by Craig Oliver
Stephen Harper devoutly sought a majority and won it in the end. He will control the Senate and the House of Commons, and by the time his term ends, he will have appointed almost all of the judges serving on the Supreme Court. It is an oftenrepeated truth that Canadian prime ministers, once handed a majority, are dictators between elections. Now that he is untroubled by the daily walk past the gallows, which is the fate of minority prime ministers, how will Harper govern and use his power? If he can expand his toehold in Quebec and steer for the centre with new moderate MPs in Ontario, he will be well on the way to achieving his objective of replacing the Liberals as Canada’s natural governing party.
11
LAST RIVERS
In company with my canoe club colleagues or with other trusted friends, I paddled over thirty Canadian rivers during thirty years of canoe tripping. In the latter years, there were a few missed seasons when an election campaign or some other commitment kept me city-bound. These were sorely missed opportunities that I came to regret as time slipped past and the adventures I did have became all the more precious. Especially memorable were two final expeditions with Pierre Trudeau.
In 1994, the club regulars made plans to tackle the Stikine, a magnificent river that originates in northwestern British Columbia and flows through the Coast Mountain Range before emptying into the Pacific near Wrangell, Alaska. Mom had been terribly ill that summer, suffering fainting spells and disorientation as a result of lung cancer, but at her urging I joined the crew for what proved to be two thrilling weeks.
Trudeau and Ted Johnson naturally formed one of the canoe duos, though their customary roles were reversed in the boat. Johnson, Trudeau’s one-time executive assistant and close aide, was the sternsman, responsible for making the critical decisions that Trudeau, his bowman and former boss, was obliged to follow.
We were attempting to run the Beggerly Canyon, a high-risk operation. The river’s considerable force and volume is suddenly squeezed into the narrows of the gorge, creating a short, violent passage that leaves no room for error. The rushing water hammers into what appears to be a dead-end wall of volcanic rock, actually a hairpin turn to the left. There the river piles upon itself, forming stacks of surging waves with deep souse holes in the troughs, dangerous in open canoes such as ours.
The Beggerly Canyon is no run for amateurs, but Johnson and Trudeau were an experienced and skillful team who had never dumped. As we usually did, Tim Kotcheff and I went first to try to find the safest route. There wasn’t one. We were caught in a powerful upstream eddy and thrown into the wall, cracking the bow gunwales and almost capsizing in the melee. The second boat was swept up by cross-currents, tossed up on top of a wave, and turned around, causing it to finish the route perilously ass-backwards.
Taking in the scene from above, Johnson decided on the prudent approach and told Trudeau simply, “We’re not going.”
“Of course we are,” Trudeau retorted. “The others went for it.”
Years as a loyal subordinate took over and Johnson acquiesced. But no sooner had they cast off into the canyon mouth than Johnson realized he had chosen a very bad line. In seconds, he would be irrevocably committed to certain trouble.
“I am heading in to shore,” he shouted above the roar.
“No!” his boss yelled back.
The team’s indecision was clear to the others waiting on the bluff. The canoe began to slide sideways. Johnson dug in, an inshore eddy caught the canoe, and the team shot up on the gravel shoreline. Trudeau grabbed his pack and trudged off sullenly down the portage trail. “Intellectually, I know I can lose,” he had once said to me, “but I never do.” Nor did he like to.
Johnson sat still in the stern of the canoe, collecting his breath. To himself as much as anyone else, he muttered, “Goddamned if I will go down in history as the man who drowned Pierre Elliott Trudeau.”
The jungle drums along the Stikine had sent out the word that the former prime minister was on the water. We were more than a mile past an outfitter’s camp when a powerboat from the camp came chasing after us. When the boat had reached the last canoe in line, the driver asked whether this was the Trudeau group. If so, would the great man come back for a coffee?
I looked ahead to Pierre who shook his head with a firm no. If he accepted, the whole group would have to paddle back against the current on his account. We carried on for another few minutes before the cruiser returned, this time with an attractive young lady, red hair blowing in the breeze, at the wheel. She was the fit and outdoorsy type that so many men find irresist-ible; certainly Trudeau did. She pulled up alongside Trudeau’s canoe to ask if he would change his mind and meet her father, who was a long-time admirer. The bows of our canoes swung back toward the camp, and the young woman had the good sense to tow us in a line astern all the way.
Inside the living room of the outfitter’s beautiful post-andbeam log home, Trudeau took a seat on a large sofa and in a voice that was more command than request suggested the young lady come and sit beside him. He was clearly entranced by this vivacious woman. They had such an animated conversation that the rest of us might just as well not have been in the room.
The woman’s father expressed his delight and gratitude that the former prime minister had stopped in. He himself was an interesting man, yet his face and demeanour carried a hint of some deep sadness. We learned later that the first thing he saw leaving his home every morning was a scarred clearing on the forested mountainside across the river—the spot where his wife and son had perished in the crash of their floatplane two years before. Trudeau was visibly moved at this news and thankful we had gone back.
The trip over, we made our way to Vancouver by air, stopping overnight at Terrace, British Columbia. Although Trudeau had been gone from the political stage for fifteen years, his presence created a scene at the airport. Eventually a crowd of a hundred or more gathered to request an autograph or simply watch as he made his way from the baggage claim to the taxi stand. That night all of us gathered for a parting dinner at a local restaurant. A big man in his fifties, possibly a logger, approached our table without hesitation and placed himself in front of Trudeau. The table fell into an uncertain silence, but Trudeau sat unflinching and gave the man that famous ice-blue gaze. The giant asked, “Are you Pierre Trudeau?” The reply was affirmative. The fellow held out a hand the size of a baseball glove and said simply, “Thank you for what you did for my country.” We were all taken aback, but Trudeau seemed especially surprised and uncharacteristically speechless. I was almost alarmed to see his eyes well up after he and the stranger had shaken hands.
After farewells at the Vancouver airport, I made my way to Mom’s apartment. She had been on my mind throughout the trip, and in peaceful moments I could not help but reflect on her own journey. How brief must have been the times when her heart and mind were at peace. Those years long ago when she and Cliff and I had lived together were among the few that had given her a secure sense of home and family. For the rest, she had looked for happiness in work or booze or the approval of others and found only loneliness.
My own experience had taught me that contentment is not to be found in bricks and mortar, however grand or comfortable, but within ourselves. Home is a place in the heart and goes where we go. The other is just shelter.
I found Mom far gone. Her lung cancer had spread to her brain, and her doctor told me that she had willed herself to remain alive for my return. I agreed to the surgery the doctor recommended, which in the end was nothing less than torture for Mom. The decision was made out of love in the hope that the surgery would lengthen Mom’s life; too late, I realized I had done the wrong thing for the right reasons. The procedure gave her a few weeks of half-life during which she never stopped smoking. In one of our last conversations, she confessed to me that she and my father had never married. I told her that it did not matter then and did not matter now.
There was a lovely memorial service in a small United Church on the grounds of the University of
British Columbia. One of Mom’s friends hired a singer to perform her favourite hymn, “Just a Closer Walk with Thee.” After the cremation, I took Mom’s ashes to scatter in the sea at Jericho Beach. The day was windy and as I crouched down to pour out the ashes carefully, a large wave hit the shore, soaking me from head to toe. Mom had the last laugh.
In the days and weeks afterwards, I received countless messages from friends who had known of Mom’s and my sometimes-tortuous relationship. They expressed solace, and I was especially grateful to those who acknowledged Mom’s feisty spirit. Jean Chrétien, then prime minister, called me in Vancouver. “I understand how you must feel, he said, “but imagine my grief. You’ve lost a mother, but I’ve lost a supporter.”
On the day of Mom’s funeral, I learned that when our Stikine canoe party had arrived in Terrace, Trudeau had been informed by telephone from Montreal that his brother had died while we were on the river. He had said nothing at the time, though perhaps the loss partially explained his wet eyes at the unexpected encounter over dinner. I wanted to offer condolences to Pierre and perhaps find consolation for our mutual losses, but I demurred. Sharing such intimacies was never his style.
Pierre Trudeau’s style was to deny any fear, even if he felt it, and to accept any physical challenge. On one expedition our party included an Olympic-level paddler who decided to run a hazardous stretch of rapids solo. The rest of us opted to play safe and portage around it. The man accomplished the passage superbly but in the process unwittingly threw down a red flag to Trudeau, who was determined to make it a competition. Trudeau ran the rapid well, doing it backwards for a short stretch and sideways for another, yet emerging unscathed and confirmed in his ability to read the water well. But the risk was an unnecessary one for him, which it was not for the much better canoeist who preceded him.
For someone with so much pride in his physical courage, growing weaker with age was a bitter pill. Trudeau’s declining strength almost cost him his life during our final trip together in 1997 on the Petawawa River in Ontario. He was then seventy-seven and thinner than I had ever seen him. Though we did not know that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, the ravages were starting to show.
Halfway down the portage trail beside the Rollaway Rapids, a brass cross is embedded in a boulder. It is a memorial erected by the friends of political journalist Blair Fraser, who drowned there in 1968. Trudeau was one of those friends and whenever he passed the spot, he never failed to pause and gaze at it in silent reflection. This time Trudeau lingered a few moments longer than usual before shouldering his pack and continuing down the trail. We camped that night high on one of the bluffs immortalized on canvas by the Group of Seven. Through a break in the clouded sky, a beacon of moonlight poured down directly on our tent spot and made a shining ribbon of the river. “Nature’s spotlight,” Trudeau called it.
The next day was a tiring one, running rapids and hiking across portages in the late summer heat. We were spent by the time we reached the last rapid of the day. Trudeau and his companion, the experienced canoe guide Wally Schaber, were in the lead. They were backpaddling, stern into shore, sneaking down the edge of a fast stream swollen by recent rains. Trudeau was in the bow, reaching far over the gunnel to draw the canoe out into the current to avoid a rock outcropping. As Trudeau pulled out, the boat was caught for a moment in suspension between powerful cross-currents that he did not have the strength to counteract. The canoe flipped, sending Trudeau headfirst into the rapids.
Behind Trudeau, the rest of us jumped out onto the rocky shoreline, hoping to get a hand on his stern rope, which was afloat on the water. Fortunately Schaber was physically strong, as well as one of the most skillful men in the country in a canoe or kayak. He tossed the canoe aside with one hand and grabbed the back of Trudeau’s life jacket with the other. I held on to Schaber to prevent him from being swept downstream with his bowman, who had by now slipped under the waves. With Schaber pulling Trudeau toward him, all made it on to dry land.
Trudeau was quieter than usual around the supper fire, his dignity badly wounded. He had to face the inescapable fact of his own waning stamina, though he referred to it only obliquely. He mentioned that his closest friend, Gérard Pelletier, was dying. “Gérard is very frail,” he observed, “but then we are all getting there, I guess.”
In 1998, Trudeau suffered the death of his youngest son, Michel, a blow from which he never recovered. He told one friend simply, “I am destroyed,” and it did seem to some that he had lost the will to live. When he was urged to treat the prostate cancer he had been diagnosed with more aggressively, Trudeau dismissed the suggestion saying, “I don’t care. I have to die of something.”
The next year Trudeau was hospitalized in Montreal. The family issued a statement saying he was suffering from pneumonia, leaving the impression that his condition was not too serious. In fact, Trudeau was deathly ill and spent several days drifting in and out of consciousness. In the same wing of the hospital, one of his long-time friends woke up following cancer surgery to find Trudeau grasping his hand in support.
In August 2000, I was in Saskatoon covering Stockwell Day when I received a call from the Trudeau residence. I was informed that Trudeau was in grave condition. His sons and close friends had gathered, and the family intended to call in a priest. I put the phone down and burst into tears. Since I was told that the family would issue a news release, I went on CTV News Channel and made just one broadcast, which is all I had the composure to do. With as much dignity as I could muster, I reported that Pierre Trudeau was dying.
National Post columnist Paul Wells wrote that Ottawa journalists took one look at my ashen countenance and headed for Montreal. There, a ring of television trucks and milling reporters surrounded the Trudeau home, giving the family no rest day or night. When some family members were disturbed by what seemed an insensitive death watch, I reminded them that the reporters were there because the country cared and they were its eyes and ears. Though the family knew the end was near, they issued a carefully worded statement that made it appear Pierre might have some time left yet to live. The reporters decamped and left Trudeau to die in peace. The end came at 2:40 in the afternoon of September 28.
In a telephone conversation some time before, Trudeau had urged me to come down to Montreal and have dinner. Although two people could hardly have been more dissimilar, we invariably enjoyed each other’s company. But I was busy and postponed the dinner, believing there would always be time, since Trudeau seemed somehow immortal to me. When the seriousness of his illness became apparent, I booked a meeting but, to my everlasting regret, I was too late.
Those of us who were Trudeau’s canoe companions were deeply moved by the closing words of a tribute that appeared in La Presse: “He has gone to paddle the river Styx in search of his beloved son Michel.” I was honoured to receive an invitation to Trudeau’s funeral service, but I had one last duty to perform on his behalf. Of a lifetime of television reports, the one of which I am proudest is the Trudeau funeral service in Montreal, which I covered with Lloyd Robertson and Trudeau’s old friend Senator Michael Kirby. We wore red roses in our lapels, and only with great difficulty did we fight off tears to finish the broadcast.
In June 2001, Ted Johnson and I met at Peter Stollery’s Senate office to nail down the final details of that summer’s planned trip to the Horton River in the western Arctic. Most of the old gang had committed themselves to come, but more than a whiff of hesitation permeated our conversations. John Macfarlane caught the general mood. He was coming, he insisted, but only because everyone else was and he couldn’t bear to be left behind. No one wanted to be the first to admit, or try to deny, that we were growing too old for these annual expeditions.
Almost all of us were now in our sixties, and spouses and friends were beginning to object. We had never had to think seriously about heart attacks or the consequences of a long swim down a frigid northern river. My eyesight was worrisome and Tim Kotcheff’s hearing was no bett
er, plus he was feeling the pangs of arthritis. Goldenberg had undergone three surgeries on his leg following a serious break. Denis Harvey’s knees were simply gone, and Allan Rock had fought prostate cancer the previous winter. Then too there was the issue of money for all of us who were no longer the free and easy bachelors we had been at the start. Fuel prices were sky-high. The flight to Inuvik and then private charter into the headwaters would make our children’s private schools seem cheap.
The three of us looked at one another glumly. Our planning meeting turned into a disassembly session as we set about pulling down the arrangements we had made during the previous months. “Maybe next year,” we agreed, though it was not to be. The club’s next trip to the Far North remains a dream.
In the meantime, I will hang on to memories of that bittersweet moment when passengers and gear have been unloaded and the Twin Otter barrels across the tundra and disappears over the horizon, the drone of its engines echoing back and around until it is gone and silence falls into the space left behind. Its departure always left me with feelings of keen loneliness and wonderful peace. There follow the sounds of a wilderness campsite, metal zippers announcing every coming and going, tent flies flapping in wind and rain, and mosquitoes assaulting the netting, crazed by the smell of blood. Nowhere else can I hear the hollow thud of muskox butting heads in the distance or the champagne-like pop of glacial ice in my rum daiquiri. I will remember falling asleep to the unremitting roar of rapids and waterfalls. Above all, I will try to retain the sound of the cut-loose laughter of my companions who, for this brief time, had not a care in the world beyond what faced them downriver.