The Canadian Civil War: Volume 3 - West to the Wall

by William Wresch

  Chapter 3

  Western Exploration – false assumptions and pure folly

  I really dislike being dumb. There are many reasons for getting a Ph.D., but that may be my chief reason. There’s a world out there, and I want to know about it. And, quite frankly, I dislike getting embarrassed for NOT knowing about it. So Saturday morning when Elise set off for another day at the ministry (this was a pretty routine Saturday for her), I got to my desk and fired up my computer. It might be worth spending a minute on my office. The house was nearly a century old, and for most of that time it had been occupied by physicians. So there was a huge office in the back of the house that had once been used as an examination room. It had cabinets that had absorbed strange smells, but were made of hardwoods that were essentially irreplaceable, so I kept them, the book shelves, the dark wainscoting. I had also bought the largest desk in North America from the previous owner, not just because I liked it, but because he had no desire to hire a mule team to move it out of the house. It was dark hickory with a pitted top, cigarette burns along one edge, and drawers that stuck every single time I tried to open them. In short, it was a fine example of French craftsmanship, but I have to admit I loved it anyway. It was like a dog so disheveled and sad looking you just had to pet it.

  What I did not love was my internet speeds. I had tried three different carriers and had dragged coaxial cables all over the room, and installed a wireless router, and the best I could do was about one megabit per second. I think the average Philadelphia second grader has a faster connection to his bedroom. Fortunately, I was downloading mostly text and still images. The average explorer took few videos in 1739, so I didn’t have much to stream.

  At this point, you are probably wondering what any of this has to do with western exploration. Nothing really, except to explain why it took me longer than it should have to discover the basic outlines of those explorations. By lunch I had the general idea – lots of folks were fumbling around in the dark, and worse, most people were relying upon ”facts” that were just plain wrong.

  Here’s an example. Sailors could calculate latitude, but not longitude. I could give you a whole dissertation on how time pieces were created to finally make the calculation, but as usual, it came down to English engineering (no surprise), which is why the prime meridian is set outside London and not Paris. Once on English ships, captains could now determine how far west they were going, and as it turned out, they were going much farther than they had thought by the time they got to the Pacific. North American was bigger than anyone had thought. To be honest, North America was bigger than anyone wanted. Columbus had sort of set the tone – Spain to China is great, Spain (or England or France) to China with a big mess of land in between is not so great. Basically, North American was speed bump, and now it turned out that the bump was far larger than any map had shown it to be. Oops.

  Then there was Marquette’s journal. Eventually it was published in the Jesuit Relations, and read all over the world (at least by the Jesuits). He included a wild sidebar about the Missouri River being the path across the continent. He was convinced he would canoe up it one day, come to a lake in the distance, paddle across the lake and find a river running west out of the lake that would take him straight to the Pacific. It might take a few weeks, and a portage or two, but getting there would be no real challenge. Where does this wild conjecture come from? The journal doesn’t say. But since it was in the journal of the great explorer Jacques Marquette, it was accepted. He had found the Mississippi, therefore he must be qualified to find the route to the Pacific as well. Except the Missouri is the worst possible route to the Pacific. We know that now (I will explain in a bit), but they did not know that then, and many died as a result.

  So by lunch I was basically shaking my head at the misconceptions these folks had as they set off to discover the west. After lunch (maybe it was the cheese. The French can’t build a cheese knife that will hold its edge, but they do make good cheese), I began to gain a bit more sympathy for these explorers. They had no idea what laid to the west, they had no idea the land was at least three times larger than their maps showed, and they had no idea they were on the wrong river. But they set off anyway. Of course maybe that was why they set off – they had no idea the trip could not be done.

  It didn’t take too long to start finding names and brief descriptions of where they might have gone (centuries had passed and no one had gps, so it’s not too surprising their pathways were approximate at best), and the reports usually ended the same way – so and so died on about such a day and near such a place, or so and so left headed for the mountains and was presumed dead. There were some interesting stories about the Varendryes and the Mallet brothers and Pierre Antoine, but I could find no reference to any Jolliets who had taken the Missouri to their doom.

  It was time for some help, but as it turned out, I wasn’t going to get it that night. Elise got home around 6, which was early for her, but we were scheduled to have dinner at some swell’s house before a night at the opera, so she would need time to change. So I wasn’t too surprised when she arrived home, but I was very surprised when I saw the look on her face. I have to admit this was the very first time I had ever seen her mad. Livid might have been a better adjective.

  I heard the side door close and heard the rustle of her skirts as she headed up the stairs, so I followed expecting to at least get a hug, when I encountered this angry lady in our bedroom.

  “The Biloxi City Council voted to deny a building permit to the diocese.”

  “For what building?” I can be unbelievably stupid.

  “For the cathedral they blew up. They aren’t permitting us to rebuild it.”

  “Good.” Did I mention I can be stupid? With one word I had now just entered a whole new category of dumb. I was right, but wow do I have bad timing.

  “What?” Elise’s native heritage gives her somewhat darker skin, so I rarely saw her complexion change, but that evening she could have been a chameleon standing in front of a red banner. And her eyes were twice their normal size aiming daggers at me. She was pretty mad.

  “The cathedral is too big and is in the wrong place. They should take the insurance money and build something simpler and less visible. A huge cathedral should not be the first thing you see when you arrive in the Port of Biloxi.” Elise had nothing to say to that. She just stared at me speechless. I could see she was breathing, so I was sure she was still alive, but otherwise she was absolutely motionless. I have no idea how much time passed. She stood, she stared, she breathed, I waited.

  “Just walk away?”

  “Just walk away. No howls, no protests, no explosions, no deaths. Find a quiet spot and build a quiet cathedral. No marble, no spires, some stained glass, and a nice cross. A neighborhood cathedral.”

  “So they win?”

  “This isn’t about winning, it is about having a church to attend on Sunday, and about nobody dying over a building.”

  “Nobody dying.” At this point her breathing changed, and her head dipped a bit. It might have been a nod. At least it wasn’t a complete rejection.

  “That’s good, right?” I said, and I began to see initial signs of agreement. I saw her shoulders relax and her breathing slow. Best yet, she stopped looking at me like I was well, I’m not sure what she was seeing and I am not sure I want to know. I can just say her expression changed and she looked like my Elise again. Feeling somewhat more comfortable, I stepped closer and put my hands on her shoulders.

  “Yes, that’s good.” She wrapped her arms around me and life was good again. She put her head on my shoulder, I leaned against her, and life was very good. We stood like that for a while. Eventually, it occurred to me I was feeling her ribs. She had been working nonstop since we got back from New York, changing offices and get more and more responsibility practically by the day, learning new jobs and adjusting to new people, while maintaining the social connections
that were expected of her by birth and by office.

  “When I arrived in Green Bay, the one thing I knew for certain was that Canadians didn’t do much work, they took lots of time to entertain, and they ate the best food in the world. Standing here with you now, I wonder if any of those things are true.”

  “I object. We do have the best food in the world.”

  “When’s the last time you ate any of it?”

  “Well, if you left me alone in the kitchen…”

  “If I left you alone in the kitchen you would be disappointed.”

  “Yes, that is true. So, what do we do?”

  “Can we stay home this evening? I would cook for you.”

  “English cooking? That is an oxymoron. Even the stove would object to your sausages.”

  “What if we cook together? I can help with the sauces.”

  “What if you give me a kiss and then we change to go out. We are expected, and these days we need friends.”

  Did I mention I am practicing to be a good husband? I would rather go to a dentist – a French dentist at that – than go to the opera, and as for yet another dinner with the aristocracy… But I changed into a suit made by a local tailor, hoping the seams would hold through dinner, while Elise changed… well, Elise got more beautiful. I am the last guy who should be describing styles, but I can give you the basics – long silk skirts, a shade of yellow that went very well with her skin color, fairly low cut in the style of the day, but she now was wearing partial sleeves. A bit more conservative now that she was a senior administrator? Whatever was going on in her dress selection, I had the usual problem looking at her and thinking about anything other than staying home with my arms around her. Patience, patience. Wow, I was learning patience.

  Don’t worry, I won’t describe the opera. It was La Boheme, of course, back for yet another season. I love an audience dressed up in their finest, sitting and watching the lives of starving artists living in Paris garrets. The Gods of irony are all French. Besides, we never got there.

  But the dinner is worth a mention. The location was the usual faux chateau, circle drive out front, white lacquered walls inside, lots of flowers in golden vases, chandeliers dripping with glass, basically all the subtlety of a punch in the face. The hosts were clearly trying to impress, which by the way is nearly impossible in insular Green Bay. Basically, Who’s Who was written in 1680. If you were in it then, you are in it now. If you weren’t in it then, well, you save your francs, buy a faux chateau on the east side of town, and throw big dinners.

  As usual, as soon as Elise entered the room she was the center of everything. Partly, and I am completely objective in this, she is always the most beautiful woman in the room, and partly because of her family and administrative prominence. She had the stature in the room. If she came to your party, you were grateful. My position was more fluid. When I had first arrived in the country, the reaction was generally, who invited the foreigner? When I started accompanying Elise, the reaction was usually, what in the world does she see in him (still a mystery to me and the rest of the world)? Having spent the summer undergoing fairly public adventures in Louisiana, now I sometimes had conversations with people who seemed moderately interested in what I had to say, although I have to admit as my bruises and breaks healed, interest in me faded as well.

  But you get the general idea. Elise and I enter the large hall, make conversation with several dozen other guests, Elise is ushered off to a special group of ladies by the hostess, and I talk lacrosse with other bored men waiting for the servants to bring another round of drinks. By the third glass of wine the men are complaining less and the women are looking even better, and we are led into another large room with multiple dinner tables each about to be crushed under the silver and crystal crowded on top. Did they have an unexpected number of guess respond “yes” to the invitation? Who knew, but the room was full, the tables were full, the room soon got warm, but the food arrived quickly and the wine glasses were refilled in a heartbeat.

  I don’t know if it was the heat, the wine, or the crowded room (I gave up trying to eat my soup after my arm was bumped a third time), but the conversation got a bit louder than usual and got less polite than usual. If you wanted to talk politics, you did it later over brandy, not over dinner. That’s not my rule, but it is the Green Bay rule, or at least it is the rule I had observed during my time in town. Tonight it was violated, although I have to admit the topic started from a direction that would have been acceptable in past years. It started with a question directed at the table in general.

  “Will you be going south this winter?” Only the truly poverty stricken spend winters in Green Bay. I have to add that it is not the best place in the summer either when the mosquito hordes arrive and carry off small children and stray dogs (or at least that is a rumor I once heard, or maybe a rumor I once started. It could be true). But most folks stayed for the summer out of loyalty or out of duty or out of pure stubbornness. In any case, there was a general migration to more sensible places right after Christmas. Louisiana was the usual destination, or at least it had been in the past.

  “Louisiana seems safer now, don’t you think?” The hostess asked. She was a lady pretty deep into her fifties, and nearly falling out of a dress which would have been more appropriate in her youth. But then Elise will tell you I still carry much of the Puritan blood of my nation. In Green Bay the dresses stayed low cut well past the point where you might have an interest in looking. Or at least that was my view.

  “The election seemed less radical than we might have expected,” one of the more mature men responded, but he let the last word drag out, as if he had no real interest in his own observation. By definition, he was now in the territory of politics and he knew that was a brandy conversation, not a dinner table conversation. Etiquette was as risk here. All were on their guard. Yet the topic mattered. You had to assume all the nobility of Canada was trying to determine if Louisiana was safe or if they would have to winter in place – not an attractive option for anyone. What to do with this conversation? Why not toss it to the foreigner; he is out of bounds in any case. And this is what the hostess did.

  “Mssr, Murphy, you have been there recently. What do you think? Should we travel there this winter? I know we all miss our homes there.” (Nice job of making it clear they could afford a second home in Louisiana, as if this was some great achievement).

  “I think I will probably avoid Louisiana for a while. My summer there got a bit uncomfortable.” At this point it raised my right had a bit and moved the fingers to indicate where some of the breaks had been. “But I think the political situation has improved, so it might be safe for most. But of course I am no expert.” At this point a number of “experts” decided they should have their say, but my attention was taken by Elise. The look on her face was what – surprise? Concern? I wasn’t sure, but it seemed certain this would be a topic of conversation the minute we got in the car. What was she puzzled about? Did she want me to go back down there? I don’t see myself as a coward, but it was pretty clear there were men down there who would go after me if they had the chance. Why would I give it to them?

  The details of the ensuing table talk are unimportant other than as a barometer of stability. For more than a year part of the country had gone off in a direction that surprised and scared people. The fall elections had shown that maybe things were not as bad as feared. The next test might well come in January. If Catholics from the north could safely enjoy their vacation homes in the south, then maybe the crisis was resolving itself. On the other hand, if folks went down there and were attacked, this low-grade animosity might flare up even worse and lead to police and even military responses.

  As you can imagine, it did not take too long before the “experts” turned to the one real expert in the room – Elise.

  “Mademoiselle Minister,” the hostess asked “What is the government position? Do they think
we will be safe?” While we were at the largest table in the room, there were three other tables and suddenly I could hear conversations on those tables stop.

  “We are encouraged by the election results, but the losing parties still have significant membership, and as you may know, sometimes a defeated group may do something desperate to regain its authority.” She paused there and let people think through what “desperate” might mean. “In general we think relations have improved, thanks often to personal connections, lifelong friendships, and sometimes just a smile at the right time. But we continue to monitor the situation there and will not be making any recommendations for at least another month yet. As you can imagine, we would want to be fully prepared for any contingency should Canadians determine to renew their annual trip to that region.” Had she always been so good at crafting a diplomatic response on the fly? It came from need, of course. She represented the government now, and while she was speaking to a few dozen people at a private dinner, she could expect her words would be repeated. So she was careful. And I was confused. What had she wanted me to say?

  I found out a couple hours later. Dinner lasted so long we missed the beginning of La Boheme (I was so sorry), so we drove home directly from the party. The car was unusually quiet.

  “Did you want me to go to New Orleans in January?” I asked finally. There was a very long, very nerve-racking pause before she finally answered.

  “No, and yes. The men who beat you up are still there, still running their party’s affairs, and still looking for trouble.”

  “I wouldn’t say they beat me up. It was fair fight – I got a couple licks in too.”

  “It was five to one and uncle got the medical report from your physician in St. Louis. You had internal bleeding.”

  “And no cool scars, just a hand in a cast for six weeks. But I get your point. They were angry then and they are probably still angry.”

  “You can be certain of that. In fact we are very certain of that. So there are good reasons why I do not want you to go to New Orleans this winter. But there are also reasons why it might be helpful for you to go.”

  “For instance, I can keep your bed warm at night.”

  “Yes,” at least I got her laughing with that one. “Shawn, you do that well. But there is more to it. You became a public figure this summer. And being American you have some status as an objective observer. If you could go down there and not get hurt it might be a clear sign that things have improved. People want this over. It hurts to see our country divided. The sooner the conflict is seen to be over, the happier we will all be.”

  “So you want me to go.”

  “No. At least not until we have done more security work down there.”

  “So you don’t want me to go.”

  “No. What I would like you to do is temporize. If asked, tell people you are still working out details, or tell them you need to see how your teaching load works out. Something like that. Stall, Shawn. That is what we are all doing. That is our chief occupation these days.”

  “But January is coming.”

  “Yes. January is coming.” There was so much fatigue and stress in her voice I left the conversation there. It was time to get home, go to bed, and let her rest. The only sound in the car came from the stupid Citroen engine struggling up and down the low hills of Green Bay while the tail pipe rattled. The ultimate in automotive luxury.