The Saskatoon Bonanza Fire Metaphor

Last year, in 2017, the most notable thing to ever happen in my hometown ensued. (Second most notable, if you count the time I fit eight tater tots in my mouth just to see if I could.)

At the corner of 8th Street and Arlington, a family-owned restaurant called Bonanza was consumed by a blaze that injured no one but completely upstaged my 18th birthday — because every teenager with a repressed Dionysian impulse within a 10-kilometer radius scrambled to document it on their Snapchat story.

People paid lot of posthumous reverence to Bonanza but, to be honest, it wasn't all that noteworthy during its 45-year tenure. (Isn't that always how it goes with history's great artists?) News articles from the immediate aftermath called it a "steakhouse," but I always remembered it as a kind-of-gross family buffet. The kind of place where it wouldn't be odd to see a table of junior hockey players next to a table of construction workers on lunch next to an elderly couple celebrating their anniversary.

The owner said he planned to rebuild, but eventually a Popeye's went up in the old Bonanza lot.

I think about this often, when I am drinking vending machine coffee in a boardroom watching my every idea get vetoed by a business administration major who makes twice my salary and has half my vocabulary. I think about this often when I am actively wrestling with the urge to change my name, sublet my apartment, take off on my bike, and throw my phone into the Lachine canal. I think about this, often when I am recalling the 20-year-old who lives in my brain and still forces me to binge drink and wear blue eyeshadow sometimes, who would be debilitated with delight if I told her we pay for the cramped studio apartment I resent all by ourselves.

In this life you will yo-yo between tearing down things you've made and putting up new things in their place. The Saskatoon Bonanza Fire inspires you to contemplate whether those new things are better or just bigger.

Bonanza was never my first-choice restaurant. I always remembered it as a kind-of-gross family buffet. But there's an argument to be made that it was quaint, unifying, and dependable.

Popeyes, meanwhile, is eldritch, corporate, and insincere. But Popeye's is also inevitable: it has more money, more resources, and more mass appeal.

That's the linchpin of the Saskatoon Bonanza Fire Metaphor: It doesn't matter whether the corporate giant should have replaced the smited family business, or whether the new things you build in this life are better or just bigger. Popeyes, like your mid-20s, is inevitable. You'll have less vitality and more money. And drunk men will do unspeakable things inside of you.

All you can do is document the fleeting, fiery transient moments on your Snapchat story.