The Cardinal Divide

by Stephen Legault

  “What can I do?” She sounded defensive. “Tell him not to get involved? Kick him out of my house? He’s going to get involved anyway. He’s going to say things. With him on the inside, on our side, maybe we can manage him. Control him.”

  Cole shook his head again. “I don’t think so, Peggy. I don’t know this man, but I’ve seen others like him. British Columbia is full of crazies. People who are passionate about the places they live, but are motivated by other things – anger, jealousy, greed, ego, insecurity. Rage. They don’t contribute much to the actual effort to protect nature. They just inflame the situation. Make a lot of noise. Polarize communities.”

  “Well,” said Peggy, looking out the window over Cole’s shoulder, “he’s heading this way. Let’s see how it goes today, and cut our losses later, if we can.”

  The back door opened and Dale van Stempvort called, “Hey Peggy, I’m coming in!” He had a loud voice with a thick Dutch accent.

  There was the rustle of a coat being hung and the sound of boots being kicked off, and then Dale van Stempvort entered the kitchen.

  Cole stood to greet the large man, powerfully built, who walked with confidence and ease. “I’m Dale van Stempvort,” he said and extended a hand to Cole.

  “Cole Blackwater,” he said, shaking the hand, his own nearly disappearing to the wrist in the big man’s paw.

  “You’ve come to help us stop those bastards from digging another hole in the ground. That’s good,” grinned van Stempvort.

  “I’m going to try,” smiled Blackwater.

  “From what Peggy has told us, you could do it singlehandedly! Like David and Goliath!” The big man roared and slapped Cole on the shoulder.

  Cole just smiled. “Where will we meet?” he asked Peggy, and she showed him to the living room.

  Within fifteen minutes another dozen people arrived, and Peggy made sure they all had coffee and cinnamon buns and were comfortable in the large living room. Cole greeted each person as they entered, shook hands, and chatted about their background and interest in the mine.

  Finally they were all seated and Peggy asked for everyone’s attention. Cole looked at the eager faces. The majority of the group were middle-aged women. There was a handful of older men and two younger women. Where are all the young people, he wondered? Two of the men wore jackets and ties and Cole figured they were the business people Peggy had mentioned. That didn’t bother him. He’d worn his share of ties to kitchen table meetings in the past. One of the young women was decked out in Mountain Equipment Co-op hiking clothing from head to foot. She looked as if she could fend for herself for a month in the woods if she had to. She had long, straight hair and a shiny, fresh face that made Cole envious. The other young woman wore blue jeans and a loose-fitting flower print sweater. The whole spectrum, from suit to flower power, was in the room. Cole grinned.

  “Folks, let’s get started.” Peggy McSorlie clapped her hands and the room fell silent. “We’ve asked Cole to help us develop a strategy to stop the McLeod River Mine. He’s come a long way to do that.”

  Cole found himself tuning out Peggy’s introduction. While she extolled his virtues as a campaign strategist, leaving out his humiliating and career-interrupting departure from the Nation’s Capital, his attention drifted to considering how far he was from where he hoped to be.

  By this time in his five-year career plan, formulated on the long drive from Ottawa to Calgary and then updated on his slide across BC to Vancouver, he hoped to be a senior advisor to a political party, if not the governing party then at least the official opposition. If not federally, then at least provincially. If not in BC or Ontario, then at least in Saskatchewan or Prince Edward Island. Half a dozen large nonprofit clients would retain him and his associates for on-the-spot advice on government relations, media, and communications strategies. One or two large corporate clients, alternative energy companies like Ballard Power or large communications or internet companies, would subsidize his probono work. The ridiculous amounts of money that he earned for his advice and insight would allow him to do free work for groups like Peggy McSorlie’s ragged band of crusaders.

  Instead here he was, three years into his solo fling, and the Eastern Slopes Conservation Group (ESCoG as they clumsily called themselves) was currently his second biggest client. His second client, period. And the only client that threatened to pay him.

  Cole became aware of the silence and realized that Peggy McSorlie’s introduction was complete. He focused and looked around the room, smiling faintly. He tried to appear as though the silence was planned.

  Then he stood and cleared his throat. “Thank you, Peggy,” he said. “We have a tough job ahead of us.” He looked around the room, making eye contact with each person. “This will not be easy. It isn’t a game. The stakes are high. A place we love is being threatened. Our opponents have huge resources: smart people, lots of money, the media, and the government in their pockets. This is going to be a long, tough fight. But that isn’t going to be the hardest part,” he said. “The hardest part won’t be facing down angry miners at a public hearing. It won’t be the cold stares you get when you walk into the local diner or the Tim Hortons. It won’t even be the crank calls you get at midnight. Or the threats from people you thought were your friends. No, the toughest part will be working together, staying together, bleeding together. Finding a strategy that you all believe in and then seeing it through. Not turning on each other. Not parting ways. Not stabbing each other in the back. Not running. Not leaving. Not giving up.”

  He let his words sink in and looked around the room. “That will be the hardest part. If someone here is not a team player – ” he let his dark eyes fall on Dale van Stempvort a second longer than the others, “this is your chance to leave. This is your chance to walk. Nobody will think less of you. In fact, we’ll thank you for your honesty. You’ll have our blessing to do what you feel you must. But from this point on, we are a team. There is no room for heroes, for all-stars, for lone wolves.” Again his eyes met van Stempvort’s. “If we develop a plan together, and execute it together, then we can win together. That’s why I am here. To win. My grandfather said that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. I believe that. Aiming to come close will not stop this mine, and it will not save the Cardinal Divide. It won’t save grizzly bears, wolves, or cougars. It won’t save harlequin ducks. I’m here to help you stop this thing once and for all. Stop it so it stays stopped. But we’re going to have to work together. That’s the only way we will win.”

  Cole thought his sermon sounded pretty good. But that was the easy part. The consultant had it easy. The real work, the work that mattered, was up to these volunteers. Still, he would do his best, over the next two weeks, to give them what they needed to win.

  The morning went as expected, with the group excitedly outlining all the myriad opportunities that they had to put the kibosh on the mine, and ranking them against a scale they devised to decide on which tactic they would use to start. Cole finished early for lunch. The group had made excellent progress, he thought, and he didn’t want to enter into the next phase, which he knew would be harder, until they had been fed and had a little stretch outside in the sunshine.

  Peggy retreated to the kitchen to work with two local volunteers who had brought soup, sandwiches, and a veggie platter for lunch. The rest of the group stood and talked, reluctant to stop when they were flying high. Cole shuffled them toward the kitchen where they fixed sandwiches and bowls of soup, then headed outside to eat, standing in the midday sunlight.

  Cole stood alone to collect his thoughts and looked out across the fields and the turned soil of the vegetable garden, eating an egg salad sandwich. The noon sun was strong and he stretched his arms forward and back.

  “I know you were talking to me,” said a thickly accented voice. Cole knew it was Dale van Stempvort.

  He finished his stretch, turned, and smiled at the big man.

  “I know you were talking to me when you said we
got to be team players,” said van Stempvort again, taking a bite of his sandwich.

  “I was talking to the whole group,” replied Blackwater.

  “But mostly to me,” said Dale, holding up his hand to cut off further objection from Blackwater. “It’s OK, really. It’s OK . I know what my reputation is.”

  Cole said nothing. He noticed how Dale’s eyes couldn’t hold Cole’s gaze, and how he shuffled his feet.

  “I got it coming to me,” he said with a smile, pushing dirt back and forth with the toe of his boot. “In the past, I have not been the best at playing as a team.”

  “Do you think this time will be different, Dale?” asked Cole, and watched him closely.

  “I don’t know. It’s hard to teach new tricks to an old dog. But I want to stop this thing, and if you think sticking together is the way to do it, then it’s worth a try. I just hate sitting on my hands while those bastards get away with raping places like Cardinal Divide.”

  “Well, I don’t aim to have anybody sitting on their hands,” said Cole quietly.

  “I suppose you don’t. But you don’t know these people,” said Dale, looking around him. Then he leaned closer. “They don’t like conflict too much. They are afraid of it.”

  “Can you blame them? I mean, they are going up against their neighbours, their customers, their friends.”

  “Well damn it all,” said Dale; his voice rose and his head bobbed. “They have got to put all that aside if they want to win. They can’t be afraid to do what it takes. If that means making a few enemies, then that’s what they will have to do.” He spoke quickly, his accent thick.

  Dale went on. “Sooner or later somebody is going to have to draw a line in the sand and say: this far and no farther. Sooner or later somebody is going to have to say: we’re going to stop these bastards at all cost.”

  The two men stared at each other in the noonhour sunlight. Cole Blackwater’s face was impassive. Dale van Stempvort’s was agitated.

  “Have you seen Cardinal Divide?” Cole asked.

  “Of course I have,” said Dale, slightly perturbed by the inference. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Do you think that the people who plan to mine there, build roads over it, and bring the outside world to it are motivated by hate, greed, power, fear?”

  “I don’t know what motivates them. It’s not the same thing as you and me. I don’t even think they are people.”

  Cole raised his eyebrows. In fifteen years of activism Cole had heard this line of thinking many times, and he rejected it. When we stop thinking the people we disagree with are worth the same dignity we insist on for ourselves, and for wild creatures, we head down a slippery slope. The way Dale spat out those words, so full of anger, worried Cole.

  “And what motivates you?” Cole queried.

  Dale was silent. He looked back down at his feet and rearranged a ridge of sand he had built there. “I don’t know ...” he said after a minute. Then he looked around at the woods bordering the McSorlie spread, as if seeking inspiration. Would Dale explain that love of nature inspired him? He doubted it. When polled, ninety percent of Canadians said they loved nature. Few of them ever lifted a finger in its defence.

  Finally Dale looked up and said, “I hate to see those bastards get away with destroying another beautiful place.”

  The two men regarded each other. Cole nodded his head. “I hate it too,” he said, in genuine agreement. “But what worries me, quite frankly, is that I think you hate the people more than you hate what they are planning to do, and that’s trouble. That blinds you to the fact that they are people, like you and me, with children they love, and passions of their own. To win, we have to treat them as people, capable of love and worthy of our respect. If we don’t, we’re not better off than they are.”

  The look of disdain on Dale’s face showed that he didn’t agree. He shook his head and repeated, “They aren’t people. Not like you and me. Not like Peggy.”

  Their stalemate was interrupted by Peggy McSorlie’s voice from the stoop of the house. “Time to get started again, folks.”

  The two men regarded each other. Then Dale said, “Peggy hired you to help us, and I’m willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. I know you’ve won some battles. You got the scars to prove it,” Dale grinned. “But at the end of the day, this is our fight. It’s my fight. Win or lose, you get paid, and go back to Vancouver, and move on to the next client. But we’re stuck here. We’ve got to stay. It’s our backyard. I aim to do what I have to do to win.”

  Cole smiled at the man. “I’ll do everything I can to help you,” he said, putting his hand on the big man’s shoulder and guiding him toward the door. “Let’s get back at it,” he said congenially. It was truly dangerous to have a man like Dale van Stempvort involved on this campaign. Dale van Stempvort seemed to Cole to be a man whose hatred made him capable of almost anything.

  5

  A telephone rang. Where was he? In the unfamiliar darkness he probed for clues. No streetlights, no sirens, no car horns. Not Vancouver. He peered around the room. Rim Rock Motel. Oracle, Alberta. The phone – he fumbled for it, knocked it off the bedside stand onto the floor. It rang yet. He bent over, sheets twisted around his legs, reached for the receiver, and pressed it to his face.

  “Hello,” he said finally, groggily, into the mouthpiece.

  “Cole?”

  “This is Cole Blackwater.”

  “Oh hi, Cole, it’s Peggy McSorlie. Did I wake you? I’m sorry, it’s just that – ”

  “It’s OK, Peggy,” interrupted Cole, “I’m sure that the day is already well underway,” he mumbled. He looked at the clock on the bedstand, where the phone had once stood. It was 8:30 AM. He closed his eyes.

  “Anyway, I’m sorry to call so early, but we’ve got a problem.”

  Second day on the job, he thought, and we already have a problem. “What is it?”

  “Well, it’s Dale.”

  “What has he done?” said Cole, rising up on an elbow.

  “I think you had better read the Red Deer newspaper and then call me back, Cole.”

  “You can’t tell me over the phone what it is?”

  “I can, but I think you’ll want to read it anyway.”

  “How bad?”

  “Pretty bad.”

  Cole grumbled something under his breath. Then, “OK, I’ll pick up the paper and call you back.”

  He hung up the phone.

  He walked stiffly to the shower and, without turning the light on in the bathroom, stepped in and turned the water on as hot as he could stand. He put one hand against the tiled wall under the shower head and let the other hand hang at his side. The hot water blasted over his head, neck, and shoulders and ran down his back and chest. He stood that way for five minutes, letting the water revive him.

  He had left Peggy McSorlie’s around 7 PM the previous night, picked up a sandwich and sixpack in town, and came straight back to the Rim Rock Motel. While his laptop slowly downloaded his email (dialup, no wireless for the Rim Rock) he washed and changed into clean clothes and quickly read the day’s headlines on The Globe and Mail’s web site. He drank a beer, sorted his email, responded to a few messages, and then took a look at his notes from the day. He ate his sandwich, drank two more beers, and by 10 PM had typed his notes and ordered his thoughts, mentally and on paper.

  He watched The National on television, drank his last two beers, and then, finding no solace in Peter Mansbridge’s dulcet tones, ventured downstairs to The Quarry for a nightcap. The bar was as crowded and noisy as the night before, as comforting as a home away from home. After his perfunctory scan of the joint, he bellied up to the bar and drank two Jamesons, neat, while chatting with George Cody about the Canucks’ chances, and whether or not Calgary and Edmonton were playoff contenders.

  It was an educational conversation. He learned that George had played football, but only in university, and at his own admission, he wasn’t very good. He had been a running back. “Big,
” he had said, “but not very fast.” Not fast enough to go pro.

  Cole learned that George had met Deborah while working in Fort McMurray, before the tar sands boom, and the two had migrated further west, bound for BC, when they had stopped in Oracle and learned that the Rim Rock and its adjacent bar were for sale, the owner in some kind of financial trouble. They scrapped together money they had saved, bought it, and stayed.

  Then Cole had a chance to try out his own story, telling George that he was a freelance business writer interested in the Buffalo Anthracite Mine, and the new project they’re working on at the McLeod River. Cole had studied George’s reaction: the big man had nodded, rubbed his moustache and said that “project might work, if that new hot shot they’ve got running the show out there gets his head out of his ass and looks out for the mine and the community, not just the company, or his own self. If that new project doesn’t pan out, we’ll have to change the name of this place.”

  Cole had raised an eyebrow in inquiry.

  “Call it the Watering Hole or the Trout Pond, not The Quarry. For the tourists. If that mine closes, we’re going to have to hope that the tourists heading to Jasper find this joint appealing, or Deb and I will be on the road again.”

  By the time Cole returned to his room it was 2 AM and he was comfortably drunk. He slept deeply but not for long enough. The hot shower was slowly easing the previous night’s poison from his body and brain. A coffee would help.

  He stepped from the shower, towelled off, and dressed in the bedroom. He opened the curtains and winced at the daylight. Alberta is bright, he remembered. He had been on the coast long enough to grow accustomed to weeks without seeing the sun.

  He swallowed two Advils with a slug of water (breakfast of champions) and stepped into the day. He walked to the front office to find a newspaper. Deborah greeted him warmly.

  “Good morning,” she said, beaming.

  “You always behind that desk?” Cole asked, mustering a smile.

  “Almost,” she said, and she winked at him. He hoped it was a sharing-the-joke kind of wink. Or just a charming but innocent habit. Not a come-up-and-see-me-sometime kind of wink.