Epilogue

THE FATHER WOULD TAKE HIS political secret to the grave, and the boy would realize his dreams. A wealthy American summer resident would befriend him and fund his university education. His life would turn out to be just as exciting as those he had read about in the comic books he devoured as a boy, and even more wonderful than the magical world he had glimpsed in his youthful and overactive daydreaming. He would join Canada’s Foreign Service, have run-ins with bandits, spend time with Indians in the jungles of Latin America who still lived a pre-Columbian way of life, survive earthquakes, witness civil strife, help combat the world’s last smallpox epidemic, meet people so wretchedly poor their living conditions defied the imagination or so rich their excesses were grotesque, become ambassador and adviser to foreign ministers and prime ministers, encounter many of the world leaders who shaped the latter half of the twentieth century, serve his country as a diplomat on all six habitable continents in a career lasting more than thirty-five years before going on to represent the Crown in his home province. At one time during the Cold War, he would even assume responsibility for the security desk in Foreign Affairs and work closely with the RCMP, which was unaware of the origin of his middle name, in helping defend Canada against attempts by the former Soviet Union’s notorious KGB to recruit Canadian diplomats to spy for it.

In all these years, he would never lose his attachment to the village of his youth. In far-off places as different from one another as the swamps of Bangladesh, the mountains of Colombia, the highlands of South Africa and Australia, the deserts of Israel and Namibia, the urban wastelands of New York City, and the rainy capital of Belgium, he thought often of his boyhood years in Muskoka when the Great Depression had just ended, when the Indians came back in the summers to the Indian Camp, when there was regular steamboat mail and passenger service on the lakes, when the veterans of the two world wars were still young, and when there were locals still alive who remembered the pioneer days.

He reflected on how fortunate he had been to have such caring parents and grandparents, to have roots in the native and non-native worlds, to have been raised in a village with an excellent library, and to grow up among people, who despite reflecting the social and racial intolerance of the times, understood his idiosyncrasies, and were supportive when he sought an education.

And half a century later, the boy, now white-haired and long-retired, took as much pleasure in telling his children the stories of his early years in Muskoka as his father had in describing his youthful adventures to his kids when they lived in the old house. He told them, however, that he had been incredibly lucky. He had not hurt anyone when he acted out his wild fantasies laying ice cream cone spikes on the highway and sabotaging truck tires when he was barely out of childhood in 1948. He had escaped a beating at the hands of the drunken trucker in the summer of 1950. He had not fallen off the speeding truck, and he had shot no one when he foolishly armed himself with a .22 rifle to protect his father in the summer of 1953.

He also thought of the questions that he had first started asking himself at the time of his Muskoka boyhood. Looking back, he saw that all he knew about God was that he still did not know him – though he continued to search for him in the wind. All he knew about time was that a lifetime of experience merely confirmed his intuition as a child – that all living things change and pass away in its embrace, and eternity was a concept he would never grasp. All he learned about death was that consciousness was its twin – that death gave meaning to life, and consciousness was a gift that came but rarely, but when it did, it made life worth living. And all he knew about wisdom he had learned from his father – embrace nature and laugh, laugh, and laugh again at the joys and absurdities of life.