When I was little I used to find surprises in my bed. We had huge old-fashioned goose feather mattresses in winter. You sank down and down and the feathers rose up around you and nearly covered you. No heat in bedrooms then. We’d undress in the icy rooms, run to the stove and get warm, and when our pyjamas were so hot we couldn’t bear them on our flesh, we’d make a rush for the feather beds, every one, even if two in a bed, with his own warm nest. And because I like to find things, there used to be little things there. I’m sure I told you before, didn’t I? Sometimes when I was asleep I’d feel Aunt Bella or someone sneak something in that I’d find in the morning. One late confession, I had my own small bed, never slept with anyone else, though my younger brothers doubled up.
And years later, many years, when I was a young man and lonely at times and wondering about life and the things I didn’t have, I tried to imagine what it would be like to sleep two in a feather mattress. Laugh quietly, but we used to get the first Life magazines, and they specialized in long-legged American beauties. I used to wonder if they could possibly be so slim and smooth and elegant and tidy and clean. You see my only point of comparison was the skin-clad ladies of the local camp who slept in their clothes, and the clothes weren’t particularly form fitting either.
This must be confession morning. Many white men made temporary wife arrangements up there. One thing I’m glad of was that I didn’t. I know the policeman who had conjugal arrangements considered me a bit weak in the wrist. There were times when I was tempted, but not very often. I had a horror of leaving a child who was mine to exist in a native camp. Fine for those who belonged there, my daughter wouldn’t. And because part-blood children can be heart-breakingly pretty, she’d be game for the first white man who arrived after she was twelve or fifteen.
But every issue of Life brought more lovely ladies and when you get a year’s issues at once, that’s a lot to wonder about. Can you see the contrast? Clean beautiful hair, no twigs and caribou hair? It wasn’t possible to believe that women had legs and arms like that, and wore them uncovered. Easy to understand now.
I was happy and content, but after I left home, the feminine was lost to me. I didn’t know it but a soft woman’s voice on the radio set up a Life picture in my mind. The occasional white woman was finding her way into the Arctic in those days and they were strange exquisite creatures but I could barely speak to them.
There was one in particular, the photographer, Lorene Squire, who came up on Nascopie for HBC. The Beaver still has rolls and rolls of her underdeveloped film. Capt. Smellie sort of gave me to her, to run the ship’s boat where she wanted to go. She was a lovely lady, not only in my confused mind, but she had a very easy, friendly, manner. She was also a very beautiful woman. She was all the pictures, all the radio voices. She treated me as though I had grown up in her environment. She gave me things to carry, cameras, and gear, she wore a kerchief on her head and if it got in the way, she’s whip it off and stuff it into my pocket or toss it to me. I was almost scared, I was scared, to touch those personal things. I’d never seen, much less touched, such a glorious person. She was always in a hurry too. Guess it’s a fact of life with photographers. She’d grab my hands and position them when I had to hold a reflector or something. She could never know what that touching meant. I was her devoted slave as you might have guessed. She ate her meals on board at the captain’s table. I ate in the officers’ mess room with my friends, the mates and engineers. The saloon ate before us and she’d come down the deck, peek into the mess room and when the radio operator left, (he never stayed more than a few minutes) she’d come in, squeeze next to me and smile at everyone. She’d grin at Marcel, our mess boy, and he’d bring her a plate and she’d snitch a bit from everyone, and every man there would have given her his whole dinner.
I suppose she was getting some atmosphere for her articles at the same time, but that glorious lady owned that old ship.
Capt Smellie was dour and unapproachable but she’d get hold of his arm and coax him into a position where she’d get the exact picture she wanted. One night there was a fantastic cloud and colour effect in Lancaster Sound. Passengers only allowed on the bridge by special invitation, and not often then. But early in the voyage the old man relaxed that rule for her completely. Only stipulation was she must not climb to the yard or the ice barrel without a crew member along. So she was in the darkened wheelhouse with us.
It was fall and the midnight sun long gone. She stood at the corner of the bridge wing with her cameras and suddenly said, “Get the captain, quick.” No one, but no one, even thought to call the captain at that time except in regard to the ship. The third mate looked properly horrified, the watchman froze in his tracks. Poor mesmerized me, I took off like a racehorse, and as I rapped on his door, I knew for sure he’d slaughter me.
But I guess I didn’t care, because I banged right heartily and when he appeared I just said, “Miss Squire wants you on the bridge quickly.” He said never a word, reached for his uniform jacket and cap and walked out, leaving me to close his door and follow. She put him in the corner near the old pelorus,18 unused these modern days, and I can still see her take his chin and turn his head to get the exact pose, and with that absolutely fantastic light behind him she shot several pictures.
She never called me the same name twice in succession; I was Shorty, Bill, anyone of a hundred. I knew by her voice that she was looking for me when I heard George or Henry from some obscure place on the ship. This time she said, “Len,” and told me “We got a beauty here.” I never saw that one. I suspect that if it were developed before she died, the old man got it. There was one of him and the pelorus in The Beaver and on the cover of a book about him. Those were daylight pictures.
One winter listening to a news broadcast I heard that the photographer, Lorene Squire, had been killed in a car accident. I was alone on Cape Wolstenholme and I couldn’t cry, couldn’t feel. There was no one to confide in. I couldn’t believe that lovely person dead, mangled, and I had no person to talk to.
We had a large HBC radio net in those days, and when the Nottingham Island operator came on that night, he said, “If no one has emergency traffic, we’ll close down because every man up here has had bad news today.” That was the only sound on 4356 KCS that night. It was a calm moonless night. I dressed and I walked miles and miles up the valley. I was alone in every sense of the word. I was young, perhaps starved for some of the things I had never known. I heard her voice, felt her friendly touch, thought of the gentle heedless things she did like resting her arm on my shoulder to steady herself in the boat.
I’ll go to Maureen’s today. There are pickles to be made, head cheese, vegetables to be dug, corn to be picked. There will be berries and good things, but I’ll probably be able to ignore the harvest and the pickles and go talk to the foal who is growing up and who has recently decided he has a temper. Maureen had a tussle with him a few days ago about a halter and he reared and stamped and misbehaved until his mother nipped him sharply when he reared at her. So he and I will have a session.
First I’ll use guile and I’ll caress his neck and shoulders. That he loves, and he will stand and arch his neck and make foolish Eleanor Roosevelt faces to show his pleasure. He is only two months old. Then we’ll find a little fresh clover, put the halter on, and if he so decides, we’ll stand just as long as he wants. But sooner or later he’ll walk, and when he does, part of the battle will be over.
One of the boys said he needs his spirit broken, and he needs to be tamed. I could never do that. I’ve always been proud that I’ve trained many dogs without a blow or a harsh word. I am an amateur with horses, but there can be no excuse for breaking the spirit of a creature so wildly beautiful. So we’ll do what we must, but no force.
When I was very young at boarding school, we had two horses, Maggie and Bill. They had been artillery horses from the Great War with bullet scars on their flanks. Both were shell-shocked. Bill never recovered. He was much too wild for a little kid like me to be near. The man who owned him was an old Scot, stern, upright and just. We tried and tried but Bill was not able to be helped. So Old Malcolm let him live out the fantasy of war that lived in his old brain.
He would race around, eyes wild with fear and excitement, rearing and plunging and shying away from the fearful things he saw. He only knew peace when Maggie was let in with him. She’d put her big old head across his neck and he’d calm down. One day Bill died quite suddenly. Malcolm said he sank to his knees and raised his head to the sky and never got up. Maggie stood quietly near him. She never went back to that end of the paddock again.
She was also shell-shocked and now and then would become unmanageable, but we usually knew when it would happen. She did it once when a brutal idiot was using her to haul wood. Malcolm would never say no to anyone who needed help but he liked one of us to go along to see that Maggie was treated gently. This time she bolted for no reason except memory and fear. She left the wood trail and plunged about fifty feet into deep snow. I had been walking beside her but had to jump aside when she bolted. In a short time she was up to her shoulders in snow and the sleigh and the wood was buried. She calmed down when I could get to her but she was lying on her side and I couldn’t release her harness.
Harvey had the stupid idea that she could back out and should be made to do so. He doubled the reins and before I even guessed what he’d do, he slashed her across the head. Her eyes, Claudia. I hope never to see anything like it again. I screamed at him to stop and he hit her again. There was an axe driven into one of the logs on the sleigh and I grabbed it. It wasn’t a cool reaction, just to scare him. I was white hot with anger and I remember the tears coming so fast I could hardly see but I could distinguish him in a blurred way and I went for him.
Doctor Paddon, who was in charge of the hospital, was walking with Mrs. Paddon and he came just in time. I heard his roar, and I put the axe down. He sent me on the run to the barn for men and shovels. It was quite close and he held Maggie’s head until we got back. When she was free and standing trembling on the road, he lit into Harvey, every word in measured English public school scorn meant to pierce. I couldn’t feel sorry for Harvey whose worse fault was probably that he was an ass, but I could see that he’d probably never change either.
Of course, I knew my time was coming. The doctor was kind. He told Joe to take Maggie away and get her dry and warm and then take her home. When they had gone, he spoke to me about the danger of letting my temper get out of hand, but there was a twinkle in his eye and a curve to his moustache that didn’t quite fit in with his words.
I didn’t talk much about it with anyone. I told Malcolm and he nodded without a word as I knew he would. Many years later my dad told me that Dr. Paddon had told him about it and had a good chuckle describing poor Harvey’s face as he looked at that axe coming at him. I must have been eleven or twelve then I guess.
Shortly after, Harvey made a vicious slash at a misbehaving dog with a long dog whip, the most cruel weapon imaginable. As usual, I was in the way, trying to do something with one of the Company dogs, and I got the whip in the face. It wasn’t the very tip, or I’d be blind now, but it wrapped around my head and took all the skin off my nose. Harvey must have been convinced his time had come but I couldn’t react. I couldn’t see.
When one suddenly loses the biggest part of the hide on his schnozz, his eyes go out in sympathy, I guess. I could hear Harvey babbling on, trying to say it was an accident, but I couldn’t see him. Anyway, there was no big axe around. When I got home, old Aunt Bella was there, dear old Aunt Bella, and she took a look and scolded me because I’d be scaring my mother, and when I wouldn’t go to the hospital, she went out to her brother Albert who was repairing the stairs, and got a big flat brown leaf of the old chewing tobacco and fitted it over my bugle. It hurt like fire for a second or so, then felt wonderful.
She fussed over me and I heard her tell Winnie, Malcolm’s daughter, “That blessed boy won’t have a head to his neck by the time he’s twenty.” Blessed wasn’t what it sounded like; it was Aunt Bella’s harshest cuss word.
Your letter was waiting for me when I got back to the office, such a nice fat one and so many things to study. Perhaps everyone can alter his vision to get double images and such like. When I was very young I learned to do it and it gives quite a variety of views to any single thing.
It’s amazing what I see in your art. I would like to see exactly what you see as you create. On the other hand I have a feeling it’s also very private and I want to be sure that I’m not prying. Is there any sense to that statement? I like to hear of what people have done and seen and felt, especially what they have felt. I would like to ask, and I do ask, but always with care because a person’s life is like his suitcase or bedroom.
In a way, a suitcase, to me anyway, resembles a life. Some are carefully packed, everything in order, no old or ragged things. Others are a joyous confusion of new and old garments, worn perhaps, old perhaps, not packed with the idea that someone might look, but packed with love and generosity showing the owner as he or she is.
A nice old lady I once knew had an expanding case of old heavy leather, and all that held it together was two big straps. It was like two boxes, one slightly smaller than the other. To get into it, you lifted the smaller one off. To pack, you put everything into the larger one and put the other over it, pressed them down and fastened the straps. The old lady used to pile it all up and slam the top one down. One of us would sit on it, perhaps two of us, and she’d tug the straps through the brass buckle. Once the straps were fastened everything would be secure.
She’d have all sorts of things in there and it was usually well expanded. The first Life-Saver candy I ever had came out of that case, peppermint. I had a toy sailboat someone made me and I carefully fastened white Life-Saver rings in the rigging. The bath water soon took care of them, but never mind, I had them for a while. Guess I was a dumb little kid not to eat them. Guess I did a lot of dumb things but they were fun.
Once there was a hot spring day when school seemed a positive imposition. Don’t know how I ever learned anything because I seem to remember every season was too precious to be inside. Anyway, it was late in the afternoon. The sun was shattering itself against the big windows and the time was so long. I had a set of shiny steel geometrical instruments and I noticed how a square had reflected a bright spot on the ceiling. Of course I had to reflect that spot here and there.
I have to tell you I was deathly afraid of Mr. Russell, the teacher, but I knew he had weak eyes. I also knew he’d half kill me and I was torn between aye and nay, but I did it. I flashed that little spot squarely in his eyes. He let out a roar and I saw him coming. If ever a person or a dumb kid knew fear, I knew it at that moment. He always wore a black robe and it was flying out behind him as he came at me.
Talk about a doomed person’s past flashing before his eyes. I hadn’t had much of a past at that time, it wouldn’t have been a long flash. But I never got a blink, too scared. He had the big pointer he always carried and I’d felt it before. He stopped about two feet away and just about when I expected to be struck dead before the whole class, the miserable girl behind me, Emily, rammed an old-fashioned pen nib through the crack in the seat and nailed me squarely in the back end.
If I thought of anything in that instant, I would have thought your sins fall on your head, and if so why is the pain in the opposite end? At that moment my small world was exploding in every direction. I half stood with shock, surprise, pain, heaven only knows what emotions, and I guess he thought I was about to attack or flee or whatever.
His second roar put me back on my throbbing backside, and my seatmate put his head down on the desk. I imagine he thought that nothing could save him from the holocaust that was inevitable.
Mr. Russell stopped, looked at me for a good minute, probably trying to decide if he would have my heart or some other palpitating organ first. Then he started to talk and I felt like he stripped every inch of skin from my frame. He was famous for his tongue and I got the full benefit. When all my bones were bare and all the kids were expecting me to drop, he laid out my punishment: four big loads of coal to be brought up from the cellar every morning, and he added that if I were of a vindictive turn of mind, I’d best not think of stabbing Emily with a pen nib, much as she deserved it.
I didn’t dare turn around but I heard later that Emily turned a good many shades of red. I knew Russell told my dad because my dad grinned at me one day and asked if I was sitting comfortably these days. Those old seats were cruel instruments. There was a wide crack in the back and the desk drawers sloped down. To ream an unsuspecting neighbour, you only had to shove your hand, armed with a long penholder, deep into the drawer, and bingo.
Did I ever get even with Emily? Well, I plotted revenge for a long time. Then one day I saw her crying because a better-dressed girl had made a nasty remark about her clothes, and it wasn’t important any more. I told my sister and she told my mother and she and Mrs. Payne created a dress for Emily’s confirmation. They had an excuse because Emily’s mother was always sick.
I saw her again when she was big and happy and productive. She must have had six or seven kids. My dad and I were staying overnight at a tiny hotel in Twillingate, and Emily happened to be there too. She told the story all over again in the best-natured way and I thought my dad would choke. Emily is a year older than me. I wonder what she’s like now.
Berry picking again this evening, back to Pilgrim. Saw where Mr. Bear had had his morning or afternoon nap. Guess it’s pretty comfortable there in the sun especially when you carry a big black rug around to rest on. Willie Millik and I once spent a long time watching a black bear take a rest. He was just like a baby, got a hold of his back toes with his front ones and look puzzled about what to do next. He’d roll over and over like a kitten and seemed to want an audience, not knowing he had one.
I can still see Willie’s merry round face with his perfect white teeth, black eyes and brown smile. He was a handsome man, tall for an Eskimo and so merry, he laughed about everything. I think of all the friends I had in the Arctic he had to be the greatest.
Nothing disturbed Willie. No change in weather, or whatever, bothered him. Once we walked a long, long, way over very rough country to get to where he had left a small boat. We intended to use the boat to cross the inlet and get home without having to climb a huge mountain that got in our way. Long after dark, in mixed rain and snow, we got to where he kept the boat on a little gravelly beach. I was dreaming of warm food and my comfortable bed just across the inlet, only half an hour’s rowing away. But no boat. Another native had borrowed it to go to the village across the water. We could see the lights but no way to signal, as there is no wood in that country to make a fire.
First of all Willie had a good laugh, then we sat down and ate some dried fish, and in the dark I could just see him as he held up and imaginary tea pot and asked politely, «More Tea?» That type of person stores everything in his head. Soon he got up and said he knew where he had picked up a couple of pieces of wood, probably tossed off some passing ship. Not far he said, and peeled off his outer kulitak and took off. He could run like a deer and see like a cat, and it wasn’t close. He was gone half and hour or more, but brought back two small pieces of wood with Moirs Confectionary on them. Also a fair-sized tin can. So if we couldn’t have a big signal fire, we’d have a reflected one.
Our little fire was so small I had no hope anyone would see it across five miles of water, but we took the wood and the can up the hill and Willie grinned as he lit the shavings. He said Magdalena Kejuk saw everything and she’d soon have someone over for us. It seemed a long cold wet wait with the snow getting thicker, but after a while we heard the tonk-tonk of Joseph Tuglavina’s old Hubbard engine, and the boat pulled in loaded to the gunwale with kids and adults who had come out in that miserable weather just for the ride, everyone laughing his head off. When we got on board, Willie’s adopted son poked his head out of the tiny engine house to offer us tea that he had been keeping warm on the exhaust. Hardly room in there to change your mind, yet he crouched behind the noisy, smelly old engine for that five miles so we’d have the tea Willie’s wife sent, nice and hot.
My assistant was at the dock to meet us. He said his wife had cooked a roast of venison. Willie’s family was already there, so we went to the big old mission house where Bill and I lived and when we walked in, our wet outer clothing was taken off. They pulled off our boots and we sat down to eat. Such a meal! Bill’s wife had learned from the German missionaries and they were experts. There were two huge coppers of water heating on the big black range, and after I had eaten, and our tale or tales were told, I got into a steaming tub and from there to bed. Sleep? Claudia, the sleep we got in that country would make old Rip Van Winkle jealous.
Just boiled a huge lot of cranberries and now have the juice straining through a linen bag. I’ll be honest, if you won’t tell. It’s a new pillow case. Outrageous, no? But it makes lovely clear jelly and what’s a pillow case every four or five years? It was lovely on the river this evening, beautiful on the Island. Now it’s raining very gently and I’m sitting here listening to the rain on the roof.
There’s nothing like being in a tent listening to the rain fall on the surface of the water while a candle makes shadows, and a little sheet metal stove gobbles gently, and the stove pipe turns red where it joins the stove. My dad used to say for pure comfort you had to have dry feet, a soft spot to lie, a favourite pipe to smoke and the stovepipe red. He loved these things and because he had to spend a lot of time in the office, he enjoyed the outside things that much more.
He had a big Michigan axe that he got from an American prospector. No one could use it but my dad. In the fall, when things were quiet, he’d take his axe and for a week or more he’d chop firewood in a special grove he had marked for his own. Actually, no one else wanted it because it was high on a hill and hard and dangerous to get. The wood was red spruce, almost overgrown, and would soon fall anyway. So he cut for his soul’s sake every fall and my brother and I risked life and limb to haul it home with a dog team.
One year we hauled a huge pile and stood it up, teepee fashion, as they do where there is a lot of snow. An owl built a nest away up where the sticks crossed, and never a stick of that wood was ever used. Mrs. Owl didn’t migrate. She was a horned owl and she used the pile summer and winter. So the wood just stood there and rotted. My dad wouldn’t permit one stick to be disturbed.
He was short, Irish, hot tempered, kind and generous. You’d have liked him. He’s long gone but my memory of his face is as clear as when I was a little boy. I was a strange kid and he understood me. I guess he was a strange kid in his day too.
I am supposed to get, one of these days, an enamel and copper brooch, a figurine of Nelson’s Victory. When my dad was a boy, the Victory was reconditioned, and at that time they took some of the copper off her bottom and cast it into brooches which were sent all over the Empire as prizes for “exceptional progress” at school. My dad won one, and at his death, my mother gave it to my sister. She suffered a break-in at her home in Salisbury, N.B., one year and the pin was stolen. Weeks and weeks later, she was visited by a couple of boys selling something or other, and one had her pin in his hat. She gave him his choice: deliver the pin immediately and replace the other things, or go to jail for housebreaking. She knew who he was and he couldn’t get away. I only hope that whoever does end up with it will value it as much as I would.19
When I was a kid, and before I had to go out to school, October was the month that we barged home the firewood. All the summer work was over, the salmon fishery, the cod and trout were all done.
The only nets in the water were for smelt and whatever we could pick up for the table: now and then a big fat salmon, or a big sea run trout. It was a joy to get up early, find ice in the boat, row out to the nets, and with freezing fingers take dozens of fat smelt from the icy water, and throw them into little wooden pails that James made just for that purpose, a pail for each house, then deliver it from door to door from a wooden wheelbarrow with a squeaky, bumpitty wheel that would make a delicious rattle over the frozen board walk. It was actually Edgar’s job, but I loved doing it and would arrive home with frozen hands but warm everywhere else.
In October, we put the rubber and leather footwear away and ran light-footed in soft silent Eskimo sealskin boots. And the wood haul: if the tide permitted an early run, we were allowed to go before school. We’d lie in the piles of dry bark in the bottom of the old wooden scow while the motorboat towed us up to what we called “The Bight.” There we’d go alongside a big natural rock dock and everyone would start carrying back loads of long poles from the big teepee-shaped piles to the barge, till she was piled high above the gunwales. Then we’d lie on the wood and ride home.
The inlet there is beautiful, Claudia, high steep wooded hills, birch, balsam, juniper and aspen, together with fir and spruce. In fall it is a symphony of colour, and on a sunny day the inlet is molten fire. Maybe kids don’t really appreciate beauty like that, but I remember how my chest constricted and my heart beat faster when I thought of leaving it.
Even now, when I have seen so much other beauty, I can still feel the warm rush of emotion that I felt so long ago on the top of a pile of sweet smelling wood in that old scow. I can remember the incredibly delicate patterns in the soft rose-coloured jelly fish that would pass the barge in a never-ending stream, little and big, eyeless, finless, almost liquid creatures, pulsing along at this slow pace, but in some sort of a perfectly regimented order, and in the centre of each a lovely pattern in pastel. Take one out of the water and it became drab and colourless in your hand and the pattern disappeared. Put it back and it would start pulsing away again, going wherever the current took it, but having a purpose, and there would be miles of them, on every side of the boat, from tiny things half an inch in diameter to huge thick creatures, six feet or more across.
They’d get left behind by the retreating tide and die on the beach by the thousands. Walking in the dark, you’d suddenly find yourself up to your knees in jelly where some big fellow lay unseen in your path. I wonder why they exist. Nothing eats them unless the baleen whales strain them with plankton. I used to get right up in the bow of the scow and watch her blunt stern divide the ranks of jellyfish, watch them roll helplessly over, then come back to their normal position and continue their contracting and expanding which might advance them a few inches in an hour. It’s more likely the pulsing is breathing and they let themselves be carried wherever by the current, but somehow they manage so that there is space between each pair. Lots to think about for a small boy who loved the inlet with a fierce protective love.
I would love to show you the flat water of the inlet under a fall moon, as the moon tides rose and the silent water crept higher and higher. That moon affects people, and the restless reaching water. If you have never felt it there is something in store for you.
Babies are born easily on a rising tide. The midwives always hoped for a birth when the water came in. I would guess that they are easily conceived on a rising tide because there is a restlessness that goes with that flow of the water. It is known that the sick revive on the rising water and decline on a falling tide. A person who is dying will likewise rally on a rising tide and remain till the water falls, then he will die. The expression “Going out with the tide” has a lot of substance. I’ve seen it often.
This is the day our last trips should be going out but we still have two loaded barges at the dock, the Nelson is still at the mouth of the river, and the Churchill still at Paint Hills. It’s not the end of the world but it was snowing heavily last night. It melts as it falls but it soon cools things so that it won’t be long before it is solid on the ground.
Gotta go. I’ll soon talk to you and let you know when I’ll be leaving Moosonee. They’ll forward letters but it means that much longer before I hear from you.
Good old King Winter is here in full force tonight, -30 F and calm and clear, with a bright, almost full, moon. Tell me, why is the city so cold at these temperatures?
Thirty below isn’t considered much back in the deep wood. Once, just before Christmas, my brother and I were quite a way inland and we found a lake we had never seen before. I don’t think many others had seen it either, as it was very hard to get to. We had climbed a high range of hills, hoping that there might be caribou there. About mid-afternoon, we came to a place where our range met another, and at the bottom was this jewel of a lake. There were trees right to the high rocky shores, no sign of people. We had two choices, go back to our previous camp or go down into the valley and camp there, knowing we’d have to climb out in the morning. But there never really was any choice, we were going down and we both knew it.
We went down an almost vertical slope on the wide, almost round snowshoes they use in heavy snow country. It was a breathtaking experience. Tons and tons of snow moving ahead of you, not the wicked power of a mountain avalanche, just the almost gentle movement of the top layer of snow. At times you don’t move your feet, just stand and go down so smoothly and gently. Claudia, what I’d give to be young and in that country again.
We arrived at the bottom, right at the mouth of a little rapid brook, so rapid that most of it was unfrozen. The trees there were huge black spruces, sixty or seventy feet tall, with branches so close and heavy that there was almost no snow under them, while the trees themselves had feet and feet of snow all over each huge branch. A camping spot one might dream about and never find.
I guess the temperature was around thirty below but the air was so close and still that it seemed warm. It took only a few minutes to clear the snow away. The big tree trunk made half of our shelter, and a dozen small balsams created a back shelter and roof, as well as a thick carpet of very fragrant branches to sit on. Not twenty feet away was a big dry tamarack, the finest possible fire wood, and while I chopped it down and reduced it to fire lengths, my brother put a noose on a long willow and snared four or five of the trout that were in the “steady,” that’s a back eddy in a brook.
We built a fire of big logs and when there were lots of big hot embers, we raked some aside and put our frying pan and tea kettle on them while the bannock thawed. The trout were red and tasty, and we cooked them to a nice crusty brown colour. It was a memorable meal, and even at that temperature, the heat reflected into our shelter was intense enough that we could sit there minus parkas, take off our moccasins and toast our feet. We had no blankets but needed none. There was not a draft of wind, at least not there. Up on the ridge, in the open treeless expanse, it was probably bone chilling cold but down there we were warm and comfortable. We ate our meal and cut another few trees for the night.
My brother was by way of being an inventor, at least he could always see some way to save work. So he piled a big wall of logs up behind the fire and he supported them with a green stake or two. The idea was that after a time the green stakes would burn off and the logs would tumble into the fire and we’d continue sleeping. Matter of fact, it worked, but a little bit earlier than he had planned. While the fire was still roaring merrily, the stakes collapsed and the logs tumbled in where we wanted them. There were sparks and smoke everywhere for a minute or so, and the dry tamarack took fire instantly so that we had to move away back because it was too hot to be near the fire. But what a sleep we had. I remember waking early in the morning when it was still dark and the moon was low. The fire had burned down and it was getting chilly so I built it up again and lay back and waited for the light to come.
Outside our shelter, it was bitterly cold. The ice in the lake was booming as the frost bit deep and there was not another sound. The moon was a big round silver ball away up there. The world could be empty of all people. It was hard to imagine there was anyone besides us, that millions all over were still sleeping in warm houses under blankets was incredible. It was impossible to remember that there was sickness and sadness and poverty. That world was so perfect that everything else should also be perfect.
Have you ever been in a mood like that when your head fills with music. I still do and I associate various pieces of music with some special happening. I never hear “Plaisir d’Amour” but I think of that night and morning, and that’s why I’m writing. I was going though some old papers, a tiresome job, and I got Liona Boyd to play me some of her music, and guess what she played? Correct. I went back in time and the impressions were so strong I wanted to tell you.
I remember the sweet smell of the balsam in the fire, the glitter of the flames on the snow and the deep red of the embers, the almost silent sound of the flame eating that almost smokeless wood that burns so fiercely, and behind it, momentarily obscured by the leaping fire, I could see the moon, the dark blue sky, the millions of stars, and the music mounting and mounting in my head. There is no reason for a person who has felt as I did then to ever think he has not known happiness. That music makes me see a perfect moon, a perfect night, a dancing flame and contentment, such contentment as I would give to the world if I could.
That was perhaps fifty years ago. There is no way there except on foot and in winter, well by helicopter I guess, but even then only in winter, but I could take you there to that very place. The ashes of our fire would likely still be visible and the stumps of the trees we cut for firewood will still be there. Things change very slowly in such a place and I would almost bet that no one has been there since. It is a wonderful feeling to know that that perfect place is still perfect and that it will remain so forever because no on will even be able to desecrate it with buildings or roads.
Recently I read a book about the Depression, and the author said, “Those were the days of great hardship and privation.” He felt we had nothing, but he could not ever realize what some of us actually had. He could never know, because he had never been fortunate to have those things.
Yesterday Jocelyn McKillop finished my oral history. She ended by asking a few questions about things we had not discussed, and some were about living conditions and the things we didn’t have, running water and electric light, no regular mail, no medical facilities. While I do appreciate them now, I’m glad we didn’t have them then.
Our meeting in Montreal was sandwiched in between a board meeting in New York and an extraordinary meeting of presidents in Calgary. Montreal wept all the while. She was grey and foggy and her streets were dripping. She had nice white petticoats on Mount Royal, but her downtown linen was soiled and she hated it.
But Montreal is always Montreal, and the rain and the grime don’t really change her. She’s like a lovely woman cleaning an old-fashioned stove, and the soot gets on her face and in her hair and on her fingers. By April, she’ll have washed her face and changed her dress and she’ll be so radiant that all the people will smile and feel that winter can never come again.
Right under the boardroom window of our new office, twenty-six floors down, is a tiny church. I don’t know who she is; I never saw her before. She sits there, and the big buildings crowd in on her and she draws her skirts back. I can see she’s indignant, biting her lips to keep the tears back because they have taken her sunlight away and her view. And while someone droned on about our fantastic year and our superlative results, I watched her, and I wanted to run down those twenty-six storeys and tell her that I understood, and one day I will. Early some spring morning, I’ll get up early and go and find her and sit there with her in the cool air and listen to the silence that comes even to Montreal at the right time of day. I can’t say I’m too strong on some of the things she stands for, but that’s her business. I admire her for staying there, for saying “…that’s far enough. Please don’t touch me…” and I can sit with her for a while and it will do us both some good.
I’ll go when Montreal is still sleeping, when the trucks and cars and buses and people have their eyes closed, and all their noise and turbulence shut off, when the tiny new leaves rustle a bit self-consciously, and try to hide, when a shaft of sunlight finds all the holes in the raggedy fringe of buildings and lies warm on the cobblestones. I’ll be there when the arrogant and resentful old Crown Life building sort of smiles under her British straight upper lip, when the birches on the slope of the mountain stroke McGill campus so that she’s like a brown tabby cat in the sun.
I’ll sit awhile there and listen to a city turn over, stretch and wake up on a Sunday morning, some spring time.
I should have been basking in the flow of adjectives that described the financial results of 1983, but I know all that, don’t I. We made money, a lot of it, and it was good to hear a quiet voice say so. Our president and a prince, he is a big cheerful easy Englishman who can take a financial report and discuss it and indicate how pleased he is. I sat there listening, stealing glances at the little church and I wondered about people. I guess there were some who thought I was inattentive. I can always say, “Sorry, I’m a bit hard of hearing,” with perfect truth.
We did have a good year, and our results at Moosonee were the greatest return, percentage-wise, that the boss had ever seen on such a small capital investment. They find it hard to believe we do so much with so little equipment, and that we don’t ask for the moon to make more.
I asked for a reasonable wage for my people and good benefits, and I have never been refused. The boys and the tug crews work hard. One of the accountants pointed out that our people make so much more than, say, his office staff. Sure they do, but in a week they easily work double the time his staff works. They have to leave home to do it. They earn their extra money and that’s the only point on which I am prepared to be difficult. I don’t feel they are employees; they are partners. That’s one of the things Jackie said to me once. I had gone back to the office to do some work after supper and she showed up. I told her she could stay at home and enjoy some free time and she looked at me and said, “We’re partners, so when you work, I work, and I like it like that.”
There are a lot of changes to talk over with her. The inevitable; it’s about time someone else has a crack at the job of general manager of MTL. I’ll be back in Moosonee this year but I’ll make fewer decisions and do less of the routine work. I’ll leave the decisions to Cal and Ellsworth, and let then handle problems from Montreal or Calgary. I’ll be very happy to turn it all over to Jackie and the boys in 1985. I told you I sent Jackie a briefcase and she liked it. I had put in a few sheets of MTL paper, pencils and pens so she’d know we want her back. I hope she can go to Moosonee the same time I do.
When we go up, I’ll send her to the mission about their oil for ’85, to the Hydro about theirs, to talk to the hospital board about the freight for Albany. I’ll take her to talk with the Quebec people about the pipeline and all their cargo. She’ll stand eye-to-eye with people and let them know she is the person to talk to at MTL. Perhaps it’s pushing her a bit earlier than I had planned, but it will, I hope, give her an idea of her worth.
The most frightening monstrous thing was in the Free Press last night. A man abused his teenaged daughter sexually when she was twelve. He got charged, and his lawyer asked to have the charge dismissed because she was a “non person,” born out of wedlock, and therefore outside the law. That the man had committed a crime meant nothing. She had no rights under the law. But she had a father, didn’t she? Someone was responsible for her being here? That a judge would even take time to consider it gave me the horrors. How many children are there of common-law marriages? The single lady who is on TV’s Journal took time off to have a baby. Is that baby a non person too? Can she be abused by anyone who decides to hide behind a law that is vicious and horrible? There is this man smiling confidently in court while the daughter listens to his lawyer claim she has no rights and is a non person.
Non-persons have thin skins. Yesterday I had to stop my car, get out and boot a big teen-aged bully who was beating up a tiny East Indian kid who knew he’d better not resist, who even when I’d disposed of the bully, sat with his hands over his face as he had while he was being beaten. All of eight or nine, he was scared, and he knew it was only temporary relief. He’ll get it day by day because of his dark skin, and because he’s small. I took him to the school, found a teacher who tried to get the other boy’s name, but he pinched his lips together and wouldn’t utter a sound. Already he knew that if you are a non person, you hold your tongue, you stay out of the way of your betters and if you happen to get caught, you cover your face and endure till the terror leaves.
Once at Gordon Bell,20 I had to leave my car to help a boy on crutches who was being beaten by two other boys. Guess people on crutches are non-persons too. There was a teacher on the steps who made no move to interfere. One kid was striking the boy with his own crutch while the kid held the fence for support. My car blocked traffic and a strolling cop ticketed it for $25. I took it into court, not because of the ticket but because that policeman must have been able to see the assault, and when my time came, I was told to pay my fine, because the law says, right on a metal plate, “no stopping at any time.” I was warned that teachers and policemen will protect the public and that I am neither. I guess I barely avoided being a non-person. I told the magistrate that I will never pay twenty-five dollars to anyone with more pride. He flushed right up to, and including, his varicosed nose, but he didn’t say a word. The clerk later told me I missed “Contempt of Court” by a hair’s breath. My daughter says some day I’m going to get it.
18 A navigational instrument.
19 Obtained by subscription and often given as school prizes, these brooches were cast in the shape of HMS Victory. They bore the following words on their reverse: “Centenary memento of the Death of Nelson, 1805 Oct 21st 1905. Containing copper from HMS Victory. The Gift of the Lords of the Admiralty to British and Foreign Sailors Society. E.R. VII (Edward VII).
20 A high school in Winnipeg.