Pan on Prairie Patrol!

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Maple Leaf Forever, Muir

There’s pandemonium in Regina this weekend, as Saskatchewan Roughriders fans vividly imagine a possible Grey Cup final! Whether or not you are a football fan, one can only marvel at the tenacious hold that the the CFL has on the Canadian Psyche.

Once the football frenzy settles down, there’s still lots to get excited about in Saskatchewan’s capital city. I posted some Caboose Stories from my visit to Regina last spring, after examining for the Royal Conservatory of Music, as well as a few sound files from an incredible Deco Government Building. Yet those adventures were only the tip of the iceberg. A diehard fan of mixed metaphors, the real icing on the cake for me was being invited to play at the brand new RCMP Heritage Centre, designed by Canada’s own Arthur Erikson. It was a privilege and distinct honour to be the first musician to officially play in this incredible structure!

Just days before hitting the road for RCME ‘Prairie Patrol’, as I affectionately call it, I had noticed an article in the Globe & Mail about the RCMP’s multi-million dollar site’s official opening. I was warmly recieved there; however, afterwards I held off posting these files: at the time there was sustained media scrutiny of the RCMP, with a new leader being installed, and what was portrayed as an internal shakedown unfolding within the organization.

In typical Canadian style, the media seems to either love or hate the RCMP, and certainly our Iconic Police Force has had its fair share of news coverage – currently there is a national pall of collective sorrow for officers who have lost their lives while on duty in recent weeks and months. No matter how they are understood by the general public, the RCMP are inextricably linked with Canada’s earliest history and continue to shape our identity as a nation, as this phenomenal museum would attest.

When next in Regina – if not to catch some Grey Cup fever – you owe it to yourself to visit the RCMP Heritage Center: ‘pan’-demonium indeed!

The parentage of Pan is unclear; in some myths he is the son of Zeus, though generally he is the son of Hermes, with whom his mother is said to be a nymph, sometimes Dryope or, in Nonnus, Dioysiaca (14.92), a Penelope of Mantineia in Arcadia.^[1] His nature and name are alluring, particularly since often his name is mistakenly thought to be identical to the Greek word pan, meaning “all”, when in fact the name of the god is derived from the word pa-on, which means “herdsman” and shares its prefix with the modern English word “pasture”. In many ways he seems to be identical to Protogonus/Phanes. Probably the beginning of the linguistic misunderstanding is the Homeric Hymn to Pan, which describes him as delighting all the gods, and thus getting his name. The Roman counterpart to Pan is Faunus, another version of his name, which is at least Indo-European. But accounts of Pan’s genealogy are so varied that it must lie buried deep in mythic time. Like other nature spirits, Pan appears to be older than the Olympians, if it’s true that he gave Artemis her hunting dogs and taught the secret of prophecy to Apollo. Pan might be multiplied as the Panes (Burkert 1985, III.3.2; Ruck and Staples 1994 p 132^[2]) or the Paniskoi. Kerenyi (1951 p 174) notes from scholia that Aeschylus in Rhesus distinguished between two Pans, one the son of Zeus and twin of Arkas, and one a son of Cronos. “In the retinue of Dionysos, or in depictions of wild landscapes, there appeared not only a great Pan, but also little Pans, Paniskoi, who played the same part as the Satyrs“.

– courtesy of wikipedia!