I knew the board expected me to talk about the Quiet Revolution in Quebec — the struggle of Quebeckers to carve out a new place for themselves in Canada after centuries of corrupt priest-ridden governments and two hundred years of domination by English-speaking business elites. It had been the issue that occupied the headlines, the editorial pages, and the debates in Parliament for years. Royal commissions had been struck, and a new national flag thought to be more in tune with the times adopted. English-speaking Quebeckers, unwilling to make an effort to learn French, and afraid they would have no place in the political order, were abandoning their Montreal enclaves of privilege to make new lives for themselves in Toronto. At the same time, a terrorist group, the Front de libération du Québec, the FLQ, emerged from the shadows to try to turn the quiet revolution into a violent one. They were bombing the symbols of the old order such as armouries and post offices, and robbing banks and liquor stores to finance their operations. Nobody, however, took them seriously. After all, Canada, Quebec included, was a liberal parliamentary democracy. The FLQ was an anomaly which would eventually just fade away.
I was confident I knew the issues thoroughly and would have had no problem laying them out to the board and fielding any questions they might have. But I didn’t want to do it. I wanted to talk about the condition of Aboriginal people in Canada, especially the Métis, but I didn’t think the board would be interested. I was also still under the shock of Longshaft’s relentless Jesuitical examination of my moral compass. He had opened up my soul in the company of strangers and found it wanting. With his little joke, Hunter had insinuated that I was no better than an intellectual whore, ready to trade lives if the price was right. I didn’t know why I had allowed myself to be drawn into a repulsive debate on the costs and benefits of torture in the first place.
Glancing around, I saw the board members looking at me as if I was some country hick, too naïve to understand the complex nature of the world and the moral compromises officers of the Department had to make to save Canadian lives and sell Canadian goods. Suddenly, I felt out of place in this room of sophisticated, cynical senior officers and didn’t want to subject myself to another cross examination on an issue closer to my heart than to theirs. Perhaps I would go to teacher’s college after all and go home to Penetang to teach at my old high school.
“I think I’ll withdraw my application to join the Department,” I said, and got up and left the room.
3: Unreasonable Expectations
The next evening, to my surprise, Burump called me at my rooming house. “I wasn’t at all happy with the way the interview went yesterday, Dear Boy,” he said. “I’d like you to come see me before you make up your mind about a career in the Department.”
By that time, I was having second thoughts about leaving the conference room in a huff. By giving way to a fit of childish pique, I had turned my back on the career of my dreams and I hated the idea of becoming a teacher like Angus Fairbanks in small-town Ontario. I was thus delighted that such a senior officer had taken the trouble to call me and hoped he wanted to give me another chance.
“I didn’t know I was getting an offer.”
“Don’t be impertinent with me. I’m on your side. Come see me in my office in the Daley Building on Rideau Street first thing Monday morning. There are a few things you should know.”
I was standing outside his door when Burump arrived for work and he told me to accompany him to get a cup of coffee. A few minutes later we emerged from the elevator into a windowless basement snack bar.
“This is our gourmet restaurant,” he said. “The specialties are always the same — fried-egg sandwiches smeared with ketchup, baked beans, and buttered toast; french fries with salt and vinegar; hamburgers with the works; hotdogs with mustard; apple and raisin pie; muffins; and awful, tepid coffee. The odour of boiling grease and burnt toast adds to the charm. ”
As we waited in line to buy our coffee, a steady flow of people passed by carrying food back to their offices. Without exception, they took the time to greet Burump — some nodding their heads in recognition, others stopping a minute to comment on the weather, and others to share a joke. Burump laughed at all the jokes good or bad, delighting in the human contact, addressing everyone, man or woman, indiscriminately as “Dear Boy,” and in some cases introducing me as a future member of the Department.
“This may be a greasy spoon,” he said when the parade of admirers trailed off momentarily, “but the greatest people in the world come here every day for coffee — people whose first love is the Department, people who aren’t afraid to pack their bags, gather up their wives and their children, and leave to spend the best years of their lives in the hottest, most unhealthy and crime-ridden parts of the world. In this place, former ambassadors mix as equals with secretaries and clerks and communicators. Sometimes the minister comes over from the East Block to shake hands and say hello.”
Just then I spotted Longshaft coming our way, a cup of coffee in his hand. “I hope your presence here means you haven’t given up on us,” he said.
“Mr. Burump wanted to see me.”
“Oh, did he now?” he said, nodding to Burump who nodded back. “Well, don’t believe everything he tells you. And now that you’re here, you might as well see me as well. My offices are on the ninth floor. Tell the guard at the door I told you to drop by.”
On our way back to his office with coffee and muffins, Burump continued greeting friends and acquaintances. “This is one of my oldest friends” he said, introducing me to a middle-aged woman who stopped to ask him if he had opened his cottage for the season. When the friend departed, Burump told me he had served with the woman in New Delhi after partition. “It was a dreadful time, the Hindus were slaughtering the Muslims and the Muslims were doing the same to the Hindus. Millions were killed. Trains would pull into the railway station in New Delhi filled with the corpses of men, women, and children slaughtered by their communal enemies.”
Another person, a registry clerk, had been with him in South Africa. “Do you remember,” Burump said to his former employee, more for my benefit than for his, “the Afrikaners were introducing Apartheid. The African National Congress was fighting back under Nelson Mandela, the greatest man who ever lived. They caught him and jailed him on Robben Island where he remains to this day. It was heartbreaking to witness the black people being rounded up and transported like so many cattle to far-off townships, out of sight of the whites, and there was nothing we could do about it.”
“Now come in and make yourself at home, Dear Boy,” Burump said, when we reached his office. I took a seat in front of his desk but he sat down on a sofa, took a sip of his coffee, and waved me over to join him. “This is where I receive my special guests,” he said. “And you are more special than most. Do you know why?”
I was put off by the overly intimate tone, and so I fixed my gaze on a half dozen framed photographs on the opposite wall and waited for him to answer his own question. The pictures were impressive. In one, a much younger Burump, in the World War II battle dress of an officer of the Canadian armoured corps, was poking his head and shoulders out of the turret of a tank somewhere in Western Europe. In another, in formal diplomatic attire, he was shaking hands with Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister. In still another, he was having coffee with a smiling Nelson Mandala.
“I’ll tell you why, Dear Boy,” Burump said, after giving me time to admire the pictures. “I’ll tell you why you’re special, and I think you’ll be pleased. It’s because you’re a Métis, that’s why.”
“What’s so special about being a Métis?” I asked, afraid of the direction the discussion would now go.
“I don’t want to sound patronizing, but a lot of us here in the Department have long believed that Canada will never live up to its potential as a force for good in the world if the voice of its Aboriginal people isn’t heard.”
“That’s not the fault the Aboriginal people.”
“I know … I kno
w the history,” he said, cutting me off before I could get launched on Louis Riel, the Indian Act, and residential schools. “Your people were treated badly by settler society and are still subject to discrimination. But in a perverse way, as a result of your history, you’re in a better position than someone like me, who comes from a long line of Scottish-English lawyers, to understand and show compassion to the downtrodden people of the Third World. At the moment, many of them feel compelled to take up arms against their governments to obtain equal treatment. Even in Quebec, that same sense of historic injustice is what drives the FLQ to violence — although everybody says it’s just a fringe group and nothing to worry about.”
I had never heard anyone say being oppressed could turn you into a better, more compassionate person. “How can understanding the misery of the Third World people serve Canada’s national interest,” I asked.
“Don’t be obtuse, Dear Boy. Look at it this way. In my opinion, the championing of Canadian values abroad is a national interest as valid as national unity, trade promotion, peacekeeping, protection of the Arctic, or any other interest you can think of. That’s why we need Aboriginal officers in positions of influence in the Department. But that will never happen unless they are recruited just after they graduate from university, and, like everyone else, are given every opportunity to become ambassadors and deputy ministers. Now after years of waiting for it to happen, you come along — a first-class Métis university graduate who has applied to become a Foreign Service officer. The results of your written exam were outstanding and you did an excellent job on the oral exam. I called you here to be sure you kept an open mind on the subject should you get a job offer.”
I wasn’t at all convinced that Aboriginal values were any different from Canadian ones. Or that Canadian ethics were any different than the beliefs held by people anywhere else in the world. Or that it should be the business of the Canadian government to push moral principles down the throats of foreigners. But I didn’t want to say that to Burump. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings when he had taken the trouble to call me at home and to receive me in his office. So I fixed my eyes on the floor and muttered, “Thank you sir … very nice of you to take time out of your busy schedule to tell me that.”
I then looked at him — asking myself what further nonsense he was about to tell me — to see him vigorously rubbing his glasses with his tie. His face was lit up with a huge smile and tears glistened in the corners of his eyes. It was as if I had given a treat to a large affectionate puppy. After looking at me tenderly, he reached over and patted my knee. “I always get choked up in moments like this,” he said. “I’ve spent my life helping others … nothing gives me greater satisfaction.
“Dear Boy,” he said, smiling and speaking at the same time, “I knew you were a Métis as soon as I saw your name and hometown in the file. For generations, my family has vacationed on an island on Georgian Bay, close to Penetang. Our cottage is my real home, not the house I own in Ottawa. There’s something wonderfully primeval and Canadian about the place. It’s Tom Thomson country — wind-swept bent pine trees on rocky islets, magnificent sunsets, tremendous summer storms, moonlit nights, the call of the loon, fresh-picked blueberries, pan-fried fresh pickerel, windswept cliffs, noble Indians paddling by to sell beadwork and deerskin moccasins.”
“Yes I like it too,” I said, hoping to bring this part of the conversation to an end. But Burump was unstoppable. “Above all, it’s the land of the Métis. I know the history of your people, how French courier de bois in the upper Great Lakes took Indian women as wives in the eighteenth century, how they fought with the British against the Americans in the War of 1812, how they left their community at the north end of Lake Huron to make new homes at Penetang when the peace settlement handed their lands over to the Americans. When I was a child, Métis people with names like Langlade, Bottineault, Comptois, and yes, Cadotte, used to come to our cottage to have coffee and a piece of pie with my grandparents. I love your people, Dear Boy.”
By that time I was staring once again at the floor. I then heard him say, “I’d give anything to have been born a Métis.”
Without looking up, I said, “I don’t believe you.”
“What’s that, Dear Boy? What did you say?”
With my eyes still locked on the floor, I repeated, “I don’t believe you … you wouldn’t have wanted to be born a Métis.”
“You’re probably right, Dear Boy. You must forgive my presumption and tendency to use stereotypes. Only a Métis can understand what it means to be a Métis. I get carried away with my own eloquence and venture into areas where I have no right to go.”
Nothing else came out my discussion with Burump that morning other than his warning about Longshaft. “I am light and Longshaft is darkness,” he said. “He came out of the war convinced that man was intrinsically evil, whereas I emerged believing in the inherent goodness of people. He believes in original sin and need for redemption, and I don’t. He sees evidence of communist conspiracies all over the world, and I don’t. He believes it’s acceptable to work with dictators and repressive governments, and I don’t. He was a junior officer in Prague in 1948 when the communists staged their coup and murdered the democratically elected prime minister — that turned him into a cold warrior. He was ambassador in Cuba during the missile crisis and thinks Canada could have done more to support the Americans. He thinks the Cubans sent Lee Harvey Oswald to kill President Kennedy in Dallas. He’s more comfortable working with the RCMP, the CIA, and the SIS than with colleagues like me in the Department. I’m a great supporter of the United Nations and all it stands for, and he’s not. He trusts few people, and I trust everybody and hope they trust me. Now what else can I tell you?”
I have never liked it when people spoke about friends or acquaintances behind their backs. There’s something hypocritical about it. Once again I shifted my attention to the framed photographs.
“I could go on and on all day,” Burump said, poking me to make me pay attention. “I’m sorry Dear Boy, but you absolutely must listen to what I’m saying. I’m telling you these things about Longshaft to warn you. He and his staff carry out hush-hush and not always pretty things out of his suite of offices on the ninth floor. Even though he’s a fanatic, he has the ear of the prime minister, and most members of the Department are afraid of him. If you’re offered a position in the Department, he’ll try to recruit you and draw you into his web of intrigues. So be careful and come work for me. Together we’ll do great things.”
Soon afterwards, I was on the ninth floor trying to convince a suspicious guard, sitting at a desk in front of a closed steel door, that the Director General of Security and Intelligence, just thirty minutes before, had asked me to drop by to see him.
“Mr. Longshaft doesn’t invite people to just drop by to see him,” he said. “His visitors always need appointments.”
“Why don’t you call his office and find out,” I said, handing him my driver’s licence as proof of identity.
After taking a telephone from its place on the wall, he kept his eyes on me as he talked to someone inside Longshaft’s sanctuary. He then smiled, handed back my license and resumed reading the morning newspaper. A few minutes later, the door opened to reveal a woman of uncertain age who looked me over carefully and beckoned me to follow her. She then scuttled ahead through a warren of deserted corridors lined with closed doors, like a mother superior leading a novice through a convent of nuns, until we reached a large door covered with deep green felt. After pushing it open, she told me not to take up too much of the boss’s time, and motioned for me to go in.
Longshaft, who was reading a file on a desk otherwise devoid of papers and documents, looked up and said, “Oh, it’s you, Cadotte. You took your time. Come take a seat at my desk. I liked the way you handled yourself Friday afternoon,” he said, not waiting for me to sit down. “Especially the way you dealt with the issues of moral costs, exceptional circumstances, and the national interest.”
“He’s worn out, waiting to die. His opinion doesn’t matter.”
“Mr. Burump didn’t seem to appreciate them either.”
“You’ve just come from his office and I’m sure he gave you an earful about the Department’s mission to spread Canadian values around the world. He probably didn’t say we have never practiced at home what we preach abroad. We make speeches at the United Nations condemning colonialism but never mention the way we treat the Indians.”
“Or the Métis.”
“Or the Métis. Nobody remembers their contribution in the war.” He then smiled and said, “There were a handful of Indian and Métis soldiers in the battalion I commanded in Normandy in 1944. They were mean, ruthless sons-of-bitches. Not afraid of spilling blood, but absolutely dependable and fearless. Whenever there was a tough job to be done, I always picked them.”
“I take it you’d like Canada to follow a more hard-headed approach to the world in its foreign policy.”
“If it was up to me, I’d pull Canada out the United Nations. It’s just a talk shop for Third World lovers anyway. I’d kill the aid program — it sends our hard-earned money abroad to be wasted. I’d put more money into the military — it’s ridiculously weak. I’d spend more on trade promotion, and strengthen our ties with the United States, NATO, and the governments of South America.”
“Anything else?”
“A lot of people in the Department, led by your friend Burump, think I’m a cold-war warrior who sees communists under every bed, but I know what I’m talking about.”
“Is Canada the target of any sort of communist conspiracy?”
“We Canadians are confronted with two levels of threat. The first is existential. The West, led by the United States, is fighting to hold the line against the Soviets and its friends around the world, including Cuba, in this hemisphere. The second isn’t existential but worrying just the same. I’m talking here about the FLQ and its escalating campaign of bombings, bank robberies, and murders in Quebec.”
Exceptional Circumstances Page 4
