by John Irving
The truth is, I never had to suffer. When I first came to Toronto in ’68, I met a few confused and troubled young Americans; I was a little older than most of them—and they certainly seemed no more confused or troubled than many of the Americans I had known at home. Unlike Buzzy Thurston, for example, they had not driven their cars head-on into a bridge abutment in an effort to beat the draft. Unlike Harry Hoyt, they had not been bitten to death by a Russell’s viper while waiting for their turn with a Vietnamese whore.
And to my surprise, the Canadians I met actually liked me. And with my graduate degree—and even my junior teaching experience at such a prestigious school as Gravesend Academy—I was instantly respectable and almost immediately employed. The distinction I hastened to make, to almost every Canadian I met, was probably a waste of time; that I wasn’t there as a draft dodger or a deserter didn’t really matter very much to the Canadians. It mattered to the Americans I met, and I didn’t like how they responded: that I was in Canada by choice, that I was not a fugitive, and that I didn’t have to be in Toronto—in my view, this made my commitment more serious; but in their view I was less desperate and, therefore, less serious. It’s true: we Wheelwrights have rarely suffered. And unlike most of those other Americans, I also had the church; don’t underestimate the church—its healing power, and the comforting way it can set you apart.
My first week in Toronto, I had an interview at Upper Canada College; the whole school made me feel that I’d never left Gravesend Academy! They didn’t have an opening in their English Department, but they assured me that my vitae was “most laudable” and that I’d have no trouble finding a job. They were so helpful, they sent me the short distance down Lonsdale Road to Grace Church on-the-Hill; Canon Campbell, they said, was especially interested in helping Americans.
Indeed he was. When the canon asked me what my church was, I said, “I guess I’m an Episcopalian.”
“You guess?” he said.
I explained that I’d not attended an actual service in the Episcopal Church since the famous Nativity of ’53; thinking of Hurd’s Church and Pastor Merrill’s rather lapsed Congregationalism, I said, “I guess I’m sort of nondenominational.”
“Well, we’ll fix that!” Canon Campbell said. He gave me my first Anglican prayer book, my first Canadian prayer book; it is The Book of Common Prayer that I still use. It was as simple as that: joining a church, becoming an Anglican. I wouldn’t call any of it suffering.
And so the first Canadians I knew were churchgoers—an almost universally helpful lot, and much less confused and troubled than the few Americans I’d met in Toronto (and most Americans I had known at home). These Grace Church on-the-Hill Anglicans were conservative; “conservative”—about certain matters of propriety, especially—is perfectly all right with us Wheelwrights. About such matters, New Englanders have more in common with Canadians than we have with New Yorkers! For example, I quickly learned to prefer the positions stated by the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme to those more abrasive stances of the Union of American Exiles. The Toronto Anti-Draft Programme favored “assimilation into mainstream Canadian life”; they considered the Union of American Exiles “too political”—by which they meant, too activist, too militantly anti–United States. Possibly, the Union of American Exiles was contaminated by their open dealings with deserters. The object of the Toronto Anti-Draft Programme was to get Americans “assimilated” quickly; they reasoned that we Americans should begin the process of our assimilation by dropping the subject of the United States.
At the beginning, this seemed so reasonable—and so easy—to me.
Within a year of my arrival, even the Union of American Exiles showed signs of “assimilation.” The acronym AMEX changed in meaning from American Exile to American Expatriate. Doesn’t that sound more agreeable to the aim of “assimilation into mainstream Canadian life”? I thought so.
When some of those Grace Church on-the-Hill Anglicans asked me what I thought of Prime Minister Pearson’s “old point of view”—that the deserters (as opposed to the war resisters) were in a category of U.S. citizens to be discouraged from coming to Canada—I actually said I agreed! Even though—as I’ve admitted—I’d never met a harsh deserter, not one. The ones I met were “in a category of citizens” that any country could have used and even appreciated. And when it was aired in the Twenty-eighth Parliament—in 1969—that U.S. deserters were being turned back at the border because they were “persons who were likely to become public charges,” I never actually said—to any of my Canadian friends—that I suspected these deserters were no more likely to become “public charges” than I was likely to become such a charge. By then, Canon Campbell had introduced me to old Teddy-bear Kilgore, who had hired me to teach at Bishop Strachan. We Wheelwrights have always benefited from our connections.
Owen Meany didn’t have any connections. It was never easy for him to fit in. I think I know what he would have said to that bullshit that was printed in The Toronto Daily Star; at the time, I thought that bullshit was so right-on-target that I cut it out of the newspaper and taped it to my refrigerator door—December 17, 1970. It was in response to the AMEX published statement of the “first five priorities” for American expatriates (the fifth being “to try to fit into Canadian life”). To quote The Toronto Daily Star: “Unless the young Americans for whom AMEX speaks revise their priorities and put Number Five first, they risk arousing a growing hostility and suspicion among Canadians.” I never doubted that this was true. But I know what Owen Meany would have said about that. “THAT SOUNDS LIKE SOMETHING AN AMERICAN WOULD SAY!” Owen Meany would have said. “THE ‘FIRST PRIORITY’ IN EVERY YOUNG AMERICAN’S LIFE IS TO TRY TO FIT INTO AMERICAN LIFE. DOESN’T THE STUPID TORONTO DAILY STAR KNOW WHO THESE YOUNG AMERICANS IN CANADA ARE? THESE ARE AMERICANS WHO LEFT THEIR COUNTRY BECAUSE THEY COULDN’T AND DIDN’T WANT TO ‘FIT IN.’ NOW THEY’RE SUPPOSED TO MAKE IT THEIR ‘FIRST PRIORITY’ TO ‘FIT IN’ HERE? BOY—THAT MAKES A LOT OF SENSE; THAT’S REALLY BRILLIANT. THAT’S WORTH ONE OF THOSE STUPID JOURNALISM AWARDS!”
But I didn’t complain; I didn’t bitch about anything—not then. I thought I’d heard Hester “bitch” enough for a lifetime. Remember the War Measures Act? I didn’t say a word; I agreed with everything. So what if civil liberties were suspended for six months? So what that there could be searches without warrants? So what if people could be detained without counsel for up to ninety days? All the action was happening in Montreal. If Hester had been in Toronto then, not even Hester would have been arrested! I just kept quiet; I was cultivating my Canadian friendships, and most of my friends thought that Trudeau could do no wrong, that he was a prince. Even my dear old friend Canon Campbell made a rather empty remark to me—but I would never challenge him. Canon Campbell said: “Trudeau is our Kennedy, you know.” I was glad that Canon Campbell didn’t say “Trudeau is our Kennedy” to Owen Meany; I think I know what Owen would have said.
“OH, YOU MEAN TRUDEAU DIDDLED MARILYN MONROE?” Owen Meany would have said.
But I didn’t come to Canada to be a smart-ass American; and Canon Campbell told me that most smart-ass Canadians tend to move to the United States. I didn’t want to be one of those people who are critical of everything. In the seventies, there were a lot of complaining Americans in Toronto; some of them complained about Canada, too—Canada sold the United States over five hundred million dollars’ worth of ammunition and other war supplies, these complainers said.
“Is that Canadian or U.S. dollars?” I would ask. I was very cool; I wasn’t going to jump into anything. In short, I was doing my best to be a Canadian; I wasn’t ranting my head off about the goddamn U.S. this or the motherfucking U.S. that! And when I was told that, by 1970, Canada—“per capita”—was earning more money as an international arms exporter than any other nation in the world, I said, “Really? That’s very interesting!”
Someone said to me that most war resisters who returned to the United States couldn’t take the Canadian climate; and
what did I think of the seriousness of the war resistance if “these people” could be deterred from their commitment by a little cold weather?
I said it was colder in New Hampshire.
And did I know why not so many black Americans had come to Canada? someone asked me. And the ones who come don’t stay, someone else said. It’s because the ghetto where they come from treats them nicer, said someone else. I didn’t say a word.
I was more of an Anglican than I ever was either a Congregationalist or an Episcopalian—or even a nondenominational, Hurd’s Church whatever-I-was. I was a participant at Grace Church on-the-Hill in a way that I had never been a participant before; and I was getting to be a good teacher, too. I was still young then; I was only twenty-six. And I didn’t have a girlfriend when I started teaching all those BSS girls—and I never once looked at one of them in that way; not once, not even at the ones who had their schoolgirl crushes on me. Oh, there were quite a few years when those girls had their crushes on me—not anymore; not now, of course. But I still remember those pretty girls; some of them even asked me to attend their weddings!
In those early years, when Canon Campbell was such a friend and an inspiration to me—when I carried my Book of Common Prayer, and my Manual for Draft-Age Immigrants to Canada, everywhere I went!—I was a veritable card-carrying Canadian.
Whenever I’d run into one of that AMEX crowd—and I didn’t run into them often, not in Forest Hill—I wouldn’t even talk about the United States, or Vietnam. I must have believed that my anger and my loneliness would simply go away—if I simply let them go.
There were rallies; of course, there were protests. But I didn’t attend; I didn’t even hang out in Yorkville—that’s how out of it I was! When “The Riverboat” was gone, I didn’t mourn—or even sing old folk songs to myself. I’d heard enough of Hester singing folk songs. I cut my hair short then; I cut it short today. I’ve never had a beard. All those hippies, all those days of protest songs and “sexual freedom”; remember that? Owen Meany had sacrificed much more, he had suffered much more—I was not even remotely interested in other people’s sacrifices or in what they imagined was their heroic suffering.
They say there’s no zeal like the zeal of the convert—and that’s the kind of Anglican I was. They say there’s no citizen as patriotic as the new immigrant—and there was no one who tried any harder to be “assimilated” than I tried. They say there’s no teacher with such a desire for his subject as the novice possesses—and I taught those BSS girls to read and write their little middies off!
In 1967, there were 40,227 deserters from the U.S. armed forces; in 1970, there were 89,088—that year, only 3,712 Americans were prosecuted for Selective Service violations. I wonder how many more were burning or had already burned their draft cards. What did I care? Burning your draft card, coming to Canada, getting your nose busted by a cop in Chicago—I never thought these gestures were heroic, not compared to Owen Meany’s commitment. And by 1970, more than forty thousand Americans had died in Vietnam; I don’t imagine that a single one of them would have thought that draft-card burning or coming to Canada was especially “heroic”—nor would they have thought that getting arrested for rioting in Chicago was such a big fucking deal.
And as for Gordon Lightfoot and Neil Young, as for Joni Mitchell and Ian and Sylvia—I’d already heard Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, and Hester. I’d even heard Hester sing “Four Strong Winds.” She was always quite good with the guitar, she had her mother’s pretty voice—although Aunt Martha’s voice was not as pretty as my mother’s—which was merely pretty, not strong enough, not developed. Hester could have stood about five years of lessons from Graham McSwiney, but she didn’t believe in being taught to sing. Singing was something “inside” her, she claimed.
“YOU MAKE IT SOUND LIKE A DISEASE,” Owen told her; but he was her number-one supporter. When she was struggling to write her own songs, I know that Owen gave her some ideas; later she told me that he’d even written some songs for her. And in those days she looked like a folk singer—which is to say any old way she wanted, or like everyone else: a little dirty, a little worldly, a lot knocked-about. She looked hard-traveled, she looked as if she slept on a rug (with lots of men), she looked as if her hair smelled of lobster.
I remember her singing “Four Strong Winds”—I remember this very vividly.
I think I’ll go out to Alberta,
Weather’s good there in the fall;
I got some friends that I can go to workin’ for.
“WHERE’S ALBERTA?” Owen Meany had asked her.
“In Canada, you asshole,” Hester had said.
“THERE’S NO NEED TO BE CRUDE,” Owen had told her. “IT’S A PRETTY SONG. IT MUST BE SAD TO GO TO CANADA.”
It was 1966. He was about to become a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army.
“You think it’s ‘sad’ to go to Canada?” Hester screamed at him. “Where they’re going to send you is a lot sadder.”
“I DON’T WANT TO DIE WHERE IT’S COLD,” said Owen Meany.
What he meant was, he believed he knew that he would die where it was warm—very warm.
On Christmas Eve, 1964, two American servicemen were killed in Saigon when Viet Cong terrorists bombed the U.S. billets; one week later, on New Year’s Eve, Hester threw up—perhaps she upchucked with special verve, because Owen Meany was prompted to take the power of Hester’s puking as a sign.
“IT LOOKS LIKE IT’S GOING TO BE A BAD YEAR,” Owen observed, while we watched Hester’s spasms in the rose garden.
Indeed, it was the year the war began in earnest; at least, it was the year when the average unobservant American began to notice that we had a problem in Vietnam. In February, the U.S. Air Force conducted Operation Flaming Dart—a “tactical air reprisal.”
“What does that mean?” I asked Owen, who was doing so well in his studies of Military Science.
“THAT MEANS WE’RE BOMBING THE SHIT OUT OF TARGETS IN NORTH VIETNAM,” he said.
In March, the U.S. Air Force began Operation Rolling Thunder—“to interdict the flow of supplies to the south.”
“What does that mean?” I asked Owen.
“THAT MEANS WE’RE BOMBING THE SHIT OUT OF TARGETS IN NORTH VIETNAM,” said Owen Meany.
That was the month when the first American combat troops landed in Vietnam; in April, President Johnson authorized the use of U.S. ground troops—“for offensive operations in South Vietnam.”
“THAT MEANS, ‘SEARCH AND DESTROY, SEARCH AND DESTROY,’” Owen said.
In May, the U.S. Navy began Operation Market Time—“to detect and intercept surface traffic in South Vietnam coastal waters.” Harry Hoyt was there; Harry was very happy in the Navy, his mother said.
“But what are they doing there?” I asked Owen.
“THEY’RE SEIZING AND DESTROYING ENEMY CRAFT,” said Owen Meany. It was out of conversations he had been having with one of his professors of Military Science that he was prompted to observe: “THERE’S NO END TO THIS. WHAT WE’RE DEALING WITH IS GUERRILLA WARFARE. ARE WE PREPARED TO OBLITERATE THE WHOLE COUNTRY? YOU CAN CALL IT ‘SEARCH AND DESTROY’ OR ‘SEIZE AND DESTROY’—EITHER WAY, IT’S DESTROY AND DESTROY. THERE’S NO GOOD WAY TO END IT.”
I could not get over the idea of Harry Hoyt “seizing and destroying enemy craft”; he was such an idiot! He didn’t even know how to play Little League baseball! I simply couldn’t forgive him for the base on balls that led to Buzzy Thurston’s easy grounder … that led to Owen Meany coming to the plate. If Harry had only struck out or hit the ball, everything might have turned out differently. But he was a walker.
“How could Harry Hoyt possibly be involved in ‘seizing and destroying’ anything?” I asked Owen. “Harry isn’t smart enough to recognize an ‘enemy craft’ if one sailed right over his head!”
“HAS IT OCCURRED TO YOU THAT VIETNAM IS FULL OF HARRY HOYTS?” Owen asked.
The professor of Military Science who had impressed Owen, and given him a sen
se of catastrophe about the tactical and strategic management of the war, was some crusty and critical old colonel of infantry—a physical-fitness nut who thought Owen was too small for the combat branches of the Army. I believe that Owen excelled in his Military Science courses in an effort to persuade this old thug that he could more than compensate for his size; Owen spent much after-class time chatting up the old buzzard—it was Owen’s intention to be the honor graduate, the number-one graduate from his ROTC unit. With a number-one rating, Owen was sure, he would be assigned a “combat arms designator”—Infantry, Armor, or Artillery.
“I don’t understand why you want a combat branch,” I said to him.
“IF THERE’S A WAR AND I’M IN THE ARMY, I WANT TO BE IN THE WAR,” he said. “I DON’T WANT TO SPEND THE WAR AT A DESK. LOOK AT IT THIS WAY: WE AGREE THAT HARRY HOYT IS AN IDIOT. WHO’S GOING TO KEEP THE HARRY HOYTS FROM GETTING THEIR HEADS BLOWN OFF?”
“Oh, so you want to be a hero!” I told him. “If you were any smarter than Harry Hoyt, you’d be smart enough to spend the war at a desk!”
I began to think more highly of the colonel who thought Owen was too small for a combat branch. His name was Eiger, and I tried to talk to him once; in my view, I was doing Owen a favor.
“Colonel Eiger, sir,” I said to him. Despite the liver spots on the backs of his hands and the roll of sun-wrecked skin that only slightly overlapped his tight, brown collar, he looked capable of about seventy-five fast push-ups on command. “I know that you know Owen Meany, sir,” I said to him; he didn’t speak—he waited for me to continue, chewing his gum so conservatively that you weren’t sure he had any gum in his mouth at all; he might have been engaged in some highly disciplined pattern of exercises for his tongue. “I want you to know that I agree with you, sir,” I said. “I don’t think Owen Meany is suitable for combat.” The colonel—although this was barely detectable—stopped chewing. “It’s not just his size,” I ventured. “I am his best friend, and even I have to question his stability—his emotional stability,” I said.
