Conor O’Dea looked at his timepiece. It didn’t work properly, but it gave an approximation of the hour. And it looked sophisticated. Parliament Hill was starting to fill with people, but to his dismay they were mainly common folks who were happy to stay outside and enjoy the weather. He needed a contact, someone to get him in the building. From afar he spotted Will Trotter, in his formal pageboy outfit, and a plan came into shape.
“Will, how are you?” In their fraying black suits with tails, starched collars propping their heads up, Conor thought the pageboys looked like penguins, and he often told them so.
“I’m fine, Conor. What are you doing here? Do you have an invitation to go inside?”
“Not exactly, but you might help.” He flashed a smile.
As a pageboy, young Will had a pass into the Centre Block. He was only sixteen years old, but he had influence beyond his position and his age because he had long been a favourite of John Macdonald’s. Rumour had it that Will served Macdonald gin in his water goblet during long debates.
“Where’s Mr. McGee?” Will asked. “I didn’t see him this morning.”
“He’s in Toronto. That’s why I’m here.” Conor built on his story, knowing Will would go along with whatever he said. “Mr. McGee couldn’t be here, so he wanted me to take his place. Be his representative. He just never got around to getting me a pass.”
Will Trotter knew D’Arcy McGee well. McGee rented a room at his mother’s boarding house when he was in Ottawa. He looked at Conor with mocked sternness. “Are you lying?” he asked.
“Of course.” Conor smiled impishly.
Will grinned back at him. “In that case, follow me. I’ll get you in.”
“You wouldn’t have a flask of water handy, would you?” Conor asked mischievously as they entered the Centre Block.
JOHN and Agnes Macdonald arrived on Parliament Hill just before eleven o’clock. They paused outside, greeting people and smiling at the crowd until the other politicians and dignitaries had arrived. She was escorted off to sit with the ladies and he waited outside, chatting with Buckley. Macdonald wanted to be the last person to enter the building, to create a grand entrance, and he wanted a little more time for the headache potion to take effect before he had to meet his colleagues. Even today, someone was sure to say something that would only make his head ache even more.
Inside the foyer, there was a stir of excitement. A police constable pushed Conor O’Dea aside. It was approaching eleven; the procession was beginning. Conor held his ground and watched as each politician entered. The July sun glowed like a spotlight on them, but as they entered the building, they faded into darkness.
George-Étienne Cartier, the lawyer and great nation builder from Canada East (or Quebec, as it would now officially be called), arrived first. He looked very much in charge: his back straight, his eyes fixed forward, and his manner at once cavalier and dignified. Conor was always surprised at how short he was. The talk of his mistress in Montreal who wore trousers and smoked cigars intrigued Conor. The portly Alexander Galt strutted a bit. Macdonald often joked that Galt’s constituents were the rich and the powerful, but Conor knew it was Galt who had come up with the original design for Confederation nine long years ago. He had the right to strut a bit. Leonard Tilley, the teetotaller from New Brunswick, followed as if sprinkling the holy water of religious calm and resolve. The parade continued. One bewhiskered gentleman after another.
Finally, John A. Macdonald entered, walking jauntily but still seeming to take his time. While his eyes adjusted to the darker hall, he winked at friendly faces and waved to admirers. With each step, he did his best not to damage himself with his ceremonial sword. Meanwhile, his head continued to pound, steadily and unrelentingly.
Conor savoured the performance. Macdonald did more than acknowledge the crowd; he befriended it, played to it and rose above it. Most of the so-called Fathers of Confederation ambled into the building as if going to a meeting. They were businesslike and dutiful. Macdonald swept in, clearly the leading man. Politics was his stage play. Parliament was his theatre. He loved being the star.
Conor knew you shouldn’t always believe John Macdonald, you couldn’t always trust him, but you had to admire him.
CONOR passed by young Will Trotter standing at the entrance. He really did look like a penguin in an ill-fitting uniform. “Cheers,” he declared, as he entered the stone building. “I owe you one, Willy.”
The politicians had assembled. Fourteen members of Canada’s first cabinet, with a beaming John A. Macdonald, “The First of Equals,” standing in the forefront. Conor studied them with a critical eye. D’Arcy McGee had told him to assess a scene as if he were a newspaper reporter. Think how a Tory paper would write it up. Then imagine how the Grits would see it. Conservatives vs. Liberals. Look at it from all perspectives. But report it as you see it.
So what did he think? Not a bad group overall, but not the best. Within Her Majesty’s first Canadian Privy Council, there were a few glaring omissions. Charles Tupper, who had fought so hard to convince Nova Scotia to enter the union, was in Halifax, waiting for different political awards. George Brown, Macdonald’s arch-rival but Confederation’s indispensable supporter, was back in Toronto, ensuring that his newspaper, The Globe, gave him and not Macdonald full credit. Their exclusion from cabinet didn’t bother Conor. After all, Tupper was better off chasing skirts in Nova Scotia, and Brown, the steadfast Liberal, or Grit, would never stand being in Macdonald’s shadow. Brown and Macdonald had worked together for this one great cause and were more comfortable as enemies again.
For Conor, there was a more painful omission: the Honourable Thomas D’Arcy McGee. And Conor wasn’t alone. Throughout Parliament Hill, questions were being asked. “Where’s D’Arcy?” “Where’s McGee?” “Where’s the Irishman?”
Conor eased his way to the front and settled beside a rather pompous man in an oversized beaver felt hat. A little warm for a summer’s day, Conor thought, but it was a celebration, and what’s more Canadian than a fur hat?
Conor knew where D’Arcy McGee was, and he knew why he wasn’t here. McGee had accepted a speaking engagement in Toronto, out of the limelight, away from the humiliation of watching others sworn into the cabinet. John A. Macdonald often said he was never much of carpenter but was a master cabinetmaker. A certain number of Protestants balanced by a certain number of Roman Catholics. A quota from Quebec, from Ontario, from the Maritimes. McGee and Tupper had agreed to decline posts in Canada’s first cabinet to make room for someone named Edward Kenney. Kenney was Irish, a Catholic and from Nova Scotia. Macdonald could, as he boasted, kill three birds with one stone. It was unfair, and Macdonald knew it. No harm or insult was intended. It was … well, it was politics. But it made Conor furious. McGee spoke for Conor and other Irish-Catholic Canadians. He represented Conor’s ideals and his aspirations.
Conor O’Dea had tied much of his ambition to D’Arcy McGee’s coattails. He liked to say he was a speechwriter and parliamentary assistant, but he was really McGee’s researcher and errand boy. He transcribed McGee’s essays and letters, acted as a sounding board for some of his speeches and helped prepare his frenzied days.
“You’re not qualified for the job,” McGee had told him. “But you’ve a good Irish name, a studious nature, a youngster’s eagerness, and best of all, you won’t cost me much money.”
Like an Irish labourer, Conor thought.
“And another thing, Conor,” McGee had bellowed. “You’re almost as ambitious as I was at your age. Not as smart, certainly not as handsome. Oh hell, you’re nothing like me. Now get back to work.”
Conor was determined to make something of his life. But what exactly? He might become a businessman, and his political contacts would serve him well. He might go into politics himself. What he really wanted was to become a newspaperman, and there were few people better able to teach him than D’Arcy McGee. McGee had edited and published his own newspapers. He had written, and was now revising, his Popular History of Ireland. But most important, he was easily the most eloquent orator Conor had ever heard. When he spoke, he lifted an audience out of the monotony of life, he thrilled and inspired, but patience was not a word in McGee’s vast vocabulary. He was temperamental, volatile and sometimes intolerant, but he liked to lecture, and Conor was eager to learn.
McGee was teaching him the language of power; Macdonald was showing him the ways of leadership. Soon he would need someone to help him fill his bank account. But not today. Today was a day of grandeur. It was … portentous. And, he thought, I wonder if I’m pronouncing it right?
Conor had invited himself to the ceremony on Parliament Hill because he wanted to see history being made, because he didn’t want to miss anything that might help fill his appetite for knowledge, but also because he wanted to honour his boss. He was there in the name of the greatest Irish-Catholic Canadian of the day: Thomas D’Arcy McGee. And no one was going to stop him.
Let people call him an upstart; he didn’t care. Let them think he was reaching beyond his grasp; his day would come. He smiled at the stuffy man in the fur hat. He didn’t smile back, but Conor didn’t expect him to.