The first of July. Maybe it was his birthday. Conor O’Dea wasn’t sure how old he was. He assumed he was twenty-one, but his date of birth was unclear. He knew he had been in Ireland during the late 1840s or early 1850s, but his father rarely talked about those years. Conor only knew life in British North America. He may not have known how old he was, but he knew he was a child of the New World.
July 1, 1867. In Ottawa, the day began with fanfare, and now the bells rang. Conor lay in bed, savouring the sounds. History would be made today. The prospect filled him with excitement. He knew some people thought that today’s union of three British colonies was doomed to failure. A rung on a ladder leading nowhere. He had thought up that phrase a few nights ago and written it down; it might be a line he could use someday.
It was just past dawn and already the summer air was stifling. The night had barely cooled the musty basement flat. If it was this hot at dawn, imagine the rest of the day. He relished the thought. He imagined it would be a day of … he tried to muster the right word … distinction. Not bad, but he could do better. He needed a D’Arcy McGee–type word. He was a speechwriter, after all, or at least a junior parliamentary assistant. The bells signalled something … portentous. Sounds important, but he wondered, did that mean something good, or something bad?
“In any event,” he said to himself, “happy birthday,” and he jumped out of bed. He grabbed a mildewed towel and headed to the bathhouse behind the flat. The residue of past users in the public privy disgusted him, but this was all a meagre rent provided. The landlord had promised he would have the filth cleaned up. Fat chance. And there wasn’t much anyone could do about the smell. At least, he thought, it wasn’t as horrid as a logger’s shanty, and it was inside.
There was still some warm water in a pannikin. He heated it slightly on the wood stove, soaped his face and started shaving. The razor was old and tired. “But I’m young and agile,” he told the mirror. “Handsome—well, sort of. Dashing and suave, in a homespun way. A young man on the rise.”
Conor O’Dea was an Irish Catholic in a land dominated by Scottish Presbyterians and Church of England elitists. He had spent a short lifetime trying to be accepted by those in power. He had learned the catchphrases: “For Queen and Country.” “The Empire. The Glorious Empire.” His charm, hard work and perseverance had manoeuvred him to the sidelines of politics. Close, but he wanted to get even closer. He knew that most people in the neighbourhood thought he was overreaching. An upstart from the rowdy lumber camps with delusions of glory.
He scratched away at his red stubble and rubbed the condensation off the mirror so he could examine his handiwork. Some soap was trapped in his bushy right side-whisker. In the American Union Army, General Ambrose Burnside had started the fad and a new name for sprouting whiskers. Conor was eager to look modern, and growing sideburns was cheap.
Back in the tenement flat, he considered his wardrobe. His one old suit would have to survive the day’s proceedings, and with a little adornment, maybe get him into a proper party that night. Apparently there would be evening fireworks at Major’s Hill Park. His pants were threadbare; the seams were too thick, the stitching unrefined. Good enough for the poor Irish section, but he wanted better. He had tried to iron his shirt by pressing it between books. It worked as long as he ignored a persistent wrinkle across his chest. He expertly put the finishing touches on his tie’s knot, twirling the silk with dexterity. D’Arcy McGee had bought him the tie, but he had taught himself the procedure. He put on the slightly too snug waistcoat and wiped off a few dried food stains. He squeezed his feet into freshly polished shoes that had once fit him. He proudly put on his jacket. One last look at his hair and his stylish red whiskers, and he was ready.
He knew there wasn’t much that was dashing about a political apprentice still living with his father. He was only as suave as he could pretend. But he was smart, or at least smarter than most people he knew, and he was definitely on the rise—heading upwind from this shabby flat in Lowertown.
Before leaving, he had a final duty. His father had slept through the morning symphonies of roosters and bells, but he had to get ready for work. Conor gingerly shook the snoring mass in the other bed, dreading the reaction. Thomas O’Dea had worked the late shift at Lapierre’s Tavern and was working today. Conor wanted to let him sleep, but he knew Thomas had some deliveries to make before the first shift. Somehow, his father’s problems became his fault. He had better make sure Thomas wouldn’t be late.
“It’s time to get up, Da,” Conor whispered. His father moved with the prodding.
“Yeah, off with you, then,” he growled.
And Conor O’Dea scurried into the streets of Ottawa’s Lowertown.
LOWERTOWN. Market stalls, taverns and brothels. Yelling hustlers and haggling customers, fishmongers and farmers, butchers and bullies all peddling their wares amid hungry street urchins and deft pick-pockets. The Byward Market in Lowertown was a frenetic opera stage featuring the best and worst of humanity just under Parliament’s tower. Conor absorbed it all. The sun had been shining throughout the week, and for a change the streets were not covered in mud. Instead, Conor coughed dust and gagged on the sulphuric stew of outhouse and sawmill smells.
Conor smiled at those he recognized as he passed by. Mrs. O’Connell was putting some fruit on a wheelbarrow. He wandered over. “And how’s my favourite woman?” She threw him an apple. Breakfast.
“You’re skin and bones, my boy. Those books you read don’t give you strength.”
“I’ll pay you on a Thursday,” he promised, emphasizing the Irish lilt. He would sound very different a mile from here.
“You’ll not be payin’ me, and you know it. You and your fancy clothes.”
He bit into the fruit. “Thanks, Mrs. O.” It sounded more like “tanks.” This was a daily ritual, and Conor appreciated it. He knew that many of the older women in Lowertown worried about him—a determined young man and his sometimes-derelict father. They kept an eye on him and helped the O’Deas with the occasional meal, especially during the holidays. A few of the mothers thought Conor might be a good match for their daughters, but he had never shown much interest in the neighbourhood servant girls and dressmakers.
Conor looked completely out of place in his suit and tie, amid labourers and layabouts in open shirts and ripped jackets. He dodged the farm animals roaming about the squalor in the streets—pigs, cows, hens and those noisy roosters—trying to protect his worn but well-polished shoes. He nodded to a few women sweeping out doorways or throwing out night soil and avoided more than one rumpled man lying on the street, fast asleep. One drunk was still desperately hugging an empty bottle. He looked familiar. Conor had probably seen him at Lapierre’s over the years. And, of course, there were the street people huddled in doorways. A mother holding her child looked up at Conor as he walked by. If there had been any spare money in his pocket, he might have given her some.
“Hey, Cookie,” someone called from an open window, “why the getup?” Conor knew the voice. It was a skidder from up the Opeongo Line; a logger in town throwing his money around. The madame of the house would soon be sending him packing. Conor waved a friendly but simple hello. He hated being called Cookie. He’d grown from a cook’s assistant in a logging camp to a parliamentary assistant in a logging town. His other nickname in the logging camp was Bookie, because his nose was so often stuck in a book. He didn’t like hearing any reminders of his rough past.
“Will you make me breakfast, Cookie?” the skidder joked.
Conor ignored him. He crossed the Rideau Canal at Sappers Bridge and headed along the wooden plank sidewalk on Wellington Street into another world. From Lowertown to Uppertown.
THE height of land that dominated Ottawa’s Uppertown had been called Barracks Hill, and it housed soldiers before 1857, when Queen Victoria surprised everyone and chose the backwoods town as the capital of Canada. “An arctic lumber village,” some wag said, and he wasn’t far off. But any place could be refurbished. So out went the soldiers and in came the architects, stonemasons and tradesmen. A grand stone building burst out of the ordinary streets on the bank of the Ottawa River. Barracks Hill became Parliament Hill, and a palace of power peered down on the citizenry below.
Uppertown was a grid of new houses and shops. The streets were wider and the buildings more substantial than in Lowertown. Water was routinely delivered by horse and wagon, and night soil was picked up daily. Often Conor would linger along Rideau or Wellington Street, admiring the merchandise on display. But not today. He had his sights on Parliament Hill.
He arrived far too early—the ceremony would not begin until eleven o’clock—but he knew he would have some conniving to perform to earn a front-row seat, and that would take time. Beads of sweat were already forming under stray hairs on the back of his neck. It was going to be a swelteringly hot day. He slapped at a mosquito and looked at his hand. There was blood. How the mosquitoes love me, he thought, and flashed that engaging, vulnerable smile his father had told him was so like his mother’s.
“I’m here,” he said to no one in particular. “So let’s get started.”
A mile away in the new suburb of Sandy Hill, John A. Macdonald was nursing a hangover. He had toasted the new Dominion perhaps a dozen times too many the night before. He had shaken the hands of his opponents, slapped the backs of his colleagues and shocked many of their wives with a ribald story or two. He had had a wonderful time. And now he sought help.
“Agnes, where’s my blasted sash?”
“Hanging up, dear.”
“Where’s my damned sword?”
“Where you left it, I suppose.”
By the time John Macdonald was ready to leave Quadrilateral, his rented house on Daly Street, he had asked his young wife the whereabouts of just about every piece of formal clothing he owned. He had found the headache potion himself, not wanting to disturb her with his problems, or open the door to a scolding.
“A cocktail suits me more than a cocked hat,” he muttered to himself.
His headache wasn’t helped by the stench on the main floor. “Those damned useless drains,” he whined. “This house smells like a …” He almost used a coarse word, then smiled to himself. “It smells like a necessary room.” His wife could hardly disagree. Since coming to Ottawa, she had consulted carpenters and handymen, but there was little anyone could do to relieve the unpleasant smell until the city built a new drainage system. In London, modern water closets were being installed—at least for the few who could afford them—but that was not on anyone’s plan for this aspiring lumber town.
“It’s no worse today, dear. It may just be that you’re feeling a bit under the weather.”
“No, I’m fit as a fiddle.” And, he thought, three fingers of whisky would be just the ticket right now.
Agnes Macdonald knew the day’s schedule by heart. Her brother, Hewitt Bernard, was her husband’s private secretary, and they often conspired to free some of his time for her. Lunch with his cabinet would mean drinks with his cabinet, so she had convinced Hewitt to book him a few hours of rest in the afternoon. But one afternoon meeting with an insistent policeman could not be moved. “Irish business,” her brother said. And she resented it.
She looked her husband over judiciously. A peculiar face, she thought, but one that emanated distinctive charm. Or devilish charm. He loved dressing well and had somewhat flamboyant tastes, at least in Agnes’s view. Today he could indulge his love of colour. He was dressed in full formal regalia: bright red jacket with gold embroidery. A sword was sheathed treacherously by his side. She thought he looked a bit wobbly this morning.
“Watch your step or you’ll trip,” she warned. “You don’t know what you may cut off.”
He took a few practice steps, trying not to let the sword swing. Deftly, Agnes moved the sword out of harm’s way. “What did you ever do without me?” she asked gently.
“I don’t know,” he answered, clutching his sword. “I really don’t know.”
There were many things John A. Macdonald didn’t know on that sunny July morning. He was uncertain about the political union he was forging. Was there really the will to build a nation? He was unsure of the West. Would he be able to talk British Columbia into entering Confederation if he could build a railway? And could they build a road through those infernal mountains? He was nervous about the East. Nova Scotia was talking of leaving before they had even started. He knew he had practically bought the New Brunswick election. Could he talk the East into helping fund the railway? He was always doubtful about his own political power. Would he stay one step ahead of his enemies? Could he control the factions in this land of religious and language divisions? He had won more battles than he had lost, but there were many ahead. What compromises, what chicanery would be needed to stay the course?
He grimaced and closed his eyes to relieve the pain.
He knew it would be a day of both celebration and mourning—festivities and funerals staged side by side, buildings covered in flags confronting buildings draped in black. Amid the cheers and toasts of the new Canadians, there were many who preferred being Nova Scotians, New Brunswickers, Ontarians or Quebecers. They had not asked for this political union, and they didn’t care if it lived or died. Distinct, squabbling, practically ungovernable British colonies would be pasted together today. It would be his job as the first prime minister of Canada to make the glue stick.
And there was something else he didn’t know. When he and his wife left Quadrilateral, they had no idea that they were being watched. The newly laid-out streets of Sandy Hill, just east and a little south of Parliament Hill, were filled with people from all walks of life—gentry, servants, shopkeepers—so John Macdonald paid no attention to a man lingering across the street.
As he helped her into the carriage, Agnes Macdonald whispered demurely, “I can lean on no other arm like yours.” Macdonald sat back contentedly and called out to the driver, “Buckley, take us to the office.”
It would have been simple, the man across the street thought, lifting the collar of his old grey coat. A flick of the blade and a slit throat. So easy. But the time wasn’t right. Not yet.
He pulled from his pocket the piece of paper that the insufferable colonel had given him. He checked the address on Sussex Street and the name. “O’Dea.” He decided he had best hurry.