Only once Raymond Siddhu was buzzed into the building did he get a key fob from GSSP’s managing editor, Harper, a woman who looked exactly twenty-three years old. “You have your own laptop, right?” she asked. “Our IT guys need to do some stuff to it first. They work off-site and they look like lizards. He hides it well, but Elliot’s obsessed with security.” The space felt more like an oversized home office than he was expecting it to be.
Siddhu had not yet told his wife that he’d quit the newspaper. He didn’t want to tell her that he’d left without a severance package. His boss had shuffled some papers and said, “I know it sucks here, everyone’s dealing with something. I didn’t realize that ‘legacy’ could be a verb until it was applied to my industry. Don’t you want your name on the front page when we run our final edition? Besides, this whole situation has given us a reason to be. Your stories have never been read this much. And now you decide to find work in communications?”
“I’ve taken a reporting job elsewhere,” Siddhu told him.
The editor’s phone started to buzz; he looked at it and then pushed it away from him like an emptied dinner plate. Siddhu hadn’t liked Curt when he came in two years earlier. He was too managerial and threw around too many buzzwords. But he had taken part in pub trivia nights. He listened to The National, loud, in his corner office on days when he had to deliver termination notices. He knew the names of his workers’ spouses and sometimes their children. He’d gained twenty pounds since he started the job; though he kept a treadmill in his corner office, he hung dry-cleaning from the handles. “I’m not going to ask you where,” he told Siddhu. “What’s gotten into you? Right, you’re feeling stuff. Have you talked to Uma about your decision?”
Last night, he and Uma had used Skype to attempt video sex fifteen minutes after Siddhu’s sons bawled at the sight of their father onscreen. They looked around for him and then wailed in their room until they fell asleep. He could not stop worrying that they would forget who he was. As a result, Uma accused him of looking distracted during their virtual intercourse and ended their call by throwing her smartphone across the room.
“I won’t change my mind,” he told his editor. In the past week, he had become the paper’s disease reporter. At every turn, Horne-Bough’s website had beaten them. It was not about intrepid reporting, Siddhu convinced himself, it was Horne-Bough’s personality creating a new business model. Maybe it wasn’t sustainable or lucrative, perhaps it was something quixotic, but GSSP could still produce the definitive record of this epidemic.
“If you just wait until the end of the next fiscal quarter, there will be another round of cost-cutting,” the editor-in-chief told him. “I don’t need to let you go empty-handed.”
Siddhu shook his head. He had a new job. He offered to give them the next two weeks, but he wanted to leave today. He left escorted by security.
At GSSP, there was a story meeting scheduled at a table crowded with takeout boxes and dirty Ikea silverware. This seemed to be the only raised flat surface in the office. No one except Harper, who was preoccupied by a malfunctioning router, was in attendance for the official 11:00 a.m. meeting time. Siddhu straightened up the table and admired the view of the city’s railyard in the distance.
“You can see it even better from our rooftop,” Horne-Bough told him when he eventually arrived, throwing his winter coat onto a chair. “If you don’t see us here, you can find us upstairs. We’ve got a gas grill and lawn furniture set up.” He was accompanied by the website’s other two reporters, including the former intern who had written better, detailed, and timelier versions of Siddhu’s own stories that week. The young media mogul looked at the table. “Thanks for cleaning up.”
The meeting was brief and uneventful. Each reporter spoke about the stories they were pursuing and how they were spending their days. The actual writing of the pieces, Siddhu seemed to understand, was done in coffee shops. When it was Siddhu’s turn to speak, he was relieved that neither of his new co-workers had wanted to cover the anti-immigration and anti-racism rallies being staged concurrently at the old Art Gallery.
“After you get your security software installed, we were hoping you would take that story,” Horne-Bough said, eyes gleaming. It occurred to Siddhu that there was likely a vaporizer on the rooftop as well. “You see, we’ve been spreading ourselves too thin. And I need help to break a big story on a, um, prominent figure.”
Siddhu leaned toward the table. “I want in on this.”
Horne-Bough centred his index finger on his lips. “Who knows if we’re being bugged? That’s why I prefer the rooftop.” He and the former intern, who had been given the original tip, had been sworn to confidentiality. “Negotiations are ongoing—we might need to crowdfund. Thankfully, we’ll be bringing in someone who’s good at passing around the hat.”
“You’re not going to pay a source, are you?” Siddhu asked.
“Not if we don’t have to,” Horne-Bough replied. He noted Siddhu’s dismay and added, “We are attempting to do things differently. If it burns us in the ass, you can blame the no-longer-rich white kid.”
The meeting was adjourned seventeen minutes after it commenced. Siddhu puttered around before asking Harper, on the phone with the company’s internet provider, about his payment information. The managing editor, once she was placed on hold by customer service, produced a wad of hundreds and asked him if he needed some cash to “blow off steam.” Siddhu hadn’t even bothered to negotiate a salary or his potential ownership share—he didn’t even know if he had dental coverage. At some point, if this all fell apart, he told himself he’d go into business with his brother Bobby, a contractor who tore down perfectly good houses to build new ones for a profit.
Siddhu had more than thirty minutes to make it to the rally, so to kill some time he got a coffee. Thankfully, it was still considered an essential food item by authorities. He stood in line at the business—coffee shop sounded too homely, café too romantic—that Bernard Rieux had introduced him to; it was the closest to his new office. He took note of the tables and outlets; this might be his new workplace. He looked over his interview notes with the anti-racism protest organizer. The organization for “European-Canadian rights” had sent him a press release that advocated an immediate deportation of all residents of Canada who’d been born outside the country and were of non-European descent.
As he ordered his Americano, he caught sight of Dr Rieux wearing a neon-orange cycling jacket. On their first meeting, Rieux had not smiled once. Today, his teeth were movie-star white and he seemed friendlier, more relaxed.
“You got me hooked on this place,” Siddhu told him.
“As I am with your news coverage,” Rieux answered brightly. “I read your farewell column. I’m sad to hear you’ll be leaving journalism.”
Siddhu explained that he’d found a new job. He wanted to write better stories, more timely stories. “And my old workplace had become a graveyard,” he told the physician. He lifted his face mask to take his first sip of the Americano. “I wanted something novel.”
Siddhu waited for Rieux to get his coffee. “Seems like there’s a lot of freedom in your new position,” the doctor told him. He seemed to pick his words carefully. “It must be exciting.”
“It was an impulse decision,” Siddhu said, as they both stepped outside. “How has business been in your clinic?”
“Surprisingly, nothing much has changed.”
Before they parted ways, Siddhu mentioned his next stop. “It’s going to get ugly,” Rieux warned him. He shook his head. “Everyone wants to make this health issue political. Infectious disease doesn’t check your party affiliation. Suffering is universal.”
It had been a cold, damp fall, but the first week of the quarantine offered glimpses of sunlight. Siddhu passed into Gastown and the business district and could see crowds forming on the other side of a police roadblock. As those with any familiarity with Vancouver’s outbreak might remember, the first week of the quarantine concluded with its only large-scale public conflict. For most locals, it felt inevitable, predictable, and tiresome. People were relieved that the rioting was limited and that there was only one during this period of protracted misery. Siddhu himself wouldn’t have predicted a riot that day, but he wouldn’t have ruled it out. He attended the protest knowing that the turnout would be high—that in itself was newsworthy. Tensions had risen and anxieties had culminated in a march by the city’s racist organizations (both its suits and its boots) and a concurrent counter-demonstration.
Several years prior to the epidemic, the city experienced a violent riot when the professional ice hockey team lost a championship final game. Drunken hockey fans, more inflamed by the catharsis of frenzy than any disappointment, trashed downtown businesses and set fire to a police car. On the morning after, Siddhu spent several hours with the newspaper’s archivist going through clippings. He interviewed some local historians and academics. They all concluded that the city’s first riots had been caused by racial resentments and economic anxiety. The 1907 Anti-Oriental Riots stemmed from an influx of Chinese railway workers undercutting the bargaining power of white labour. Two riots in the Depression era originated, respectively, from a fight for longshoreman’s rights and disgruntled unemployed men cut off from government relief.
In the last half-century, the motivations for and conditions that precipitated rioting, said the experts, became less overtly political. The Gastown riots in 1971 arose from a heavy-handed police response to a marijuana-rights protest. People rioted outside a Rolling Stones concert in 1972. The first hockey riot in 1994 seemed to result from genuine sports-induced nihilism. (Vancouver Police blamed the mass disruption and property damage on a short-lived alternative publication. In that free weekly, a columnist offered the cheeky suggestion of looting as a means to alleviating class envy.) These latter-day riots dramatized the struggle between personal freedom—to smoke, to rock out, to throw a tantrum—and state power. Some argued that they illustrated generational divides rather than friction between economic stratas. These were the types of riots reserved for a sleepy provincial city in an economically developed country.
At its outset, the riot that Vancouver experienced during the period of this narrative had the markers of the city’s earlier scenarios in that there was an existential crisis that flushed out base resentments. As Siddhu progressed through the crowds, he had trouble finding the original European-Canadian rights group. The sign-bearing anti-racist crowd was far more prominent and formed a throng around the fencing and line of police security along Robson Street leading to the south side of the old Art Gallery.
Food carts were stationed at the outskirts of the demonstration, lending a festive atmosphere to this political event. A majority of the crowd consisted of people who might otherwise describe themselves as bystanders. Siddhu assumed—hoped—they might be anti-racist. Their ethnic make-up was varied, although their identities were largely concealed. Face masks were effective in obscuring identities. Protestors covered their heads in toques and hooded sweatshirts, and as it was also unseasonably sunny, many wore mirrored sunglasses. A number wore backpacks, although Siddhu could not discern whether there were more backpacks than usual.
The active demonstrators began to jeer as the small parade came from an indeterminate point west toward the Art Gallery. He recognized the old Red Ensign flag, the one with the Union Jack in the top-left corner, slung over the shoulders of two young men in black bomber jackets and bleached blond hair who marched beside some older men holding up a banner with the name and URL of their European-Canadian rights group.
He heard the explosion first and then a burst of flame in front of the marchers. It was like thunder and lightning. Later he would realize that the sound had come from a Molotov cocktail that had been launched at the rear of the parade. This sound was, in his memory, like a starter’s pistol at a sprint. The chanting stopped behind the metal gates. The young marchers in black formed a defensive circle around the men carrying the banner. The fences gave way and the police line cracked. Siddhu stood behind a VPD officer who shouted at him to move back. The officer distracted him. Siddhu couldn’t see who threw the first punch, but soon limbs had been extended and were in motion.
The police buffered the two groups, minimizing the violence between them. The crowd of non-protestors seemed to disperse during this confrontation. Siddhu realized that it had merely moved down Robson Street, away from the police detail, and toward the shops. Siddhu was too far away to hear the glass smashing. Cellphone photos posted that day showed people in face masks stuffing their backpacks with electronics and handbags, others carrying stolen clothes by the rackful. For this segment of the crowd, the demonstration was a pretext to steal, a distraction from the spectre of death. Siddhu asserted his size and jostled himself out of the crowd as the air began to smell like gasoline and burning plastic. He succeeded in turning away from Robson Street, heading back toward Gastown, where he would find a place to write his story. He would piece it together from his own observations and the firsthand reports that he skimmed from social media.
Longtime Vancouverites felt as though they were following a script as the images and self-congratulating police press conferences ensued. But there were significant divergences from the previously established template. Many have noted that, unlike the previous riot, Vancouverites could not blame this embarrassing event on the “Bridge and Tunnel” elements. They owned this: the racists, the counter-protestors, the onlookers. More importantly, in previous iterations, the riot served to cap off tensions or, at the very least, acted as a release valve. From violence rippled sobriety, introspection, and remorse. Even as they watched homemade firebombs going off—relieved, this time, that no police cars were burned to charred hulls, and that the extent of the rioting was limited to two square blocks—they knew that this did not signal the final throes of turmoil. The rancor in our city had not been discharged; it festered. It made the people of this city sicker.
The day after the riot, Romeo Parsons gave his first televised speech since his election. It was broadcast on television and radio and streamed live. Vancouverites watched it with the single-mindedness of previous generations who’d been limited to only print and broadcast media. They saw Parsons’ response as the definitive, official reaction to recent events. On a provincial and federal level, politicians had already expressed concern; some called for a redoubling of medical resources and additional relief funds. But Vancouverites regarded their comments with indifference. They felt second-hand, patronizing. Parsons, whatever his political powers might be, was trapped with the rest of the citizenry. They regarded him as their leader and he still radiated the optimistic feeling that had given him a landslide victory.
The remarks came from within the mayor’s cherry-panelled office on the third floor of City Hall. The video had an impromptu air. The mayor sat behind his desk, which was cluttered with stamps, files, and souvenir flags. One of the venetian blinds behind him was unevenly half-lowered. Parsons wore a white dress shirt with a creamy blue tie, slightly loosened. His jacket was slung around the back of his chair. His eyes looked puffy, as though he had been crying, but he was otherwise well-composed, and before he launched into his speech, he flashed his white teeth at someone off camera. The mayor read from his text, his eyes bobbing up regularly from the page as though he was a swimmer doing the breaststroke.
“First off, I want to thank the people of our city for their time,” he began after the land acknowledgment. “As always, it’s my privilege to serve you, even under these extraordinary circumstances. Yesterday’s incident was troubling for all of us who take pride in our city’s friendliness, its inclusiveness, its safety. Last night, after watching images from Robson Street and speaking to the chief of police, I could not sleep. I got out of bed and put together some thoughts. Please forgive me if my language is not as polished as I would like.
“It would be foolish not to address the anxiety that served as the subtext for yesterday’s violence and property damage. We are undergoing an immensely stressful time. Many Vancouverites are worried about death and illness. Others have found their livelihoods and routines affected by this illness. Many businesses have shut down or have reduced hours. To all of you affected, I want to say that we have not stopped working to find solutions since this health crisis first came to notice.
“We are committed to putting to justice the most grievous offenders from last night,” he continued after sipping water from a plastic bottle. “The incidents yesterday struck many Vancouverites as a gesture of hopelessness. People who see no future see no reason not to break a window and steal a pair of sneakers. Our hearts are broken like yours. After the last riot, there was a great up-swell in civic pride as people helped repair broken windows. Kind messages were scrawled on the plywood boards that covered up broken shopfront exteriors. The messages all boiled down to this: ‘Not all Vancouverites are vandals—not all of us are rioters.’”
He took another sip of water and a deep breath. “I am going to suggest the opposite: we are all complicit in the tensions and inequities exposed, not created, by the outbreak. We see the illness as an exceptional situation. In reality, it was our founding condition. As many people know, our city takes its name from an English officer of the Royal Navy. When he entered what’s now known as the Strait of Juan de Fuca in the early 1890s, he’d already been at sea for a year and had visited Australia, Hawaii, and South Africa on his quest to claim land on behalf of the British Empire. When he came to our region, though, Captain George Vancouver did not see wealth and abundance but devastation. He found abandoned villages and beaches lined with decaying bodies. He saw canoes placed in the trees, which upon closer inspection, held skeletons inside them.
“Amid this devastation, Captain Vancouver was greeted by only a few Indigenous people, many of whom bore terrible scars and were blind. Vancouver saw evidence that there had been a far greater population here in the past—village sites and clearings that would have contained thousands of inhabitants. Some historians now estimate that there were a hundred thousand original inhabitants in this unceded land we now call home. The Coast Salish people of this region were seafaring peoples whose canoes covered the water. Imagine great numbers of them against the first white settlers. History would surely be different.
“What caused such devastation? Smallpox, brought first to the other end of the continent by English soldiers during the American War of Independence. The disease had already struck the area in 1782 when David Thompson visited. He was asked then by Indigenous people whether smallpox was a weapon of the white man brought to destroy them.
“Now, conspiracy theorists have suggested that this epidemic is a foreign plot to destabilize our economy and real-estate market. You don’t need to wear a tinfoil hat to see how disease disproportionately affects our most marginalized people, the poorest, the least privileged.
“I came to office promising change while at the same time appealing to a broad electorate. People were disheartened by the Annex project and the previous mayor’s tone-deaf self-congratulations over reduced drug fatalities. And yet there has been little appetite to follow through on the consequences of such uneasiness. I do not take your vote as a blank cheque to enact unpopular policies, but leadership requires tough choices. It requires acting out of principle and not in the service of a focus group.”
The remainder of the mayor’s speech outlined a more severe version of his anti-poverty and environmental policies. City land earmarked for mixed use would be designated only for social housing. Anti-gentrification zones would be created. In the last weeks of his election campaign, the mayor had stepped back from his market-hostile ideas. Now he behaved as though the disease was his own chance to smash a window.
Siddhu watched the speech from a pub, his laptop opened in front of him. He wasn’t sure how a story about it would work on Horne-Bough’s website. His riot article was received indifferently by his boss, who did not even bother to offer it first to his subscribers. “I’m glad you’re here to round out our coverage,” he said. “No one can call us mere gossip-mongers.”
Siddhu had finished half his article when he was called in by Horne-Bough. His young employer was dressed in a cream hoodie that made his soft skin look like bleached paper. “We got the story we’ve been hunting down—and, before you ask, it wasn’t cheap,” he said. “The lawyers have looked at it. Now we need an extra set of eyes on this to make sure we haven’t split any infinitives.”
According to this report, released only to subscribers, a twenty-eight-year-old woman claiming to be Parsons’ biological daughter (her existence had been concealed from Parsons by her birth mother, who died when she was a child) described having sexual contact with the mayor earlier that year. The story would be shared with non-subscribers an hour later.
“Guess who we want to contact the mayor for comment?” Horne-Bough said with a smile. He handed him his flip phone. It was already ringing.