“I’m sorry if I’ve upset you,” was all he could say.
That just got me even more worked up and I carried with my angry rebuttal. “And what makes today’s white people think they’re more humane than the seventeenth-century Iroquois. Most, if not all, of the so-called advanced countries in the world, including Britain, France, Spain, Portugal, and the United States, hauled millions of Africans across the ocean to lives of slavery in the Americas throughout the eighteenth century and most of the nineteenth century. The United States and most Latin American countries treated Indians like vermin fit only to be exterminated. In this century, the Germans murdered civilian non-combatants by the million during World War II. Even in Canada, as we meet here today, the government is dragging Indian children from their homes to be sent to be brainwashed in residential schools.”
Fairbanks let me go on until I calmed down and said my response was exactly what he had hoped to stimulate. “I want you to feel deeply about history. I don’t want you to take my word for anything. I don’t want you to take the word of a priest writing about a slaughter that took place a few miles from here without making up your own minds on who was in the right.”
But nobody else said anything. Corinne began to cry, which made me feel awful. I think Fairbanks realised he had made a mistake but didn’t know what it was. “It wasn’t my intent to demonize the Indians, if that’s what’s bothering you. I just wanted you to think for yourselves.”
He then asked a number of questions to stimulate debate, but nobody spoke up and the rest of the period was spent in an embarrassing silence. When we filed out the door at the end of class, however, I overheard Hilda Greene, her lips curled in derision, whisper to one of her friends, “Indians were savages back in them old days and they’re savages today. My dad says it’s in their nature and they’ll never change.”
When we went back to history class the next day, an unhappy Fairbanks said he had received calls from parents to say he had gone too far in reading the Jesuit Relation. Someone had told him he was a sadist, out to titillate and not educate their children. Looking my way, he said someone else said his presentation lacked context. The chairman of the school board, who hinted his contract might not be renewed for the next year, had called to complain.
“The people of Penetang obviously want their history be portrayed as it is in movies, with all the bad things happening off screen and all endings happy ones,” he said. “But I can’t teach that way, and I’m going to take a job somewhere else next year where the locals are more open-minded. In the meantime, I have no intention of saying anything more in this class about Indians or Huronia.”
The incident made a lasting impression. Grandpapa used to say the Métis had inherited the best of what our white and Indian ancestors had to offer. We were better singers and fiddlers than the French, better tap and square dancers than the Scotch, better trappers and canoe men than the Indians, and braver and better looking than the whites and Indians. He said these things to make me laugh, but I believed there was a grain of truth to them. But the remark of the girl about the inherent savagery of Indians planted a tiny seed of doubt in my mind. Did my Indian blood condemn me to come to no good, no matter what I did in life? Was I genetically predestined to failure? Was the real reason I always made a big show of expressing pride in my Métis identity an attempt to mask internal doubts?
I hoped not, but wasn’t sure. But suddenly, I no longer wanted to become a payroll clerk, or to live in a basement after I got married, find fulfillment helping raise a family, and spend my time sitting in a screened porch. I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, but I wanted to prove to myself that a Métis was just as good as a pure laine Franco-Ontarian or the son or daughter of settlers from the old country. To do that, I’d have to set my sights on becoming something different for the rest of my life. I’d have to go to university and become an engineer or a school teacher, something to prove myself to people like Hilda Brown.
The next day, after classes were over, I went to see Fairbanks in his classroom before he left for the day. If he was mad at me for taking him on in history class, he didn’t show it. In fact, he was delighted when I told him I was thinking of going to university and wanted his advice. He probably thought his reading of the Jesuit Relation had led to my decision to rethink my ambitions in life.
“If you don’t go to university, what would you do?” he asked, smiling broadly.
“I’d go to Business College and study to become a payroll clerk. Then Corinne and I’d get married and settle down here in Penetang.”
“You’d be making a big mistake,” he said, no longer smiling. “Not the part about marrying Corinne. She’s a fine girl, but you have the ability to go far in life and you’d soon be bored in a clerical job. In my opinion, you should take a four-year honours history program and apply to join the Department of External Affairs as a Foreign Service officer. You love history, especially diplomatic relations, and have an extraordinary grasp of the subject. In fact, in twenty years of teaching, I’ve never come across a student with your abilities. You would have to study hard and pass some tough exams, but you’d get in.”
“But I’m not sure I’d want to spend a good part of my life outside Canada. And Corinne probably wouldn’t want to leave the Georgian Bay area.”
“Why don’t you ask her? Her answer might surprise you. But if you don’t want to become a diplomat, why not become a high school history teacher and get a job in this part of the province when you graduate? ”
Although I didn’t let it show, I was by then excited at the prospect of going to university. But I still needed some reassurance. “But none of the guys around here go to university,” I said. “Everybody’ll think I’m a snob.”
“No they won’t. They’d be proud to see one of their own getting ahead — and you’d be a role model for the Métis and Indian youngsters. And don’t be intimated by the cost. Your dad can speak to some of his contacts on the freighters and get you a job as a deck hand for the summer. You can take out a student loan to pay the difference. You have no excuse not to do it. Don’t waste your life in a dead-end job.”
My parents were supportive when I told them my plans to go to university. At last the Cadotte family would be able to count a white collar professional in its ranks! Corinne said she was pleased when I told her I now wanted to go to university to become a high school teacher, but didn’t look at all happy when I said the wedding would have to be postponed. Afraid she’d be really upset if I told her Fairbanks had recommended I apply to join External Affairs on graduation, I didn’t even raise the possibility. In retrospect, I think she guessed I was holding something back because she then said — a little too fast for my liking — that she’d now drop her plans to be a private secretary. “I’ll take the three year program offered at the Soldiers Memorial Hospital in Orillia to become a registered nurse. That way both of us will be professional people, and have the money to buy a proper house and not have to start our lives together living in a dark damp basement.”
When I told her that I wouldn’t be able to see much of her when I was on the freighters and at university, she said, again a little too eagerly, “That’s no problem. We’ll keep in touch by letter and see each other when you come home for Christmas.”
I had no trouble gaining admittance to the University of Ottawa, which gave its courses in English and French, perfect for a bilingual guy like me. I also found work as a deckhand in the summers on the freighters after my dad put in a good word to a friend. During the first six months of our separation, Corinne and I wrote every day and she obtained leave from the hospital to make the fifty-mile trip from Orillia to Penetang to attend church and eat Sunday lunch with my parents, even though I wasn’t around. The following six months, we exchanged letters every week, and she cut back on her visits to my place. After that, we wrote once a month until our correspondence slowly came to an end, and she stopped visiting my family altogether. Eventually she wrote telling me she had known
since the moment I told her I was going off to university that we would grow apart. Perhaps it was for the best, she said.
My parents and grandpapa were shocked at the collapse of the relationship. They were fond of her and had come to look at her as a member of the family. But grandpapa was the only one who became visibly upset, rebuking me when I came home for the Christmas holidays. I didn’t try to defend myself. “We just grew apart,” I said.
“No,” said grandpapa, “You think you’re too good for her now that you’re going to university.”
Perhaps it was inevitable that Corinne and I would drift apart. A new world, one I hadn’t known in my hometown, had opened up. I took advantage of everything a university could offer, the subjects on the curriculum, and the library books on French existentialism, nineteenth-century French novels, and the latest in Biblical revisionism. I read a dozen volumes of the Jesuit Relations. I was a member of ten or so clubs including the United Nations Student Association, the History Club, the International Affairs club, and the Spanish club. We discussed issues Corinne and, for that matter, my own family, would never understand — or so I was convinced in my arrogance.
I didn’t even answer her letter, telling myself I would look her up during a visit home and say goodbye in person — but I never did, another example of my growing conceit. But I agreed our breakup was for the best — all the more so since grandpapa had been right — becoming a teacher was no longer good enough for me. I decided to follow Fairbank’s suggestion to join the Department of External Affairs and become a diplomat.
2: When Values Differ
In January 1966, my last year at the University of Ottawa, I applied to join the Department of External Affairs. To be honest, despite my bravado, I really didn’t think I’d get in. After all, thousands of university candidates, many with advanced degrees in law, economics, and history, applied for the dozen or more openings that came available each year. It was the home department of Lester Pearson, Canada’s only Nobel Peace Prize winner. Dozens of the top bureaucrats in Ottawa had emerged from its ranks. In those days, before its decline set in, it had a reputation for excellence among foreign ministries around the world and at the United Nations.
True, I had done well in my time at university, but the University of Ottawa wasn’t Oxford, Cambridge, Queens, Laval or the University of Toronto — the institutions of higher learning favoured by generations of aspiring Canadian diplomats. I wasn’t a Rhodes Scholar like a disproportionate number of the Department’s members. Moreover, I didn’t fit the mould of the typical Foreign Service officer. Most were the offspring of what was then called the two founding nations: middle-class British settler stock and French Canadians who could afford to give their children classical college educations. Today, people say the Natives are the third founding people, but they’re just trying to be politically correct.
However, I had one secret weapon — my memory. In preparing for the written examinations held in early March, I spent months in the library reading back copies of the Economist, Time Magazine, Le Monde, the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, and Le Devoir. Incredible as it may seem, I remembered almost everything I read. And when they handed out the test papers, I saw that the questions were presented in multiple choice, which made my job easier. I was able to dredge up accurate answers to each and every one of them. The people who marked my paper must have thought I was a genius.
But passing the written exam was only the first step. I next had to face a panel of senior officials, the so-called oral board, who would grill me on all manner of issues and decide whether I should be taken on. Early one Friday morning in late May, I put on the dark blue suit I had bought at a reduced price at Tip Top Tailors, straightened the tie the salesman had thrown in free of charge, and set out through streets lined with budding maple, oak, and black ash trees for the East Block of the Parliament Buildings. As I walked, I wondered what I’d do if I got a job offer. Would I be smart enough to survive among all those super intelligent and sophisticated people? Would I be up to the challenge of living in strange countries with exotic cultures? But would I ever forgive myself if I turned down a job that might lead me to do great things with my life?
Arriving at my destination, I walked up the steps of the imposing stone High Gothic–style building which housed the offices of senators and the minister of External Affairs, and made my way to the conference room where the oral board was conducting its interviews. The chairman, Theodore Longshaft, I knew by reputation. He was the highly respected and feared director general of Security and Intelligence. After a cordial welcome, he pointed me to a seat with his pipe and invited the other five board members to ask questions. There was a shuffling of papers as they searched for my file among the overflowing ashtrays and papers piled in front of them. I heard someone say in an irritated voice, “Let’s get this over with as soon as possible….”
An older, florid-faced, white-haired board member, sweat dripping from his chin, his tie askew, peered at a picture in front of him, looked at me to confirm I was really Luc Cadotte, smiled, and introduced himself.
“My name is Milton Burump, director general of the bureau of United Nations and Global Affairs. Appearances to the contrary, I don’t eat junior Foreign Service officers or individuals hoping to become one.” After waiting for a second to see if his sally would elicit a chuckle — it didn’t — he asked the first question.
“Dear Boy, I hope you don’t mind me calling you ‘Dear Boy.’ I call everyone under the age of forty, Dear Boy. No offense meant. Please relax. Speaking for the others — if the others don’t mind — all our questions are going to be as easy ones. Now I see from your file you have the distinction of being the first candidate for the position of Foreign Service officer since the establishment of the Department to have registered a perfect score on the written examination. Did you cheat? If so, tell us now, Dear Boy, for we don’t want cheats in the Department.”
“No I didn’t cheat,” I said, too surprised to be insulted, and left it at that.
Burump looked at me and shook his head as if he didn’t believe me. He then made a great show of removing his glasses and polishing them with his tie, like an eccentric university professor. “I’m going to give you another chance to answer, Dear Boy. In the Department, we always take the word of a gentleman. Are you a gentleman, Dear Boy?”
I’ve never been afraid to speak my mind and let my irritation show. “Probably not,” I said, “but I have a special memory and can remember most things I read or hear. That accounts for my score.”
“Oh I see. That must mean you’re an idiot savant,” he said, smiling condescendingly, “like the people who perform in circus sideshows. But isn’t using those powers a form of cheating?”
“I’m neither an idiot nor a cheat,” I said, somewhat defensively. “I’m no more intelligent than anyone else but I have an ability to remember things.”
I wasn’t sure if he was some sort of malicious jokester who liked to humiliate people he had just met, or whether he had put his questions in good faith. Whatever it was, I didn’t like it. To make it worse, the others had laughed when he asked me if I was an idiot savant. I felt they were all putting me down. They probably knew I was a Métis — my name would have given me away —and wanted to have some fun at my expense before dismissing me out of hand. I’ve always had a problem with my temper and I now wanted to tell Burump to go to hell, to tell him to “Dear Boy” somebody else, to tell him he was a snob with his talk of what constituted gentlemanly behavior. I wanted to get to my feet and tell everyone in the room that they could take their job and stuff it, and then stalk to the door, shove it open with one great push, step out, and slam it as hard as I could behind me.
But something told me that was exactly what Burump and the others wanted me to do, to provoke me into abandoning my attempt to join the Department. So I forced myself to smile and made a superhuman effort to laugh and pretend Burump had just been joking. And when I came out with my feeble little l
augh, more a humourless chuckle, everyone in the room burst out with great guffawing and hooting. It had just been a harmless joke after all — I had almost let my temper disqualify me.
One after the other, the now-friendly board members threw questions at me, asking me to comment on issues as diverse as growing tensions between Israel and its neighbours, the Unilateral Declaration of Independence of the white regime in Rhodesia, border clashes between Indian and Pakistani troops, race relations in the United States after the Harlem and Watts riots, and the changing face of the United Nations in a decolonizing world. I did my best to provide good answers but couldn’t help noticing that nobody other than Longshaft appeared to be paying attention. Two of the members were reading newspapers, someone was scribbling notes on what looked like a draft memorandum, and others were staring out the window. Burump was the greatest offender, smiling with great animation and encouragement most of the time but falling asleep periodically, letting his head drop on to his chest, and snoring noisily for a moment before waking up with a snort and turning his attention back to me.
Exceptional Circumstances Page 2