THE 1980S. THE RASKIN FAMILY OWNED AN ASBESTOS mine here, and many other holdings as well.
The two elderly uncles were quite wise and animated in a public way. Both had served at different times as MLAs, and Chester once as deputy premier, to the aforementioned Premier Bell.
But they were in their eighties now. Their main financial advisor, William Bell, had been worried about their money, and had told them many times their pension fund was inadequate because of many insoluble and unforeseen events that Mr. Bell thought might happen.
This was the last thing Bell said to them, for he was retiring soon: “I think unless we find those letters you spoke about, you will come under very heavy scrutiny.”
Sick and old, with trouble sleeping, seeing the cataclysm coming against the old men, he felt at times like an overseer of all their years, oddly responsible for them. Oh he knew they had been grouchy with him, and not always fair, and at times forgot to thank him for extra work he had done on their behalf, and once did not invite him to a very special gathering but flew off to it with someone who was trying to usurp his position and had only lasted in their employ a month. This is what Eva Mott did not recognize when she visited the house to celebrate her birthday with her cousin Clara that long-ago year. That this idea of him being important was at that moment dependent on him having a job at the end of the week. And that word he spoke rashly to his wife while she was putting on her boots was said in irritation because of that apprehension.
Now many more years had passed and it was the last day. That last day he was there, going over files and accounts. They offered him a glass of sparkling water, and felt very pleased that the maid cut some white cheese—they had no idea they had white cheese, it seemed so special. They had planned his lunch with them, but found after all this time little to speak about. They didn’t know much about him.
They sat in their splendorous mahogany den, surrounded by books. Books from all kinds of authors, and on all kinds of topics. Fishing rods from all parts of the world, from bamboo to graphite. The tusk of a narwhal and paintings too, local and national, adorned the walls, from Molly Bobak to Tom Thomson. Letters of support from Lester B. Pearson, and John Diefenbaker, to keep up the good work in their asbestos mining. For there had been nothing wrong with it back then.
A picture of Allan Aitken, brother of Lord Beaverbrook. And a picture of Morrissey Raskin, founder of Raskin Enterprises.
This asbestos mine that had engulfed one side of Good Friday Mountain had made them millions both here and abroad and had kept two hundred men working. Now, in spite of everything or as some might say because of everything, it was coming to an end.
The little reserve sat at the very edge of it, the crossroads of time. When Byron went there that past Remembrance Day, all of them wearing their poppies, one could sometimes hear the trucks as they rattled the little house.
However, their oil distribution tanks, which held four hundred families’ oil, would continue into the next generation if someone would take it over. They had eight trucks.
The brothers sat in splendorous solitude the both of them, not often speaking, now and then saying yes or no to a question as they carefully navigated a soup spoon from their plates to their mouths. The sound of spoons was at times their conversation.
They were used to being listened to, even when they were silent.
The silence in the rest of the huge house told one that other people were here—servants for the two men and maybe a nurse, though neither would mention this. The day was white, the great house too had a whiteness, and floodlights pierced the foggy cold outside with a yellow sheen. The asbestos mine was to close its doors soon, and like a great house where only the footman appeared, such was the silence in that pit, with one or two journeymen there during the long, cold day. The echo chamber of the years that held all the earth by its noisy galley was silenced, and now in that silence, foreboding. A truck or two that was loaded, and a railcar loaded, sitting up at the end of the pit like a solemn cast-iron dragon, seemed to complement the old men of the manor. The two secretaries arrived every morning to a huge office that was now almost silent, where somewhere at some point a phone would ring. They were doing their duty for the old men who did not remember their names.
There had been ongoing trauma in the papers over this mining operation for five years or more that was now coming to a head. It had started hesitantly and would end suddenly and harshly. The Indigenous and the environmentalist group from the university had formed a brigade against it, slowly fanning out in regimental displeasure. Yes, it was terrible, but before anyone knew how terrible, the old men had given much to the Indian band and much of course to the university. But certain men and women from that community, and certainly certain people from the university, believed restitution must be repaid.
The two old men, Chester and Dexter, were silent. They had gone to a band meeting last year and pledged to do more about the runoff on Riley Brook. They also initiated a program to build a school on the reserve, and helped supplement the incomes of two young women who taught the children in their own Mi’kmaq.
Other than this they were silent.
There was no chance at stopping what was to come, the recrimination and shaming of old men, but they awaited it in solitude, trying to figure out who amongst the world they could rely upon now. They had put a request in to their great-nephew Albert, someone they hardly knew, for a meeting late last week, but he had gone to another meeting—an environmentalist meeting with those who were determined to march against Raskin Enterprises and support the Indian blockade. They had somewhat vainly waited for his call. But he did not call. They knew he was not really their nephew but they had tried to treat him like one, even after Byron died.
However, for years they had not foreseen the power of the enemy, and now they had seen it they were too old to mount a credible defence. The enemy had outflanked them, and in a bold manoeuvre had encircled their last pocket, and in that pocket the defences were crumbling, the adversary’s artillery strafed and ricocheted about their old whitened heads.
With Carmel they had always seen a reaching for prospect. That didn’t sit well with them. They were too traditionalist to stand it. But Byron had been searching for someone new to protect when he married her.
Three months after the wedding of Byron and Carmel they saw her—unexpectedly walking toward them through the morning mist, with a striking red hat, a black scarf tied at its base, red hair and red high heels. The child was being held in Byron’s military hands, Byron’s jaw set as she spoke to him about some matter that seemed to drain his strength. That was it—they noticed it had drained his strength to be with that woman. They were both in shock.
“It has all come true,” Chester said to Dexter.
“I’m afraid it has,” Dexter replied.
So they bit down on their lips as they shook her hand, and as she made light of them, as if to prove her recent marriage had allowed equality and she must try and discredit the fumbling, antiquated gentlemanliness that they offered.
“Why, you’re just two little bitty fellows,” she said. “You’re no bigger than spit. No wonder you never married.”
And she laughed and looked for approval at Byron.
They laughed as well.
Little by little she became the woman who understood politics and men. To them it came from the gaudiest hat, and the parody of those heels stabbing the gravel as she approached them.
“Ah, my,” Dexter said, now reading the paper that morning in the 1980s.
“Ah, my,” Chester now responded.