by J. J. Martin
“Am I no better than my dad?”
Melody breathed deeply in contemplation.
“Some folks may say you’re just another privileged white boy who got what he wanted in the end. Is that it?”
“I guess. Yah.”
“Privilege is wrong when you don’t share it. You needed to share your privilege. That’s why I made the suggestion. You understand?”
“Yes.”
“It’s because you could offer help. You needed to help. The difference is the operation of free will. Options for how the Paquime family could live their lives the way they wanted to. You offered help, with an option. You shared your privilege. You’re not forcing them to do anything.”
If there was a moment I could point to, a moment when I felt set free, it was then.
I started attending AA meetings some time after New Year’s, around the same time I got a walking-distance part-time job logging inventory at an industrial battery warehouse near Carleton. It was a client of our old friend David, who worked as a partner at Jamie’s law firm. And, just before Christmas, I got into a regular schedule with one of Clare’s suggested therapists, a woman on Somerset Street. I rode my bike to my appointments when it wasn’t slushy and walked when it was. And, for a couple glorious weeks last month, the canal was frozen, and I skated to my shrink’s office.
Physically, I had not been in such good shape in years. Jamie suggested we join a beer league hockey team, and I said the beer part didn’t work for me. So, we joined an adult ringette team. We were the only men on the team, but I felt better about no pressure to drink, and Jamie enjoyed not being jostled and bumped as much. But yes, we were mocked unmercifully at the rink for playing on a women’s team. I did not care.
In a few days, I would see the Paquimes again and I was very excited.
One thing remained to deal with — the boxes in the basement of the house. Dad’s boxes.
In my apartment, I sat down at the window, near my new peperomia plant. My first plant. I tested the moisture of the soil with my forefinger. Out my window was the bright day and I could just make out the Rideau River, which had broken up early after the unseasonable warm late winter we were in.
Of all the things in our Blackburn Hamlet house that were left after Clare, Jamie, and I had gone through everything, there remained only one object I wanted to keep. It was the dewe’igan, the hand drum Dad was gifted by Indian Affairs when he retired.
It was a mystery to me why I kept it, but the look of it comforted me. I hung it out of the sunlight on the wall of my flat. The hand drum was about a cubit in diameter and adorned with a painted turtle, in a Cree woodland style. I admired it while I sat.
I sucked air and looked at the phone number I had written on the well-worn piece of paper in my palm. I had been carrying this paper for months. This was the afternoon, I had decided, to finally make the call.
I dialed and waited for the pickup, then a familiar, warm voice came on the line.
I identified myself to him. To Mike Racine.
“I don’t know if you remember me, but you had a big impact on my life.… I wish I had gotten to know you better when I had the chance.”
“I remember you,” he said. “I know who you are.”
“I wish I had come back to Scouts when you led the troop. Somehow, I think things might have gone differently for me.”
“Mm-hm?”
“I saw you at my dad’s funeral. I wanted to talk with you.”
“Your dad and I had our differences,” Mike said.
“You and me both.”
“Big believer in rules,” he said, “your dad.”
“I think so.” I cleared my throat. “I’ve learned a lot about my father recently. I never really knew anything about him and what he did for a living, until after he died. You see, he kept a lot of records and hid them in the basement. Records from Indian Affairs. Boxes and boxes of files.”
Mike took a few moments. “What kind of files?”
My mouth suddenly went dry. “Well, um. Letters and ledgers. It is an ugly story. Sterilization, beatings, runaways. Deaths. Of children. From schools.”
“How many boxes?”
“Maybe twenty or thirty.”
“Files like that were usually destroyed. Sounds like your dad hung on to them for some reason.”
“Maybe he wanted to save them to do the right thing.”
“I doubt it,” said Mike. “But I understand that kids need to believe what they need to about their parents.”
“My dad used to tell me I had to do what he said because he was my father. That never seemed like enough of a reason to me.”
“One time, me and George Erasmus talked about that. It’s hard to change minds. People get locked in ways of doing things that don’t make sense. I came to work at Indian Affairs to make change. Your dad did not like change.”
“Why do you think he kept the documents?”
“I don’t want to guess.”
“I do,” I said. “Maybe he planned to do something. He must have known what he was doing was wrong. Maybe he wanted to fix the mistake, but he didn’t know how.” I was surprised to hear myself trying to make excuses for my dad.
I watched my little corner of the river, nervously waiting for Mike to respond.
“I don’t know about that,” Mike said at last. “Harry LaForme, and a group of other people, survivors from the residential schools, are getting ready to do something big. Like what they did in South Africa. After Apartheid.”
“Planning to do what?”
“Shining a big light on what was done at these schools. Canada is like South Africa, but most people don’t know. Or maybe they do know, and they don’t care, eh.”
“I care.”
“If you want to help,” Mike said, “you can start by loading those boxes of yours into my truck.”
Tectonically, the weight shifted from that grotesque paper mountain I inherited — a chronicle of hurt, ignorance, and malpractice — and it shifted to the sky. We would literally exhume those fungous, sinful deeds to killing light. And I could help with my small part.
Conversation shifted gears.
“A group of us are going hunting in a few weeks,” said Mike. “You want to come, Jake? Might be good for you.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Up to you. You won’t have to do any of the cleaning or gutting. We’ll do that. It’s mostly camping. But we’ll bring something home.”
“I’ve fished before, but … hunting and killing something, I don’t know. It’s a generous offer. Don’t get me wrong. I guess I’m just scared.”
“You learn respect hunting. People spend too much of their time in life floating downstream like a leaf.”
For a while he said nothing.
Then he said, “The Creator made a big world. We share it. When you die, you’ll go back to it. Spirit comes in and out of us, and everything else.”
“That makes sense to me,” I said.
“Doesn’t matter what you call it. Nothing ever begins or ends.”
3
Jamie still wasn’t cleared to drive, so Clare and I took their cars to the airport. I drove Jamie’s Mercedes and Clare drove her Grand Caravan. With all that, we had room for the luggage and for all five passengers.
Jamie was great unpacking everything once we arrived at the house. The Paquimes had eight huge suitcases, and apparently there was more coming, being shipped later.
“Welcome to your new home,” I said to the four of them. To Jamie and I our house seemed average, but Matias and Antonio called it a castle.
“You boys each get your own room,” I said to them.
Nothing had ever felt as clear and right as Melody’s suggestion to sponsor the Paquimes and have them live for a year — rent-free — in our parents’ house.
“Save up a bit from your job at the Blackburn Arms,” I said to Mr. Paquime. “I’m looking forward to the new menu items.”
The plan had sa
ved them from being deported to Mexico. My old friend Paul Lozinski — the baby from that memorable bris we attended — was an immigration lawyer now, and we managed to fast-track the Paquimes. Everything fell into place. The only question Mrs. Paquime had asked was whether there was a Catholic church nearby.
Mr. Paquime shook all our hands vigorously.
It was too cool for a picnic outside, but we had a happy, loud feast in the dining room. Afterward, Jamie and I told the boys we wanted to show them something.
In the garage, there were four bikes. Two junior Nakamura mountain bikes with training wheels, which we gave to Kitty and Harry. And for the Paquime boys, our two vintage Mustang CCMs, which I had restored to pristine, gleaming condition. We told the boys that, when they outgrew the Mustangs, they needed to pass them along to Kitty and Harry so they could have a turn.
“Matias and Antonio,” I said. “Jamie and I want to show you the best thing about your new home.”
As Clare gave Mrs. Paquime a tour of the house, which Clare and I had revamped to her specifications, Jamie and I set off on foot with the kids. We helped Kitty and Harry with their bikes while Matias and Antonio zipped along toward the greenbelt. We wanted to show them the forest, which was smaller now as the city had grown in all around Blackburn, but wonderous still.
It swung out before us, the woods. To the left, one of the Capital Commission’s working arboretums and glass houses. To the right, our old stomping grounds, which twenty-five more years of children and shenanigans charged with an even more exciting vibe.
“Is this another country?” asked Matias.
“It’s a preserved natural space called a greenbelt,” I said. “People use it like a wild park. Jamie and I used to play here when we were young.”
We headed into the forest together along the Tauvette Trail, with the Paquime boys.
“Stop and listen,” I said to Antonio after five minutes of tramping into the sticks. The trails were pounded down solid, but it was too early yet for any carpet of the first springtime shoots and florets. “Hear how quiet it is? You’d never think the suburbs are that way and the city is that way. You get to touch nature. Just wait until the leaves are on the trees.”
“That way is Hornet’s Nest,” said Jamie. A bunch of soccer pitches — footie fields. “Let’s go this way toward Green’s Creek.”
I said to Antonio, “You can learn more about people and yourself than you think out here. You just need to listen.”
Kitty and Harry hollered as their bikes sunk and rose over the trail.
“Here it is,” Jamie said.
I failed to see it at first. The tree, at one time looking like God’s hand reaching upward to pluck an apple from the clouds, had metastasized and thickened. God’s forearm seemed too weak a description. It had become a monument, devouring and clearing competing growth around its trunk. The packed trails encircled it as a plaza. We may have started it, but two more generations of kids had built forward on our start.
All my lashings were gone, but I recognized a couple of braces which, twenty-five years later, still supported the platform, which had acted a shelter and kept the rot out.
“Can we go up?” asked Kitty. Jamie gave her a boost so she could be first. The boys followed.
The main platform in the crook of the hand was large, and a secondary one had been added on the thumb, braced against a sixth finger that had come in since our day. There were two roofs. It had become a version of the very temple I hoped it might become.
“There’s ABCs here!” cried Harry.
“Initials,” said Antonio. “There are a bunch of initials here.”
Jamie and I eyeballed each other with glad respect. “Read them out, Antonio,” Jamie said.
“KB. TB. DS. DS. JS. RS. ES. SN. BN. BF. JS. PR. JR. DS. JC. CL. SM. SM. BJM. SM. GC. OO. JM. JM.”
“There we are. Don’t get smug, buddy,” Jamie said to me. “But that sounds like a legacy.”
The kids scrambled back down.
“When we were kids like you, Jamie and I started building this treehouse,” I said to their awed faces. “And those other initials are probably the other kids who looked after it once we started.”
“Did you live here?” asked Matias.
We laughed.
“We wanted to!” Jamie said.
“Whenever someone tells you they think they know better,” I said to Antonio, “you can come here and get the truth. Everything you need to know about anything is here. You just need to watch and listen. And learn from it.”
I wasn’t sure he heard me, but I wasn’t concerned. He would discover what was here whether someone told him to look for it, or not. You can’t hide natural truth.
“Let’s head back now,” said Jamie. “Lunch at the house.”
Kitty and Harry were tired, but too thrilled with their mountain bikes to stop now. Those bikes are freedom, I thought. Jamie and I gave them freedom. And a place to explore it in peace. The best gift one generation can give the next.
Antonio and Matias raced ahead, pointing and marvelling. So different from the Los Angeles concrete. Spring will get in full gear, the first tender leaves will sprout and the ground will be blanketed with blue flowers and trilliums. What magic awaits these boys.
Antonio could now do the good work of saving himself, maybe by also saving someone else. In saving another you can save yourself. Repossess yourself.
As we walked through the white, shadowy light of the afternoon forest, I felt like the grand old place was asleep. But it would soon awaken, and when it did it could finally see and recognize me again. I loved these four kids deeply. May they find the truth and build the lives they want in the way they want.
I slapped Jamie’s back.
All the weight of the past thirty years now felt to me as light as the sky over our heads.
At one time Jamie and I felt this land belonged to us. But you don’t have to own it for it to be home. Moving freely, being what you want and feeling what you want and finding inspiration by what captivates you is what makes a place feel like home. There’s no better salvation than finding your way home. Home should feel like the truth. And the truth had set me free.
Acknowledgements
Two influential writers, neither of whom I met in person, had a big impact on my writing and died during the creation of this book: Richard Wagamese, the Anishinaabe journalist and novelist; and Richard Sipe, the psychologist, activist, and former Benedictine friar. Both promoted decency and justice. Please read their important work.
Several editors and advisers were indispensable working on cultural sensitivity and readability. I appreciate your guidance, Adrienne Kerr, Scott Fraser, Shannon Whibbs, Sean Costello, Nancy and Sam Ifergan, Mike Aron, Dominic Farrell, Danielle Sinclair, and Herbie Barnes.
The commissioners of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission have created an invaluable resource that I hope will prevent history from repeating. Their work, especially Canada’s Residential Schools: The History, Part Two, 1939–2000, inspired the Indian Agent–Gast communication found in this story. I encourage all Canadians to read the Summary Report of the TRC.
Kendra Martin, Randall Howard, Carl Brand, and Kirk Howard were instrumental, helpful, and patient with me on this project. Kathryn Lane’s support was invaluable.
Special thanks to Alex Janvier, AOE, for speaking with me about his experiences and in allowing his quote to open the story.
While I wrote this book, Barbara Blaine, the founder of SNAP, the Survivors Network for those Abused by Priests, passed away. Her work carries on and SNAP continues to have a powerful impact. Thank you, Tim Lennon and assorted members of SNAP, for sharing with me and listening to me, and thank you to SNAP.
My parents were not like the parents in this story, and for that, I’m grateful.
I’m thankful to several priests who followed vocations beyond the Church and had a positive impact on my life, and on those I care about.
My old writing bu
ddies continue to inspire me, even thirty years later. They are Tom Abray, Timothy S. Johnston, Rev. L. Smith, R. Morrow, and Paul Maurice.
My wife, Susan, is my first and best reader.
Book Credits
Developmental Editor: Dominic Farrell
Project Editor: Jenny McWha
Copy Editor: Shannon Whibbs
Proofreader: Shari Rutherford
Designer: Laura Boyle
Publicist: Saba Eitizaz
