Paul Tomkowicz, Switchman
I always wonder about the street cleaners I see around Hong Kong, small and weathered by sun and age, who sweep the pavement with coarse straw brooms. Their wide-rimmed hats, like the kind traditionally seen on Tanka “boat people,” seem oddly anachronistic next to their reflective safety vests and surgical masks. Who are they? Where do they live? How did they find themselves on a path that led to days and nights spent brushing the gutters free of debris?
I wonder if anyone thought the same when they saw Paul Tomkowicz, a Polish immigrant who worked as a street railway switchman fifty-five years ago. In the bitter air of midwinter Winnipeg, his job was to clear and defrost the city’s frozen streetcar tracks. In a beautifully-shot 1952 National Film Board documentary, we observe him as he works, silently, to clear the tracks, his ghostly frozen breath illuminated by the kerosene lamp he keeps at his feet.
It seems a lonely, anonymous life, but Tomkowicz doesn’t seem to mind it too much. He seems resigned to it more than anything, if only because the alternative, for him at least, would have been far worse. “Winnipeg’s alright,” he says. “In Winnipeg, you can go in the street, daytime, nighttime, nobody bothers you. My sister wrote me from my village in Poland. The soldiers came in the night. Murdered 29 people. My brother. My brother’s wife. Why’d they do that?”
Tags: National Film Board, Tramway, Winnipeg
forrest says:
fantastic. fantastic
September 30th, 2008 at 3:58 pm