by Ron Thompson
Miss Flanders smiled understandingly, although her eyes welled with tears for his naivety.
Really, Theodore, one of the teetotallers said, embarrassed for the President and everyone present. There’s no need for— No, no, my friends, the President interjected magnanimously. This is why we are a trust. To address your requirements and allay your concerns. And if I may explain a characteristic of money called fungibility. Every dollar, you see, is like a drop of water—
The first dollar, said Theodore Abernethy, and every penny collected until the purchase price is covered, must be segregated and held apart.
We will, of course collect and hold—
The chief, interrupted the obstinate Abernethy, wanted the railway to hold it.
The President looked only mildly offended at Abernethy’s rude interruption. As you wish, my friend. If you feel that strongly. It will require more legal work, but if it is a point of principle the extra time and expense are warranted. Now, if we may turn our attention to our plan for the initial stock offering . . .
The teetotallers left the details and legalities to the Trust, and eagerly anticipated the issuance of shares and the development of a unique and principled colony on the western plains.
* * *
The opportunity to participate in the Great West Colonization & Settlement Company would be advertised throughout Ontario and the rest of Canada, and the Etobicokers insisted on reviewing the wording of the solicitations. They approved of it whole-heartedly. “Virgin land in the north-west (went the pitch), serviced by rail; a temperance settlement on prime farmland comparable to that in the mid-latitudes of Europe.”
Buried in the paperwork they approved was the wording for advertisements which would appear in Britain and on the continent—but there was so much paper, the Ethical Standard Integrity Trust had so many preparations to make, and there was so little time to read everything. Miss Flanders hovered patiently with pen and ink, nodding and smiling kindly, serenely, as she collected the required signatures from the Society’s representatives. She wore the most delightful fragrance, a solifloreof iris that reminded the gentlemen of spring and youth; and without breaching the bounds of propriety, they admired her beauty, her goodness.
Had there been time for them to peruse the documents that Miss Flanders swiftly gathered up, the gentlemen would undoubtedly have recognized the sales pitch to Britons and Europeans, for it bore similarities to that made to Canadians; yet it was more assertive in tone. “Own the Last, Best West,” the solicitation read. “Thousands of acres of prime farmland, well watered, suitable for wheat, cotton, tobacco, tender fruits, and olives. The natives are docile and amenable to farm labour. Recognized for its temperance, the climate is comparable to that in parts of France and Italy. Demand for this oasis of plenty will mean substantial profit for settlers and investors.” Genny could now see what was going to happen. “The disclosure requirements,” I acknowledged, “weren’t as robust then as they are these days.”
* * *
The process of soliciting share subscriptions took weeks in those days—and the Trust kept selling shares the whole time. In the end, ten times as many shares were sold as originally proposed to the teetotallers. Most of the buyers thought they were buying 160 acres of land; it turned out they had bought 160 common shares in the Great West Colonization & Settlement Company. But that was worth something—the Company was now sitting on a mountain of cash, an amount far beyond the Etobicoke Temperance Society’s original expectations. A lot could be done with that amount of money. The members of the Society, after all, controlled the Company, and could rectify any inadvertent misunderstandings. All would end well.
Alas, the teetotallers found themselves holding common shares among a multitude of other common shareholders; and while they all technically owned the company, they did not control it. According to a clause buried deep within the documents they had signed, the voting shares were held—in consideration for services rendered—exclusively by the directors of the Ethical Standard Integrity Trust. These directors, named as the President and his lawyer friend, now controlled the Company. Their firstmatter of business was to declare a dividend on the voting shares, in the amount of the Company’s available cash. This accomplished, they decamped (along with the comely Miss Flanders), but not before flipping their shares to a venerable Toronto distilling company. For the distillers, it was a strategic acquisition, an early example of vertical integration.
The teetotallers, indeed all the investors, had been had; and the scammers disappeared from Toronto. There was much speculation on who they were and where they went, and many claims, over the years, of sightings. A trio matching their description sold shares in the ill-fated Nicaragua Canal project in the 1890s, and during the Klondike gold rush, two scallywags bearing likeness to the men promoted a never-built gondola for the Chilkoot Pass. The same scoundrels, and a woman resembling Miss Flanders (now reportedly with two tykes in tow), were also behind a turn of the century hospitality venture, a chain of frontier hotels and gambling emporia under the “Malamute Saloons” brand. The venture was visionary, decades ahead of its time; its promoters, by contrast, were scant hours ahead of their creditors, but managed (again) to escape with the cash.
And then the trail went cold for more than a decade until, in faraway London, someone gulled in one of these scams spotted three individuals who closely resembled the perps.
It proved an egregious case of mistaken identity. The woman was a much esteemed matron, mother of three and wife to one of the gentlemen—who were both respectable industrialists with shipbuilding interests. Nothing flashy: they owned a company that made rivets—hardly a cover for accomplished grifters. Stolid as their business was, they had established a blue-ribbon customer base. It was said they supplied some of Britain’s biggest shipbuilders, including those then building the RMS Titanic.
* * *
“You’re making this up!”
“No—why?”
“How do you know all this?”
“You know. History. It’s what I know.”
“It’s so typical!” Genny wore an affronted, angry scowl. “As long as people are motivated by money, there will be people who take advantage of others.”
“Well, yes . . . but that was those days. It could never happen now. Those kinds of misrepresentations in offering documents, that kind of stock fraud, there are just too many checks and balances these days.”
“I should hope so!”
“You have to believe in the system.” We were standing at another of the level crossings that cut through the center of Poplar Lake. The train we had heard in the distance was rumbling past ten feet away, making a soothing clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack; and I remembered when Clinton Sturgis and I had stared at trains just like it as they rolled through town, envying them because they were bound for somewhere else. Clinton had always been fascinated by trains, by roads, by vapour trails above our heads, and where they led. I had been more fascinated by books and history, by stories, and where they could go.
“So what happened here?” Genny asked. “What happened to Pîwiwisakedjak?”
“Thank goodness for Theodore Abernethy. The Trust was still showing its ethical-integrity face at the start of the offering process, so the first money that came in went into the trust account held by the railway. In fact the scammers made a great show of it, while the rest of the money went into another account they controlled. So, at least Pîwiwisakedjak would get his money, and the Great West Colonization & Settlement
Company technically owned the land. But all the investors with common shares got screwed. They owned a tiny portion of something they could never control. Most of the original teetotallers were ruined, and there were legal problems for those who had been directors. A few of them stuck with it out of principle and ended up homesteading the land—Theodore Abernethy for one. They basically paid for it twice. But P
oplar Lake was never a temperance settlement beyond their presence around here.”
* * *
The agents for the new controlling shareholders arrived ahead of the railway in a train of red river carts sloshing with whiskey. We’re here to lay out the town site, they told Pîwiwisakedjak. We’ll call it Poplar Plains. We’ll have it surveyed before the settlers arrive next spring.
As a token, they presented the chief with a handsome saddle. The distillers had heard you had to give Indians presents. It was a tedious custom, but they were dealing with child-like savages who got ornery if they felt snubbed.
The railway man, that Scottish engineer, was travelling with them. As soon as he could he asked to meet privately with Pîwiwisakedjak, who called in old Father O’Fian for the confab. A terrible thing has befallen the Temperance Society, the engineer said, but your money is safe. The railway is holding it for you in an account down east. It will keep its end of the bargain. But the good men who transacted with you have been done in—by these people.
Shysters, gamblers, old-school whiskey traders, pedlars of cheap trade goods and faulty flintlocks—the old chief had seenthem all. But he had never experienced anything like the Great West Colonization & Settlement Company. His eyes settled on the Company’s advance men, who were milling about in front of his tipi, laughing and making lewd gestures to his granddaughters. A scalping or an old-fashioned maiming, a good slow roast over a fire with some artful cutting—these were appropriate inPîwiwisakedjak’s dancing, watering eyes—much superior to killing them outright. But Father O’Fian counselled against doing anything rash.
A good whipping, then, and some non-fatal knife work. Cut off their balls and stuff them down their throats. But O’Fian counselled against that, too. I know a thing or two about losing land, he said. And a thing or two about getting invaded. I can only say, it’s a long campaign you’ll need to wage, and you won’t even begin it if you cut off their balls. You’ve got your own land here on the reserve. It’s good land. And you’ve got the money. Now you need to bide your time, just as my people have. We’ll get our country back, and you will too. Little Trickster knew the priest was right.
Follow me, he told the advance men from the Great West Colonization & Settlement Company. He mounted his horse (bareback—he had never needed a saddle in his life) and wordlessly rode away from his encampment. He rode, and he rode, the whites trailing behind. It was featureless prairie to them but Little Trickster knew every knoll, every bluff, every copse of poplar; he knew it like the back of his hand. Finally he reached the place he had decided upon and swung his horse around to face the Company men. This will be the site of your new town, he said. I want you to build it here. Right here.
Your station, he told the railway man quietly in an aside, put it over there, on that high ground.
That engineer had laid track through rock and bog in the Canadian Shield and across the Rocky Mountains. He had an eye for terrain. But even he could not discern high ground in the direction Little Trickster pointed. His eyes were not attuned to the prairie landscape as were the wandering, blinking eyes of the aged chieftain.
* * *
“And there was a lake here the next spring.”
“Yep. It never floods out on the Reserve, but here, for somereason, the whole downtown does. Except right around the station.”
“So in the end Pîwiwisakedjak had his revenge.”
“Pardon?”
Genny studied my face for a moment in the way she did sometimes, as though searching for a sign; perhaps she had lost her train of thought.
“What did he do with the money?” she asked at last.
“Well, it wasn’t that much. Land out here wasn’t worth much. Still isn’t. But it was enough to pay for a primary school right on the reserve. He figured the young people should learn to read and write, and they shouldn’t have to leave home to do it.”
“Remarkable.”
“Father O’Fian helped set it up but he disappeared around the time the Mounties posted a couple of constables to the new town. No one knows where he went or why he left.”
Genny studied my face again. Her scrutiny was intense. I wondered if I had a booger.
“Did the school survive?” she asked at last.
“For years. But after Pîwiwisakedjak died the money ran out, and the government stepped in and got a church to run it. Then the church built a big residential school down in the Qu’Appelle valley and sent all the kids there. When the school finally closed a few years ago, the government handed the site over to the local band as part of a land settlement. The building would make a good office or community centre, they suggested, but the band had it demolished. They had all the rubble, every last brick, hauled away. They wanted none of it left behind.”
CHAPTER 8
And speaking of old schools: we were standing now in the middle of First Avenue, looking up at one of mine. It had once been the town’s high school, the grandly-named Poplar Lake Collegiate Academy, but in the early seventies a bigger, modern facility was built at the edge of town, and the venerable old institution in the leafy centre was converted into a junior high.
Despite its scholastic demotion, the building was a marvel to my young eyes, a direct link to distant antiquity. Its halls echoed with the ghosts of generations past. In a town that worshiped the new, it was old.
The school stood at the front of a square of greenery, its portico perfectly centred on the middle of First. From the downtown core you could look up the street and admire the symmetry of its Georgian edifice, its hipped roof, its white dormers, the central one of which was pedimented for the hint of an ivory tower. The windows of the classrooms were broad and long, inquisitive eyes on the town and the world beyond it; and the columns on either side of the main doors, which were situated at the top of a steep stair, created the impression that the school lay on a hill. Yet it did not. The site was as flat as the rest of thetown, although it never flooded, even when the downtown core was afloat with the spring melt.
Genny was having a hard time picturing this architectural wonder, for she was looking at a windowless, single-storey brick structure hunched with its back to the street as if cowering in shame at its predecessor’s exhibitionism. “A few years ago they knocked the original building down and built this thing in its place,” I said. “The third floor was in rough shape and the building was condemned. It was going—”
“I know, I know. It was going to cost too much to repair.”
“Yup. It’s a primary school these days.” Genny slipped her arm around my waist. “Forget about the building. What was the place like for you? Tell me about your time there. Did you steal kisses and break hearts?”
I smiled. “You know me too well. In my day it was known as the Violet Abernethy Junior Academy.”
“Who was Violet Abernethy?”
“Or, to our sporting adversaries, as VAJunA. Our nickname was—”
“Very funny. Very juvenile. Who was she?”
“An interesting character, Violet. She—”
“Well, there you are!”
I jumped at the voice. It had come from close by. I turned to find my mother just a few steps away, beaming at us.
“I was coming from church and saw you two standing here in the middle of the road. Careful, now, you’re not used to the traffic these days. People in town drive too fast, and they just don’t pay attention.”
I looked both ways. There was no traffic in sight. She had pulled over and approached without us hearing a thing.
“Come on. I’ll give you a ride home. Your dad must be ready for his lunch.”
I took the back seat to give Genny the front and paid no attention to their conversation. Instead I looked out the window and thought about junior high.
As much as I had revelled in the building’s antiquity, I had floundered in its modern incarnation. From the day I star
ted Grade Seven I was lost in a sea of strangers. Groups coalesced, cliques formed and reformed, and I fit with none of them. I went to class, did my assignments, and clicked with nobody. My parents, knowing what I was like, made me join a few extracurriculars, and so I chose flag football in the fall, and in the spring I ran track, where I gravitated to the solitary events. I made nodding acquaintances but no real friends. I escaped into books and history and solving equations; I lived in my head, resigned to loneliness.
But that changed when Clinton Sturgis arrived in the summer after Grade Eight. We spent all our time together. We played catch for hours, joined pick-up games in the neighbourhood, rode our bikes around town or out to Ortona Forest. Afternoons we went swimming, or hung out and listened to punk tapes or read. He was not a reader like I was, but he liked comics, and we swapped titles and talked about the stories. In the evenings we played catch again until it was dark.
One evening before the end of summer I came around the side of his house to get him and found his mother sitting on their back steps smoking and reading a pocket book, a wineglass beside her on the step. She glanced up and smiled. “Clinton’s in his room, honey. You go right in.” She drew on her cigarette then held it away, her wrist cocked elegantly towards heaven. As she exhaled she observed me, and I noticed she wore lipstick and something that made her eyes look nice. “In my line of work,” I had heard her tell my mother, “I have to be put together all the time.” And that night she was, for although she was relaxing in her backyard she looked, in her capris and sleeveless top, set for a day on the Riviera. And the mere fact that she sipped wine from a tall glass marked her as a sophisticate, for in 1978 nobody in Poplar Lake drank wine save the rubbies down by the rail yard, and they drank it straight from the bottle. But Mrs Sturgis did not drink Four Aces or applejack, as the rubbies did on a good day. She drank real French wine like they did in the movies. She showed me the bottle when she saw me looking at it, behind the glass at her hip. “It’s Bordeaux,” she said. “Do you know where that is?”
