Last Days of Montreal Read online

  They analyzed the situation, going at it from both sides: the mistakes, the slights; the wrong moves and the dirty ones; history and the distortion thereof; the only possible reaction to the logical progression. There were also Sunday excursions to meet with like-minded groups in other parts of the Montreal area. And they planned to travel to the Outaouais, the region bordering Ontario along the Ottawa River. And the Townships; a very strong group was based in Lennoxville. Thence to smaller, far-flung cells in the Lanaudière, the Mégantic, the Mauricie, and the St. Lawrence Valley; then out to the Gaspé, up to Val-d’Or; and even a sortie to lend encouragement to those stalwart souls trapped inside the new Premier’s home territory of the Saguenay.

  For Bruce it was inspirational, healing. One night he raised his hand and was recognized.

  “It’s just to say I’ve never seen a Maple Leaf flag displayed on or near a private home in my neighbourhood over on the east side. And not too many over here on the west side either, for that matter. During the campaign, where was it? Why is this? Why are we so meek? Why are we so intimidated that we can’t raise our flag?”

  No one responded.

  Bruce told them, “I’ve got neighbours who’ve had their fleur-de-lis tacked up in their front windows since I’ve lived there. The woman across from my backyard flies hers from her balcony. Always. I mean, sans faute, right as rain. She never takes it down. What about us? Why can’t we do that? What are we missing that keeps us from flying our flag? I’m sure things would be different if we did…What I mean is, the day of the vote…I have this other neighbour and she’s on our side — and we didn’t even know it!” Then Bruce looked at the floor, feeling his ears burning, knowing he was verging on the sort of rant that would leave them yawning. He faced them again. “That’s all… It just seemed to fit with where we seem to be heading here.”

  Before he could sit, a voice, low and even, asked, “So why didn’t you fly one — during the campaign?” It was no churlish challenge, but an honest response to what he had laid before them.

  Bruce shrugged. “It never occurred to me.” Then he added, “And when it did, it was too late. I was afraid. Too spooked.”

  Someone else asked, “Then why do you live there?”

  “It’s my girlfriend’s place. After I separated, I moved in. It’s quite pleasant, I mean with the market and all…” Recognizing a certain look on another face, he added, “She’s from France — not really involved. You know?” Because there had been many stories of couples being ripped apart.

  People nodded and sat there ruminating. On the way out, they approached. Some were patting his back. “I know exactly what you mean,” they muttered. And: “Thanks for sharing.”

  Spillover

  First comes le rassembleur…

  The day after the Referendum, Donald Beeton left his home in the north end of Montreal and drove to the Westmount Library. In the Children’s section he found an English book for an English-speaking child. This book was not available at his local branch. He found a child-sized chair by a window and sat. Outside it was grey, cold, wet, an ugly repeat of the terrible day before. There were children in every part of the room, watched over by librarians, teachers, parents. They were quiet, discovering stories, or busy working on school projects. They had no time to worry about the effects of a politician upon an adult’s mind… As Donald’s eyes searched that book in the Westmount Library, he recalled his mother’s voice: not sweet, but low and dream-inducing. Donald’s mother had always read to him before bed. Sitting in that miniature chair, Donald recalled his blue blanket, how he would lie there, attentive and as still as he could be while she read to him about Champlain.

  French-born explorer Samuel de Champlain was the first European to see and chart Canada. Following the lead of Jacques Cartier, Champlain sailed from France to the new world. Over the course of twenty years and nine voyages, Champlain made many friends amongst the native peoples of Canada. The explorer mapped the shores of Newfoundland and Nova Scotia, and made his way down the eastern seaboard. Sailing from the settlement of Quebec he explored the great St. Lawrence River and then continued inland to the western shores of Lake Ontario. Coming up the river, Champlain gazed at rocky shores and unfathomable green forests. West of the Iroquois River the land became flatter and much wider. Champlain saw fields and waters that were ripe with life and potential. He spotted different fruits and berries. He wrote in his diary, ‘this Canada is as beautiful a country as you could ever hope to find!’ On July 2, 1611, Champlain came to the site of the modern city of Montreal…

  Or words to that effect. It was not likely Donald had turned up the book. There was little chance of memory reaching back nearly thirty years to retrieve its title. Most likely, it no longer existed, and even if it still existed, there would be no point calling Toronto to ask his mother. Not now. But it was like the book, and it helped Donald remember that the story of the explorer was planted long before he would have to know what a politician was or could do. A story of one man sailing up a river into a new country. Donald read the passage several times.

  He imagined he would have stopped his mother and asked, “What’s un…unfathomable?”

  He imagined her looking out his window, into the night, thinking about it. “Unfathomable. It means it was too big to see it clearly. It means it was all too new to understand.”

  “Where’s Montreal?”

  “It’s in Quebec.”

  “Is that far?”

  “Not too far.Your father and I went there when we were married. But for Champlain it was on the other side of the world.”

  “Is it nice there?”

  “Lovely. Most of the people speak French.”

  “Did you speak French?”

  “A little bit…un petit peu.”

  “Petit peu…what’s that?”

  “Shh! — or we’ll never get Champlain to Georgian Bay.”

  “Georgian Bay? That’s where we go!”

  Donald’s mother had read it to him when he was just old enough to see it.

  He dreamed great dreams of the river. Had a dream rapport with the explorer…

  And twenty years later his father was pleased when Donald announced his plan to leave Toronto to try his luck in Montreal. “Find a Québécoise and live with her. Then you’ll know what this country is all about.”

  Said Donald’s father. So Donald found Pascale. But then Pascale found Lucien.

  2.

  Donald arrived in the fall of 1986. He had missed Lévesque’s referendum and had no reason to dwell on that man’s dewy-eyed “à la prochaine fois” valediction to the weeping faithful. Bourassa was in charge again, the Canadiens were winning, the political scene was “quiet,” the economy was strong and Donald was optimistic. Soon his goal in life was to mate with a Québécoise.

  She had a businesslike way of cleaning every single flake of snow from her car before leaving in the morning, her pure black hair set against a royal blue wool topcoat. That was when he’d first seen her from his window — his beautiful neighbour — and had dared to say hello. She flashed him a broad smile, cheekbones extravagant. “Bonjour!” Two evenings later she was getting out of her car as he returned from another trip downtown, a freelancer in search of contracts. He’d had a good interview, was feeling less timid than he’d been two days before and he allowed himself to look more closely. Her eyes were a richer blue than he had ever encountered in Toronto, almost purple under a street light’s glow, a deep rich blue with flecks of honey. He asked her name.

  Pascale…

  Donald could not remember ever hearing her say a word about politics.

  The first time he tried to kiss her, to declare his love and include her in his life, she resisted, kindly but firm. She touched his lip to quiet him and said, “Si tu veux faire l’amour, il faut que tu le fasses en français.” But that was not political; it was her prerogative as a woman. That day they were resting against their bikes, sipping water. Her tan was delicate, hair tied back,
some sweat on her nape from their ride from Pointe-aux-Trembles. Donald was dazzled, watching those eyes gazing at the river as the summer sun beat down. There was a speedboat bouncing through the swells, sending rainbows through the heat. The Cartier Bridge loomed, framing the river, announcing Montreal. It was postcard perfect: He should send this moment to Toronto. Dear Mom, Can you see Champlain on his foredeck waving bonne chance through time and the summery wind? I can! Love, Donald…

  Learn to make love in French? Damn right I will, Pascale. (Thanks, Dad.)

  And a third-floor five-and-a-half on Papineau facing Parc Lafontaine has lots of space with hardwood floors, stained glass trim on the front windows, a balcony over the street, winding stairs to the alley behind; it’s vintage Montreal. In late November as the season changes Donald looks down through the skeletal trees, watches City workers putting up boards for the rink, working slowly, almost motionless. The three o’clock sky is an absolute cobalt blue. When he looks again at 4:15, the boards are all in place, waiting for ice, while the sky has transformed itself into strips of mauve and indigo stretching to the sunset in the far northwest. Pascale gets home at 6:00. She works hard and makes good money, far more than a freelance writer; but it’s not about money, and anyway he’s always kept up his end. It’s about love and they’re both so busy, who has time to worry about a mopey-faced politician named Lucien? The man’s far away in Ottawa. Or maybe he’s still in France. Who even knew he existed?

  Not Donald and Pascale. No, she never said one word.

  3.

  OK, yes, there was the day they walked down through the park to Sherbrooke Street to watch the St. Jean Baptiste parade. Summer, 1990; it was the first time the parade had been allowed in Montreal since the dangerous days of 1981; it was less than a week after Mulroney’s Meech Lake Accord had failed because some politicians could not accept the idea of a “distinct” Quebec. On first glimpse, Donald was amused by the sun-and-beer-soaked mass of revellers, at how crazy they were getting. The floats were chintzy, Bourassa waved in his usual bland way as his float passed. Then before he realized it, Donald was afraid. The body knows it first. Donald’s Anglo body felt the raucous crowd impinging. Defiant drunks danced in the road like diabolic majorettes, shaking their fists, pumped with a relentless angry energy; and like a distorted mirror, those drunks’ passion sparked the crowd’s. They roared and waved placards, their messages bitter: Maîtres chez nous! Le Canada est mort! or downright ugly: Fuck anglos! There was Clyde le con!, Ici on parle français Clyde!, Ne touchez jamais à la loi 101!, Le Québec aux Québécois!…this last a rallying cry, surging like spontaneous flames around Donald where he stood in the curbside throng. The combined effect in this seething sea of pride and anger was a rising panic. It set him shaking. Nearly sent him running.

  What if they recognized him? What if they knew?

  He clutched Pascale’s hand like a frightened child, pulling, peevish, I want to go home.

  “Incredible!” he gasped, peering around, hurrying away from this first taste of paranoia.

  Pascale looked around, saw the same faces, the same symbols, and declared it, “Beautiful!”

  “Why do they have to do this?”

  “Don’t they do this in Toronto?”

  “Only for Santa Claus. Maybe the odd football game. I mean, why do they have to be so angry?”

  She told him, “They will never let their language and their culture be taken away. That Mr. Wells, he got it wrong, Donald. This Quebec is a different place. Distinct, non?”

  “No one wants to take anything away! If we didn’t have Quebec, we wouldn’t be Canada.” At that moment Donald could hear his father speaking through him as if he, Donald, were a cipher, some automatic medium. But in the next moment it faded and was just an echo. It was his own thought now. It was the first time he had ever spoken it. And it seemed as obvious as making love in French.

  “Peut-être,” she mused. “Mais sans le Canada ou avec, le Québec will always be Québec.”

  As if that were obvious too. “But you, you’re not like them?…the ones with the signs.”

  “B’en…” She shrugged. “This is not my style to be so angry, no, but this is my home too.”

  “I’ve never been in the middle of anything like that before in my life!”

  “Ah,” she teased. “Don’t worry, I will protect you from the méchants séparatistes.”

  “It’s not funny, Pascale. They’re hating people they don’t even know.”

  Looking into Donald’s eyes, Pascale agreed. “Non, c’est pas drôle.”

  That was a single day in a river of thousands they lived together. After that, they were always somewhere else on the 24th of June. How many times do you need to see the same parade?

  4.

  And how many different ways do you need to see her before you truly know her? So much of love is visual. Mornings, evenings, all the nights there beside you in the dark: it has nothing (almost nothing) to do with how she’ll change her hair; it’s you, how she appears to your eyes. Was there something he ought to have seen and prepared for, watching her watch a parade? Seeing Pascale, eyes raised, attentive, beholding a beautiful thing: Where does that lead? If the object of her gaze is a mythical city on a mighty river, your eyes spill over, you vow your love. But if the object of beauty is an angry man who would co-opt her eyes, seize the city, turn all dreams upside down? These were Donald’s points of reference, twin points, entry and exit (entrée/sortie), you may say, as he lost sight of his Pascale and became trapped in a vision of another man’s vision that degraded his ideal of love.

  While the same thing lifted her up: What she saw in Lucien.

  And five years later, at thirty-something, the question remained: What did Donald really know?

  He was a bona fide homeowner now. They’d bought the cottage up by the market, had the floors done, a wall knocked out, skylights put in, a deck, a garden. They were two professionals without children, DINKs in the marketer’s parlance. He knew her career was her focus. She kept working those long days, tireless, and was climbing the ladder with her steelmaker, a major player in the ranks of so-called Quebec Inc. She talked about a baby when things got less exciting, but not quite yet. Because Pascale was his wife now and Donald knew this. He didn’t push. He knew he loved to see her focused, dynamic. A part of him knew he was guarding that first vision of the serious businesswoman leaving for work of a winter morning; it dovetailed with the resonance of his father’s words. He knew she liked his family, enjoyed Georgian Bay in July, and he knew that he liked hers. Although Rimouski was not his favourite place and her Papa’s accent was tricky for Donald’s ears, he always enjoyed the drive down along the river…The river evoked Champlain. But she didn’t insist like he didn’t insist; they alternated visits, Christmas, Easter, summer, sharing like the good children they were.

  He knew their life was in Montreal.

  Donald knew their life was good.

  What would life have been like in Toronto? Donald sometimes wondered. He knew that, practically speaking, Edgar Avenue and all it stood for was behind him, in another world. He wasn’t arrogant. (Was he?) Or blinkered and retrograde like those people on the West Island who’d been born here and yet could hardly speak five words. Donald had adapted; he could speak. He wasn’t deaf. How could you be, with Parizeau and all his noise? And he wasn’t blind. Having been raised in a staunch Liberal family, Donald was not just some consumer; as any informed and responsible citizen ought, he dutifully observed the glowering Lucien in Ottawa, now very much a part of the scene, at the helm of a party democratically created to break the system from within. He knew Pascale was watching too.

  But Donald didn’t know how she watched because they never talked about it. The separating factor plays out everywhere in a billion personal scenarios; but you don’t want to think it, let alone let it into your relationship (notre couple). There were lots of couples like Donald and Pascale; he knew this too. Yet one tends to feel special, unique an
d alone, in discovery mode, as it were.

  Like Champlain.

  Alors, knowing (and not knowing) these things, and given the force of life’s imagination confronting him each day, was Donald inclined to explore the logical unfolding of his particular future, where it would lead and what it must meet or crash into? Not as deeply as he might have.

  She would tell him it was all quite logical — what Lucien proposed.

  Blame it on love then? No, blame it on Lucien!

  In the summer of ’95 they watched from the sun-baked rocks of Georgian Bay as Premier Parizeau, leader of the Oui side, blundered around Quebec bragging how he had his voters trapped like lobsters in pots. Pascale smiled, polite but blank, at one of Donald’s mother’s sly, dry Anglo comments, and rolled over, lazy, peaceful. So did he. There was nothing to worry about. Somewhere between that moment (…that comment? Pascale said non, Donald’s mother had nothing to do with it…) and the end of the long drive back to Montreal, the Oui side turned to Lucien. Strictly speaking, it was none of his business. His turf was Ottawa. Strictly speaking, Lucien could only be a guest at Jacques’ never-to-occur coronation. But the guest showed up and took over.

  And when Lucien assumed the torch, Donald’s good life began to unravel.

  She watched Lucien talk on French TV. One night in August, Donald followed her to a stadium to hear him speak. Like following her to a parade: let’s see what this guy is all about. He heard a man who was madder than ever, telling people they’d been humiliated for far too long — for more than two hundred years! — and that it was time to rise up off their knees. Donald was prepared for Lucien’s accusations, far more so than he’d been ready for the feisty passion of a drunken crowd at a parade on a hot afternoon, but not for the reaction they evoked. People — regular mothers, fathers in ties, not a parade-day crazy in sight — were roaring, stamping their feet each time he told them how horrible their history had been, and how all they had to do was say oui, and it would change. Donald could not understand how they could be seduced this way. Were they really so desperate? How could they be? That night, watching them weep as they reached to shake Lucien’s hand or touch his coat, instead of the panic Donald had felt that St. Jean Baptiste day, he felt sad. Vaguely disgusted. Mainly mystified. They were so willing to believe they lived in a neglected, deprived and perpetually cheated place.