by Don Gillmor
Thanks go to a number of people: Nicole Winstanley for her editorial skills as well as her extraordinary patience and generosity. My agent, Jackie Kaiser, who was so instrumental in the conception of this book. Gail Gallant for her perceptive reading of the manuscript. The Canada Council for their generous support. Special thanks go to Ken Alexander for his heroic efforts with the manuscript—reading, advising, and arguing Canadian history with the energy of a patriot.
And of course, my family, my wife Grazyna, my daughter Justine and son Cormac for their support and indulgence while I worked on the book.
ABOUT THE BOOK
Spanning two centuries and countless kilometres, Kanata is a story both epic and personal in scope. Don Gillmor, coauthor of the award-winning Canada: A People’s History, brings the vast story of our nation into fine focus through the eyes of Michael Mountain Horse, a high school history teacher with a remarkable heritage and an adventurous past. Shifting seamlessly between Michael’s story and insightful historical portraits, Gillmor delves deep into the hearts and minds of fascinating characters both real and fictional, inviting the reader to examine not only the nature of history but that of storytelling as well.
As the country celebrates the 1967 Centennial, Michael is ready to retire, but he hasn’t given up trying to reach the easily distracted young minds in his classroom. Hoping to involve them in Canada’s historical narrative, he assigns his class a new project: a commemorative wall mural that illustrates what the nation’s past means to them. Absent from this project, however, is a fellow student named Billy Whitecloud, who is trapped deep in a coma following a tragic car accident.
Michael begins making regular visits to his comatose student, and it is here in Billy’s quiet hospital room where the real story of Kanata is told. Starting with the life of his great-great-grandfather David Thompson, Michael delivers the lessons Billy has missed, revealing his own past in the process. Gillmor’s skills as a historian shine as he furnishes the high school teacher’s stories with narrative passages that invigorate hundreds of years of Canadian and world history and bring a vital human touch to men and women lost to the past.
Thompson’s story sets the tone for the book and establishes many of its themes. Despite cruel hardships and seemingly insurmountable challenges, Thompson explored the vast uncharted country for the Hudson’s Bay Company and made it his life’s work to draft the first accurate map of its distant borders. Although his work wasn’t recognized in his lifetime and he died penniless, Thompson’s perseverance and pioneering spirit were essential stones in the foundation of the country.
Kanata’s history lessons continue through the years leading up to Confederation, as John A. Macdonald, D’Arcy McGee, George-Étienne Cartier, and George Brown form a decidedly uneasy alliance and an unusual country. Gillmor presents a fascinating look at Macdonald and how this very fallible man took his place in history as our first prime minister. He also explores the inner conflicts of other crucial and controversial Canadian figures, including Métis revolutionary Louis Riel, battlefield surgeon Norman Bethune, and prime ministers Mackenzie King and John Diefenbaker.
But it is Michael’s remarkable story that truly brings Kanata to life. As his private lessons with Billy continue, Michael slowly reveals his nomadic past and the events that made him a man. From his childhood adventures with his older brother Stanford to the bloody killing fields of the Great War and the Spanish Civil War, Michael’s spirit remains restless. He tramps the railways across the prairies, learns about love and heartbreak in Hollywood, finds work on ranches and oil derricks, and finally applies his incredible life experience to a career as a history teacher.
Based on painstaking research, Don Gillmor’s Kanata is an epic exploration of Canada and its greatest natural resource—our history.
AN INTERVIEW WITH DON GILLMOR
Q: How did the idea for Kanata originate? Did it emerge as part of the process of researching Canada: A People’s History or did it develop afterward?
It started with Canada: A People’s History. It was the story of David Thompson that seduced me. I had known a bit about his life, but after delving into the details I found his story both extraordinary and heartbreaking. At the time I thought it would be perfect for fiction.
Q: Why did you choose to use the fictional character of Michael Mountain Horse to provide the framework of the book, especially since many of its historical figures, such as David Thompson and John A. Macdonald, could have easily supported a novel on their own?
Certainly Thompson could have supported his own novel (as could Macdonald and Bethune and others), but once I decided to open up the subject, to continue past Thompson and up to the modern era, I needed a fictional character who would act as a narrative thread. Mountain Horse gave me that latitude. He had the Native background that allowed me to explore a critical part of the country’s history, and he was born at a time when he could conceivably be part of many key historical moments.
Q: As a young man, Michael experiences war in Europe and love in America before eventually returning to Alberta. Do you think it’s important to see the world in order to fully understand and appreciate what we have in Canada?
When I travelled to Europe as a student, years ago, I remember thinking it seemed so much more sophisticated. Nevertheless, after months of travel, it was a joy to return home. Canada has gotten much more sophisticated since then, without losing the essential force of its personality. Now it’s a model for the coming century, a harbinger of the successful multicultural state.
Q: Many of the political figures depicted in the book, such as John A. Macdonald, Louis Riel, and Mackenzie King, have strong and complex personalities defined by what some may call serious character flaws. Why do you think such traits are so common in the political world? Do you think these leaders have earned their places in Canadian history because of or despite those flaws?
I suspect that Louis Riel’s bouts of mania helped propel him through the hostile political landscape. They were what launched him and what defeated him at Batoche ultimately. He needed those flaws, but they were his undoing. Macdonald once remarked that the people would rather have John A. drunk than George Brown sober. His flaws and his gifts were wrapped up so tightly that they became indistinguishable. His energy was heroic for all things: politics, alcohol, and life. King succeeded in spite of his flaws. He was insecure, overly attached to the mystical, and curiously isolated. But his natural instinct for compromise helped govern an ungovernable country. Arguably, it was also what kept him from being great, however.
Q: Kanata covers almost two hundred years in our history and touches upon many important people and events. Were there other events or figures you wanted to include but simply could not find the space for? If so, do you have any plans to explore them in the future?
There were a lot of stories that I couldn’t find space for. Some of them I wrote and then reluctantly cut. The stories themselves were fascinating, but they seemed to stray too far away from the central theme. I originally wrote a section dealing with the Dene Natives who worked in the uranium mine at Great Bear Lake. They were shipping the uranium to the U.S. to be used in the first atomic bomb. A third of the Dene miners died of cancer, and Deline became known as the “Village of Widows.” It’s a tragic story and historically rich, but I cut it, finally, because I felt there just wasn’t room. It opened up too many doors; it needed a longer treatment.
Q: What were some of the practical challenges in creating a fictional interpretation of events that took place hundreds of years ago? Were you mindful of presenting a “truthful” fiction?
The practical challenges aren’t as great as one would think. There was a wealth of existing description, especially in Thompson’s exhaustive records. The literary challenges are more of a problem. The question of what is “truthful fiction” lurks. There is no hard and fast rule. Kanata was presented as “historical fiction,” a term that means different things to different people. I wanted to have the boo
k governed by central truths, but I took liberties with certain events, or collapsed events into a single scene. I used dialogue and descriptions from the historical record, but also manufactured my own. I tried to stay truthful to the spirit of the characters and to history—an impossible task, ultimately. All historical fiction necessarily takes liberties. It does so in the service of the story.
Q: Which of the historical figures did you find most interesting to explore? Did any of them present a difficulty or a challenge in capturing their voices?
I deliberately used characters who had left a written record of their own. Thompson’s journals helped give him a voice. Bethune also wrote a great deal, and his voice and personality shine through in his work. Mackenzie King left an astounding archive—more than thirty thousand pages. My greatest affection was for Thompson, but I gained a surprising empathy for King. I don’t think he was a great leader, but he was, in his way, very human. He was like a character in a Samuel Beckett play. Diefenbaker was another character I hadn’t much liked as a politician, but I had sympathy for the man. He became, very quickly, a man out of time. It is difficult to be so beloved and then so ignored. And Diefenbaker had no other life. He was purely political.
Q: How do you respond to those who say that Canadian history is boring, especially when compared with that of the United States? Why do you think Canadians are reluctant to embrace or explore our country’s history?
I think my generation was shortchanged as far as Canadian history went. I remember the Plains of Abraham being a compelling story. But I don’t recall many other stories being told to us. Our history was presented as a series of inevitable battles, generically heroic figures, and dates. A lot of dates. I didn’t sense a narrative, I didn’t get a sense of the personalities. The drama had been removed, and the history felt neutered. So we looked to the south, where American history was being distorted in a thousand entertainments.
Q: If some of the historical figures in Kanata were able to borrow Mackenzie King’s crystal ball and peer into the future, what do you think they would say about the nation that Canada has become and the state of their own personal legacies?
Well, Clifford Sifton—the minister of the interior under Wilfrid Laurier and the man charged with the task of filling the empty prairies with immigrants—would be cheered. Diefenbaker would be disappointed that the British legacy has faded so much. Thompson would be proved right (he predicted that the Natives would be pushed off the land in favour of settlers). Mackenzie King would look at our current political situation with its minority stalemates and think that what the country needs is a man like him.
Q: You have an impressive career spanning fiction, non-fiction, and journalism. Do you find that your approach to writing changes depending on whether a project is fiction or non-fiction? Is one more rewarding than the other?
At one level, non-fiction and fiction are a cure for each other. There are moments in non-fiction when you wish the character could be more interesting, or more flawed, or more something. But you’re stuck with him. And there are days when the blank pages of fiction can be daunting rather than energizing, when one wishes for the prescriptive structure of non-fiction. But when it’s going well, fiction probably offers the greater rewards. It is a purer act of creation, I suppose.
Q: Canadians share a certain national pride, but we often find it difficult to put it into words. Do you have any thoughts on why we have such a hard time defining ourselves?
The country is young, geographically diverse, linguistically complex, and increasingly multicultural. So it’s hard to define. But like all countries, we have our foundation myths, from David Thompson’s maps to Paul Henderson’s goal. It’s better to search for national meaning than to subscribe to uniform, sometimes jingoistic, notions of nation. As far as nationalism goes, I think we have one of the healthier versions.
Q: In an era of Google Maps and GPS, what place do you think mapmaking, as an art and as a medium, has in today’s world?
It is less of an art, certainly. Though the bias and subjectivity that informed maps in the sixteenth century are still with us today. Back then, mapmakers would put drawings of spice trees or gold mines as a lure for explorers. Now we have MapQuest, which shows where the nearest restaurants are. In that sense, maps have always been less objective than we would like to think. Usually some point is being made.
Q: How has the novel been received? Does the literary reaction differ from that of the historical community?
The relationship between historians and historical fiction is generally troubled and needlessly territorial. I sympathize with the historians’ position, that sense of violation they feel when a character they’re familiar with is brought to life using fictional tricks. But the aims of novelists and historians don’t coincide. One of the reasons I used historical characters who had left extensive records themselves was to bypass historians’ interpretations, which can be sterile and subject to the same biases novelists are prone to. Australian writer Peter Carey, whose novel Parrot and Olivier in America was panned by historian Hugh Brogan, said that the historian “had no idea how to read a novel.” I empathize with Mr. Carey. There is a great deal of territoriality in play, and novelists are seen as interlopers. But we aren’t working the same side of the street.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. “History is a series of accidents balanced against inevitable forces.” How is this statement illustrated in the novel?
2. Why do you think it’s important for Michael to visit Billy Whitecloud in the hospital and tell him stories from Canadian history?
3. Throughout the novel, war and conflict are depicted in various art forms, such as murals, paintings, and movies. Discuss how any given representation of war reflects the time period in which it was created.
4. Kanata presents a fictional narrative based on actual people and events. Do you feel that this approach to storytelling is respectful to the historical figures in the novel and to their legacies? What does it say about the malleable nature of history itself?
5. Many of the historical figures in the novel suffer from such character flaws as alcoholism, violent tendencies, and mystical delusions. Discuss how these traits help or hinder the leadership of these men.
6. “Endurance is part of the national theme: that humbling geography, its overwhelming scale, the sheer weight on the collective psyche.” How is endurance, in physical, religious, or emotional terms, explored in the novel?
7. “We knew what we were against but not what we were for.” How does this statement reflect Canada as a nation, both in the past and today? How is this uncertain sense of national identity illustrated in the book?
8. “In the evening, [King] wrote in his journal, the obsessive history that he attended to each night, a version that concealed and revealed in equal measure, like all histories.” Discuss the narrative nature of history as it pertains to the individual characters and to history itself.
9. Some people feel that Canadian history isn’t as exciting as American history. How does a book like Kanata subvert that attitude? Which of the historical elements did you find most interesting or surprising?
