharmacy, but otherwise its fairly unremarkable
Except that it's a place that still captures Oberman's imagination thirty years later.
"There were some extraordinary lives being lived out very quietly. That can happen on everybody's street, though there's something special about the north end," says the Winnipeg writer and playwright - of the place that was the source for his book printed last year, This Business with Elijah
Less obviously, the north end was also inspiration for his other book, - The Always Prayer Shawl, a children's story about a boy's life from revolution-period Russia to old age and the lessons he learned from his grandfather, which he eventually passed down to his grandson.
The story is about change and permanence and the transfer of tradition - symbolized by the passing down of a Jewish prayer shawl.
And this north-end-rooted story has travelled and been widely recognized. Oberman recently went to New York to receive the National Jewish Book Award for a children's picture book.
And the book will appear as a play, produced by Winnipeg Jewish Theatre at the MTC Warehouse in March 1995.
"It's about my grandfather's life - the life of an immigrant, says the writer who now makes his home in Crescentwood and teaches part-time at Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate.
"And it's about the whole lifestyle of that (eastern European) culture that shaped the north end."
One of the main reasons he writes about other times is that young people don't know one period from another. "They seldom get an integrated look at their history. They only get fragments."
Telling stories about people and events from the past tells us not only who we are but what we're becoming, too.
"The one problem is that mass media has wiped out families telling their stories. . . It doesn't matter whether you're Jewish, Native, or Irish - you need your stories," says Oberman.
Today, people tend to plunk down in front of their TVs - or go to movies - and see other people's lives told bigger than life and they believe that those stories are more important than their own.
"My stories are very basic. They stay at a very human level," he says, adding he hopes they encourage people to tell their own stories, rather than replace them.
In This Business with Elijah, young Danny Stein's head has been filled with stories of the biblical prophet Elijah by the caretaker, Mr. Werner, who lived in the basement. Werner is from that mystical world out there - eastern Europe, legends and biblical stories, songs in Hebrew - where spirits and magical things live.
Enthralled and curious, Danny explores the complex and brilliant characters ters of his neighbourhood.
The collection of short stories - which at first were not intended to be a book - reflect Oberman's attempt to deal with that place in his mind that special time in his north end neighbourhood hood represents.
"(The north end) is a place of transition. I think any place of transition is exciting, whether it's here or a river in the Congo - places where you find cultures colliding " he says.
"The jostling, the bump and grind, was really creative. It was tough, but that's 0K."
The east European-dominated Culture of the north end up until about 25 years ago was marked by a kind of startling honesty," Oberman feels. "When you got cheated, you knew it ... I don't think we were separated by luxuries."
One clue as to why he finds his childhood such a source for his writing is the great number of eccentrics that populated his neighbourhood.
"There were so many people alienated from mainstream society; so they had a lot of freedom to do what they liked. They were outcasts anyway. Just like the north end was outcast anyway from the rest of the city . . . And there are clear social and political reasons why people formed that way."
Today, most of those same north end neighbourhoods are no longer Jewish, Ukrainian, German, and Polish. The largest single population is Aboriginal. And though their ancestors were the first people here by a long shot, in many ways Aboriginals are the new immigrants, Oberman feels.
"They face some of the same struggles. A lot of the experience centres around arrival and change," he says. "But many of the problems people here now face are different. Then there were rising expectations that you'd do better than your parents. "
He still has links to the north end and many people remember his colourful family, known as the OB's - as in the former OB's Steam Baths and his mother, Dot OB the psychic.
What I really get a kick out of is that Chapman's Pharmacy in my old neighbourhood carries (This Business with Elijah). it's not out in front or anything, but if you ask for it they'll rummage around and pull it out, he says.
Today he's working on another children's book in cooperation with an Inuit man, who is retelling stories of his childhood, living on the land around Baker Lake, NWT.
"I like the kids' books because it's a great way of getting to the parents. When you read them 10 or 15 times over you have a chance to penetrate, make an impression."
But Oberman's most excited about the upcoming theatrical mounting of The Always Prayer Shawl, centred on the character Adam.
"In the play I get to develop his wife as a character, as well .. . She's a socialist and follows her traditions of social change. I'm excited by the dialogue between them," he says.
"It's a family show in the deepest sense."