As we stood there silently, Art Grenville pulled a book out of his coat pocket and asked if it was okay if he read a passage out loud. It was Peter Fidler’s journal. Fidler was a geographer and contemporary of the great, and better known, David Thompson. Fidler travelled with the Piegans to the valley of the Red Deer River in the late 1700s, and it is his account of the bison, or, buffalo, as Fidler calls them, (no wonder we have been confused for centuries) that Art Grenville wanted to read to me.
It wasn’t Fidler’s description, however, that I found remarkable. I’ve heard similar accounts before, about how the plains were so thick with bison that you couldn’t see the ground for ten miles all around you. It was something that Art did when he had finished reading that affected me. He put the book back in his pocket, pointed off to the southwest and said, “I figure Fidler was standing on that ridge there when he wrote that.” Grenville was talking about something that was written more than two hundred years ago.
“I figure,” he said, “that the view was pretty much the same.”
Only once before have I felt so close to history. That, too, was on these dry and rolling plains. It was the night, some decades ago, in the Cypress Hills, when I stood alone listening to a songbird swooping and felt the ghost of the great Indian warrior Sitting Bull, who crossed over the Medicine Line into the North West Territories, as they were then called, seeking refuge from the American cavalry who were pursuing him after the Battle of the Little Big Horn.
The dry winds that blow the sage bush over this parched and cracked prairie carry stories you can sometimes almost touch.
The trick is to be there when the wind is blowing. And to listen to the soft whispers of the dry grass when it does.
7 May 2006
PARLIAMENT HILL
The first thing I did on Monday morning, with time on my hands, was what I always do when I have time on my hands in the nation’s capital. I got in a taxi and asked the driver to take me to Parliament Hill. I find the Parliament Buildings, both in their stony reality, and for all that they symbolize, an inspiring place. I am moved by all of it—by the certainty of the stone and the symmetry of the architecture, by the fragility of the eternal flame and the aspirations of the Peace Tower, by the languid lawn at the front door and the rapid river at the back. Even if I don’t have time to stop by, I like to drive by and pay my respects. Take the long way, I always tell my taxi driver, even if I am hurrying to the airport.
This week I was not hurrying. I had time. But that’s not all I had. My friend David McCormick, who is a member of the Ottawa Press Gallery, had arranged to get me a press pass. For the first time in thirty years I was going to be able to wander wherever I wanted.
The pass came with instructions. “There are two hidden gems,” said David, who knows my taste in these things. “I think you should see them.”
He told me to go to the Parliamentary Library. “There is an inkwell on display,” he explained. “It was used at the Charlottetown Conference of 1864. And then again, eighty-five years later, for the signing of the terms of union under which Newfoundland joined the Canadian federation.”
“I will check the inkwell out,” I promised.
“When you do,” said David, “check out the cake too.”
“The cake?” I replied.
“There is a cake on display. It was baked by the parliamentary kitchen more than thirty years ago, for the library’s one hundredth anniversary You have to see it.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because it was baked in the shape of the library,” said David. “It is the oddest thing, but affecting in an odd way.”
An inkwell and a cake. These are the sort of things that I love. Let the tourists climb the Peace Tower, I thought as I walked along Wellington Street. Let the students of politics head for the House of Commons. I will go to the library, and in that most splendid of Parliament’s many splendid rooms, in the woodlined cathedral of books, I will pray at a familiar altar, the altar of the inconsequential.
I have always believed that the big truths are hidden in the small things. An inkwell struck me as such a nice small thing. The indelible smell of ink, like the smell of blood, or the smell of the sea, recalls elemental things. The alchemy of liquid that, with the stroke of a pen, can become law.
I was touched that someone had had enough respect for history to guard that inkwell for nearly one hundred years so that it could be used during both the first and most recent days of Confederation, and I was pleased that I was going to find it displayed so modestly, on a library desk.
And so I thanked David, and I picked up my pass with great anticipation.
If you have never been to the Parliament Buildings, the best way to walk into the Centre Block is to imagine yourself walking into a cathedral. It is all limestone marble and gothic arches, bathed in the soft light of a setting sun, or as the parliamentarians would have us believe, I am certain, an approaching dawn. You wouldn’t be surprised as you walked around to spot a red-cloaked bishop padding down one of the corridors, or I wouldn’t. Like one of Canada’s grand railway hotels, Parliament is all history and tradition.
I wandered into the Centre Block, into the Rotunda, and then down the Hall of Honour heading to the Library of Parliament.
Before I got there, however, I was drawn to another corridor— one that the public isn’t supposed to use. It is reserved for members who want to slip out the back door of Parliament when they are trying to avoid people like me. And there, tucked away in a small alcove, I stumbled on a sculpture, a small bust by the great French artist and father of modern sculpture Auguste Rodin.
To Canada, reads the plaque on the pedestal, whose sons shed their blood to safeguard world freedom.
The plaque is signed, from grateful France.
I am moved by grand gestures made with modesty. By small, determined things.
On I went, and soon enough came to the library, where Irene Brown, the librarian on duty, told me with obvious disappointment that the cake I had been sent to see had begun to crumble and was no longer on display. The inkwell was gone too. It was in storage.
Irene was soon joined by her colleague, a librarian named Louis, and with the spontaneous enthusiasm typical of librarians everywhere, they soon enough had set aside their work and joined me in mine.
“We could show you our favourite book,” said Irene.
“What book is that?” I asked.
“It was sent to Canada by Queen Victoria,” said Irene. “After the death of her husband.”
“Yes,” says Louis. “It is a collection of the Prince Consort’s speeches. It is inscribed in the Queen’s hand.”
“What does the inscription say?” I asked.
“To the Library of Parliament,” said Louis.
“From a heartbroken widow,” added Irene.
I passed a pleasant hour in the library before saying my goodbyes and continuing my wanderings.
I headed up to the top floor, the sixth floor, to the parliamentary restaurant, which I have always wanted to see. The maître d’, a woman named Margueritte, welcomed me just as graciously as the librarians had.
“That table there,” she said, pointing at an alcove near the door, “is reserved for the prime minister. That alcove is for Conservative members, that one for Liberals and that is where the NDP gather.”
Then, sensing my interest, she said, “Would you like to see the New Zealand Room?”
She took me to the back of the restaurant and into a small and elegant dining room with a table that would sit a dozen, but not one more.
“It is panelled with wood sent by New Zealand after the Centre Block burned to the ground in 1916,” she said.
And it was at this moment, as I stood there under the green copper roof of Parliament, in that modest dining room with its magnificent view of the Ottawa River, that I had my little epiphany.
One hundred years ago New Zealand was pretty much on the far side of the moon as far as Canada was concerned. And v
ice versa. Yet, in 1916 someone in New Zealand heard that our Parliament Buildings had burned to the ground, and they responded to that news in such an odd yet peculiarly appropriate way.
They sent wood. To Canada, of all places. As if wood was something Canada was lacking. And someone here received that gift with the respect with which it was given. And those two small acts of respect had served the greater good.
And it occurred to me, as I stood there all these years later, in what is now known as the New Zealand Room, that we have lost our understanding of that sort of respect.
In its place we have developed an impulse for cynicism. Too quickly we look at our politics and our politicians as if everything was easy to figure out; as if compromises didn’t have to be made; as if you can always say exactly what you mean; as if a thoughtful person can’t reflect on something and then change his or her mind; as if the business of governing isn’t complicated.
Cynicism is an easy place to pitch a tent. And it is worth remembering, when we are tempted by that soft and undemanding clearing in the forest, that there are more noble campsites.
Parliament has been, and could still be, the best of us. And, I would put forward, it behooves us to embrace that possibility, to admit to that possibility, to own that possibility and, most importantly, to expect it. These are important days. This is an important place. We owe it many things. Our passions, our commitments, our truths and, yes, our respect. The broken-hearted Queen Victoria showed that when she signed and sent that book in the memory of her husband. Auguste Rodin showed it as he fashioned that sculpture for all of France. Those New Zealanders showed it as they bundled together their little shipment of wood. Those librarians show it as they guard that inkwell still. And so should we, each one of us, as we come together in our todays and our tomorrows, to consider, as best we can, the great questions of our times.
13 September 2009
MAYNARD HELMER
Orma Mitchell met Maynard Helmer in September 1946 on the first day of school. She met him in the village of Winchester, a small farming community set in the heart of Ontario’s dairy country, halfway between Ottawa and Morrisburg.
Orma was neither born nor raised in Winchester. She arrived by train on Labour Day weekend that year. She was twenty-three years old and fresh out of the Ontario College of Education, with a contract to teach English, French and physical education at the Winchester High School. The school board had arranged a boarding house for Orma. She went straight there from the station and hung up her new grey seersucker dress, which she had bought at Holt’s. The next morning she put on her new dress and a pair of white chamoisette gloves and set off for school. It was her first real job, and she was scared stiff. She had barely walked a block when a young man appeared and began to dance around her. As he danced, he sang.
“Son of a B, drunker than hell. Son of a B, drunker than Hell.”
Orma didn’t understand what he meant. But she did understand that he didn’t mean harm. So she kept walking, and he kept dancing. He seemed to her to be loosely put together. His clothes and his limbs all seemed unstrung. He followed her all the way to school, dancing around her the whole time. Singing the whole time too.
“Son of a B, drunker than Hell.”
When they arrived at school, however, he didn’t follow her in.
That was Orma’s introduction to Maynard Helmer. She soon learned that Maynard was what we now call a child with developmental disabilities. Orma learned that Maynard attended school for a few years, and although the teachers and the students were kind to him, his academic career wasn’t successful. Maynard never progressed beyond grade two.
In the 1940s, there was no place for a boy like Maynard in a town like Winchester. But Maynard’s father, Cy, didn’t want his son to be institutionalized in a big city. So Maynard stayed in Winchester all his life.
In the ten years she lived in town, Orma got to know him. It was hard not to. Maynard was a fixture in the village. Every morning he made the rounds of all the cafés. He knew everyone, and everyone knew him. He’d go to Mary’s, and Sutton’s, and Alexander’s Lunch. By the time the five o’clock whistle blew at the Ault’s Dairy, which was Maynard’s signal to huff down Main Street and get home for dinner, he had drunk about twenty-five cups of coffee. He probably didn’t pay for one of them.
“What you doing today, Maynard?”
“Busy,” he’d say. “Busy. Busy. Busy. Lots of things to do today. Lots of things to do.”
If there was any job going on around town, Maynard would be there. If someone was digging a hole for a fencepost in the most remote corner of the village, Maynard would show up before the first shovel load of dirt hit the ground.
If there was a wedding or a funeral, Maynard would often be standing at the door with the minister at the end of the service, shaking hands with everyone as they left the church.
His grandfather Herb Helmer was one of the village’s first police officers. People will tell you that it was something to see old Herb Helmer and Maynard walking down Main Street together. They’ll tell you that there was something about the old man’s walk, something about the way he put his arm around Maynard’s shoulder. Maynard took to wearing a police hat and carrying a black notebook wherever he went. When Gibb Raistrick became the chief, Gibb took him under his wing, and Maynard kept tagging along. No one in Winchester was surprised if Gibb drove up on official police business, and Maynard climbed out of the car with him, pulling his notebook out of his pocket. Maynard took his police duties seriously.
If he was walking down St. Lawrence, and he saw a car that he thought was travelling too fast, Maynard would pull out his book and say, “That’s going to cost that son of a bitch twenty dollars.”
And he would scratch something down in his notebook. Maynard couldn’t write, of course. But he was always referring to his book or scribbling something in it.
He loved to direct traffic. Sometimes, if there was an accident, or the mood seized him, he would get out in the middle of Main Street and he’d wave at the cars like his grandfather Herb. People would wave back and do just what he told them. Everyone in town had time for Maynard. So what if it took five more minutes to get to the drugstore?
It is hard for someone living in a big city to appreciate how the entire village took Maynard into their hearts. He rode the fire engine in every Santa Claus parade. People came out to see Maynard as much as they came out to see anything else.
They gave him a white hard hat that said The Boss in black letters on the front. He loved to be the boss. He’d be out at the arena straightening things up for Frank Morgan and he’d stop.
“I’m the boss, aren’t I, Frank?” he’d say.
“Oh yes, you are Mayne boy. You’re the Big Boss,” said Frank.
In 1970, when the village was putting in sewers and the truck drivers from Morrisburg arrived with their loads of gravel and sand, it was Maynard who met them.
He said, “Yeah, you just dump that load over there. And you put that one there.” When the foreman arrived and started yelling at the drivers, asking them what they hell they were doing, they pointed at Maynard and said, “The Boss told us to put it there.”
When Shirley Fawcett’s daughter had a baby, Maynard showed up at the hospital with a stuffed toy. Shirley remembers him standing arm’s length from the bassinette, reaching over to slip the toy in, and adjusting it so the baby could see it. Then he stepped back again and stood there, smiling.
The doctor said he never progressed much beyond the mental capacity of a six-year-old. Yet everyone in Winchester will tell you that Maynard had an amazing memory, especially for faces. They’ll tell you that Lois Coones left town as a young woman and didn’t come back for thirty-five or forty years, and when he saw her, Maynard said, “Hi, Coones. Where you been? What are you doing?”
People didn’t just put up with Maynard. He was part of their town. Part of their lives. Sometimes Maynard would bring his electric razor downtown, and Gibb would help him s
have. Sometimes he would bring his tie. Maynard liked ties, especially bow ties, which he wore nearly every day, with plain shirts and plaid shirts—made no difference to Maynard. He loved to dress up, and he loved it when people told him he was looking good.
Every year at Christmas, Maynard went home with more gifts than anyone else in town. He would have to go home two or three times a day with his arms full of presents.
People invited him to their homes. They shared special occasions with him.
Joel Steele, who runs the Country Boy Men’s Wear, remembers the day Roy Fawcett came in the store and said that Maynard was coming to his daughter’s wedding.
“I want to get him a suit,” said Roy. “And I want to get him a nice one.” They chose the best one in the store. They split the cost.
When Maynard got sick, Frank Morgan put it in his column in the paper, and Maynard got hundreds of cards—mailbags full of cards, from all over the country, even from the States, from people who had moved away, from people who heard that Maynard was in the hospital.
Orma had not had a lot to do with Maynard since 1955, when she left Winchester with her husband, until this April, when she came back to the village for a funeral.
It was a miserable and rainy day. As she drove through town, Orma noticed a lot of changes. The old school where she had taught had burned down. There was a new park on the corner of St. Lawrence and Main, with a little bandshell. She mentioned the park and the bandshell to Rob Preston after the funeral.
“It’s a lovely looking park,” she said.
“Did you read the plaque?” asked Rob.
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