Condemned to Repeat

by Janice Macdonald

  Nola saw and seemed to approve of what I was doing. She nodded and poured us some more tea.

  “We haven’t been to that park yet, though we should go. Do you have any idea when they are going to be closing up for the winter?”

  I wasn’t sure, but wrote down the URL for the Ukrainian Village for Nola. I also put my phone number on the piece of paper, as I had a sense that she was someone worth pinging this kind of research on. She had, after all, been living the life for the past few months. Nola folded up my offering and put it in the pocket of her apron.

  We talked about volunteering at the Fort, and how working in the fall for the school tours differed from the regular summer tourist times. After a few minutes, Nola asked Jasper if he would mind positioning himself in the front parlour so that they could know when the school group was headed toward them. He obliged, after reaching out to take a final cookie from the plate on the table.

  “Don’t you ruin your lunch, young man,” his mother intoned, but his grin back at her made me realize this was some sort of private game between them.

  Nola confirmed it as he left the room. “I swear he has a tapeworm. I have never seen anyone eat as much as that child.”

  “Boys are always hungry, aren’t they? Just wait till he is a teenager. I had a colleague who had to put a lock on the pantry door because her boys were honestly eating them out of house and home. She would budget for grocery money monthly, and they would gnaw through half the mortgage payment, too.”

  Nola laughed and shook her head.

  “No, I can’t imagine Jasper getting that bad. I mean, where would he put it? But still, I never have to worry about his ruining his appetite!”

  She wiped her hands on her apron as if she was drying them of mirth, changing the smile on her face and even the set of her shoulders.

  “Now, what I didn’t want to dwell on while Jasper was in the room was that there was a break-in to this house a couple of weeks back, and some of the artifacts were tossed about.”

  “What Jasper called the mess,” I said.

  “Yes, that is what I called it because I didn’t want to spook him and I didn’t really want it to loom in his mind as something to chat about with visitors, either. For one thing, you don’t want to spread the word about how easy it might be to sneak into the Park, but for another, you want people to feel safe when they are here.”

  “Do you feel safe?”

  “Why not? It’s not as if there actually is anything here, and I don’t think anything was stolen, either.”

  “What did they mess up?”

  “Mostly the maid’s room. The bedstead was overturned and the trunk opened, and one of the baseboards had been pried away from the wall. That was the extent of it. They put up the rope so that people wouldn’t go in while the baseboard, which had to be repainted, was still wet, but I think they decided to leave it up as a deterrent, since there really isn’t anything you can’t see from the other side of the barrier. It’s not as if you could swing a cat in there, after all.”

  “Not many maids in the habit of cat-swinging, I’m guessing.”

  Nola laughed, which did a lot to disperse the mood of gloom that was descending upon us.

  “No, I expect they had had enough of carpet beating throughout the day.” She pointed to the rather lovely object near the back door. It was about the same size as a tennis racket, but instead of net, it had a curlicue design. “That is what she would have used, after dragging the carpets out, on her own, and draping them over the clothesline. The harder you hit the carpet, the more dust and grime and dirt would fly out, likely right into your eye. Whenever I think of that whole process, I tell you, I go home and hug my Hoover.”

  Nola stood up, after offering me another cup of tea, which I refused. I could tell the moment was over, and she was getting ready for the onslaught of children who would be asking questions about the stove and learning how butter was made. Nola cleaned off the table from our teatime, sliding the leftover cookies onto a larger plate she had set aside for the school group.

  Jasper called out to his mother from the parlour.

  “I see them coming from Egge’s.”

  22

  --

  The school group was on the move, having had their first class in the upstairs area of Egge’s Barn. They were likely to be a bit restless and rambunctious, but Nola and Jasper would be ready for them. She had lined up ten pint jars, which Jasper was helping her to measure cream into. As he put the lids on each jar, Nola set out several baking trays and started to mix dry ingredients into a large bowl.

  “The kids will be shaking these jars to make butter, which will separate from the milk after about fifteen minutes, and then they can spread their homemade butter onto fresh biscuits.”

  “Hot biscuits and fresh butter is wonderful,” Jasper sighed. “Are you going to stay, Randy? You could have a butter jar, too.”

  “Thanks, Jasper, but I probably should be getting out of the way. I think I’ll just pop up and take a couple of pictures of the rooms upstairs, to use as comparisons to the ones at Achnacarry, the new place, and then I’ll head out. It was lovely to meet you both and thank you for the tour”—I nodded to Jasper—“and the tea and cookies.” This time I smiled at Nola.

  “We’ll keep in touch, Randy. I am interested to know how this project will turn out.” She patted the pocket she’d popped my phone number into.

  “Thanks! You never know, I may be back.”

  Jasper’s face lit up in a grin, which turned the possibility to certainty in my mind. You never knew, maybe I would get him to teach me some of his expert jacks techniques.

  I went back up the little maid’s staircase, which was just as well, since I heard the first steps of feet on the front stairs. Nola was expecting twenty-seven nine-year-olds. It sounded like a marauding army, coming to pillage.

  Now that Nola had mentioned it, I could see the slight difference in paint colour on the baseboard closest to the doorway of the maid’s room. Otherwise, there was nothing to indicate that there was any hiding place at all. There were three hooks set on the wall behind the doorway. Perhaps, in the Rutherfords’ day, there would have been a washstand in here as well, for her own pitcher and ewer, or maybe she was allowed the use of the indoor plumbing along with the rest of the family. But aside from the colour in the patchwork quilt, there was nothing bright and personable about the room.

  I didn’t suppose it was an original quilt, though it looked old and worn enough to have been used well and washed thoroughly more than a few times. From my work around Rutherford House, I was beginning to understand the difference between the concept of preserving sites due to their cultural significance, their architectural significance, or their historic importance. There were all sorts of standards that had to be considered when deciding on what plan of attack the historic site committees would aim for, whether it be restoration, rehabilitation, or preservation. It reminded me of a dinner conversation I’d once had with a museum curator who explained the dilemmas inherent in the preservation of our history. She had used, as an example, the rope used to hang Louis Riel. Embedded in the fibres of the rope were bits of skin and traces of blood and sweat, which would break down over time and eat into and erode the rope. To preserve the rope, it would be optimal to clean away this organic residue. Of course, once you removed the actual bits of Riel, did you still have a valuable historic artifact? Or did you just have a rope? Would it be better to have a disintegrating noose in a glass case? Or would preserving forever the actual rope make more of an impact on generations to come?

  Questions like these made me glad I’d not chosen a curatorial path. I had enough trouble picking out which socks to wear in the morning. I knew that many of the artifacts in Rutherford House, the brick rendition, were actual Rutherford-owned items. But here in Fort Edmonton Park, with so many visitors and school groups coming through, it was likely this wasn’t really one of their old quilts. And why should it be? The province was likely awash
in old quilts. I had three at home myself, made by my grandmother.

  This room, though plain and utilitarian, seemed cozy enough. It wasn’t as girlish and bright as Hazel’s room, of course. I thought back to my earliest exposure to what a working-class young girl could expect when coming to a new position, which was, of course, Anne Shirley’s delight in the room Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert had prepared for her. There would have been little to delight even the most imaginative Anne here.

  Working backward from my original tour, I took the front stairs down to avoid the throng whom I could hear avidly shaking jars of milk in the kitchen. One of the parents who had volunteered to shepherd them was standing in the front room, checking out the harmonium. She looked startled at my appearing out of nowhere, but I smiled and held out my camera at her, the international sign for “I’m a harmless tourist.” Of course, since she was chaperoning minors, that same gesture could have equally been interpreted as the international sign for “I’m a pervert hoping for lewd shots of your children.”

  I must have looked harmless because she just smiled and nodded as I let myself out the front door. It was brisker outside than it had been in the warmth of Nola’s kitchen. I did up my jacket, but it was a lovely day nonetheless. I decided to wander down 1885 Street to see if there was anything open along that way, and to stretch my legs. It had been a long time since I’d been down to Fort Edmonton Park.

  Unlike the Ukrainian Village, which was spread out with lots of walking required between buildings, Fort Edmonton was filling in to be a bustling little town in its own right. While there was a large empty space still open on 1905 Street, where the tent city got set up in the summers to show how desperate people had been for housing in the earliest boom time, there was very little real estate open on 1885 Street. From the sample homesteading spike through to Ottewell’s Farm, both sides of the street were lined with interesting shops, a church, and early homes.

  I wandered down past the old hotel, the general store, and a saddler and crossed the street over to the Ottewell Farm. The last time I had been to the Park, there had been a covered wagon set on the corner, bridging the timeline between the Fort days and the settlement time. It had been a hot day, and the interpreter, a feisty girl in a calico dress and grimy apron, had crawled out from under the wagon, where she had been resting on a thin mattress she’d dragged out of the wagon. She gamely discussed the compartments and ingenuity of the wagon, with sweat running down the sides of her face. In her interpretive scenario, she and her husband had been coming over the Carlton Trail, but he had taken ill somewhere near Yorkton and was buried there. She figured there was nothing for it but to carry on, as they had the paperwork affording them a homestead near Fort Edmonton. She wasn’t certain how she would manage to clear the land and fence it in accordance with the homestead laws all on her own, but perhaps she would meet someone eventually who would wish to share the life. All the while, she poked up the fire she had made near her wagon, and set the coffee pot to swing over it. She pulled out a tin mug, dipped it into a pail of water she had on hand, and wiped it on a towel before offering it to me.

  I hadn’t taken her up on the coffee, but it was testimony to her acting and interpreting that I recalled so much of our exchange even now. The wagon wasn’t there; it had probably been taken away into storage for the winter. I was noticing a few signs of the Park’s preparing for their annual Spooktacular, as well. They ran a two-day extravaganza of scary Hallowe’en fun, stretching from candy and games for little kids in the airplane hangar on 1920 Street to zombies and horror houses on 1885 Street for the older ones looking for a thrill. Houses with precious artifacts were locked up, but Lauder’s Bakery was a favourite for creating a haunted-house effect, especially as there was a clear entrance and exit for the unwary to pass through on their way to meet the undead.

  I walked down the gravel road toward the Fort, which loomed up on my right. It was very impressive with its upright palisades surrounding the big house, whose roof I could see peeking out above the walls. I tried to imagine it standing on its own, on the promontory of land where the Legislature grounds now were, just about where the north side of the High Level Bridge began. If you were paddling up the North Saskatchewan River, and you caught sight of that, how would you feel? After days and weeks of solid nature, with no roads or houses or any other sign of western civilization encroaching, would these walls appear to you as the equivalent of the bright corona of city lights after miles of dark highway?

  It was to the Park’s credit that they had managed to situate their sightlines so that relatively few modern buildings were spotted on the horizon. From various places in the Park, a visitor could imagine himself back in a time with no power lines or river-edge mansions to mar the effect.

  It was particularly true from where I stood now, at the Indian Village edge of the Fort. I had been told it wasn’t open, but I walked down toward the Fort gates anyhow, mostly to see for myself the little door that Nola had mentioned. There it was, cut into the door, with a threshold at least two feet off the ground, so someone entering would have to clamber over the lintel. There was very little that was inviting about it, and yet, through doors like this, the history of European infiltration of the largest part of North America was forged. The river ways of Canada brought the fur traders of the North West Company and the Company of Adventurers of the Hudson’s Bay Company further and further to the source of their wealth, the native trappers themselves. Just like every major hotel in Canada was situated near a railway, every major city was camped on a river.

  I patted the door once more, for luck, and turned to walk my long way back through the history of Edmonton. By the time I made it out to the bus stop on Fox Drive, it was the beginning of rush hour, and a bus came right away. As I waited on the platform at South Campus for a train, I calculated that I had travelled 163 years in about an hour.

  23

  --

  The Jaque family had not wanted a public funeral for their daughter, so the staff of Rutherford House had not been given a chance to congregate and deal with their own gradations of grief. Perhaps that was why I saw several of the permanent staff members in the chapel of Old St. Stephen’s College for the somewhat delayed memorial service for Mr. Maitland. That is the worst thing about losing someone in circumstances that warrant a police investigation. The time before the body is released to the funeral home creates an awful limbo in which grieving hangs with no release. Funerals may be dreadful rituals, but they somehow serve the purpose to purge and release all those tragic emotions.

  St. Stephen’s College was a suitable place for the funeral of a provincial archivist, since the stately building, which had been one of the first on campus, was now the home to the provincial Historical Resources Management department. I wondered if Mr. Maitland had specified that he wanted his service there. Nestled into the east wing of the main floor of the building, it was small enough to make the small number of attendees seem to swell in rank. A plaque listing members of the college who had died in wars hung on one wall, and muted stained glass windows ran down another. A central aisle was flanked by several rows of blond pews, which were all facing an apse that was one elevated step up. It was all muted and restrained and comforting, like so much of the United Church.

  The service was officiated by the principal of the present St. Stephen’s College, which was now housed in a small two-storey building at the south end of the old college grounds. He gave a short homily, led us in prayer, and then turned the pulpit over to several people who read psalms and spoke about Mr. Maitland.

  Even his close friends seemed to touch on the aspects of his character I had found immediately endearing, so it occurred to me that Alastair Maitland had been one of those totally authentic people who had delivered the same open features to everyone he met. He was fair, kind, interested, a stickler for detail, loyal to a fault, and a creature of habit. One friend spoke of his irritation at having to find a new place to buy his shirts and bow ties when the W
oodward’s department store closed—after a hundred years of business. While this brought smiles to several people around me, a full-throated laugh came when it turned out Mr. Maitland had reluctantly taken his business to Eaton’s. When they also closed their doors almost immediately, he had stocked up on several bow ties and crisp white shirts from the Bay and held his breath.

  The more I heard from his friends, the greater my indignation over his death seemed to be. While I am, of course, a big fan of John Donne and pay lip service to that whole concept of “each man’s death diminishing” the collective, in practice, it’s not something that really tracks with me. Most of the time, the knowledge of someone’s demise warrants a sigh. If I hear of an accident taking several lives or a situation where some madman mows down a park full of teens, I will take note, of course. But it is rare that I actually feel the loss, that the chasm opens up and I understand the vacuum that has occurred in the firmament.

  In an article about why she stooped to write mystery fiction, Dorothy L. Sayers, the great Dante scholar, said that murder was the one crime whereby society became the victim, as part of it had been rent, and in order to create a whole cloth once more, the murder must be solved and the living victim avenged. Any other crime could be dealt with by the victim him- or herself, which is why lesser offences created a voyeuristic impression in crime literature. I was beginning, there in the small chapel, surrounded by polite friends of a buttoned-down little man who had lived alone and trod gently, to understand the concept of the hole created by the loss.

  We all stood to sing the final hymn, “Jerusalem,” which was still in the old blue United Church hymnals tucked into the pews, as this was, after all, a historic site. The late autumn sun hit the windows, sending dazzling purple and golden lights across the room, and I heard a sniffle behind me. Though it had been a very polite service, it seemed somehow good that nice Mr. Maitland had someone crying over his passing.