Joshua Then and Now

by Mordecai Richler

  “Now who in the hell was that?” Joshua asked.

  Juanito conferred with one of the porters and returned to say, “He’s a German, I think. His name is Dr. Dr. Mueller.”

  3

  A YEAR AFTER THE END OF WORLD WAR II, PRIME Minister Mackenzie King said, “For the Jewish people the recent war had an especial significance. The way of life of all free peoples was threatened by Nazi and Fascist aggression. In addition, the Jewish people had the even sterner realization that for them it was not only a way of life, but life itself that was at stake.”

  His mood playful, Joshua once reminded his father-in-law of that typically prescient pronouncement by Wee Willie. The venerable senator was amused, but still considered the Mackenzie King Memorial Society – an organization Joshua had invented, and served as secretary – just this side of disreputable, and he adamantly refused to address it. A great loss, Joshua felt, for his father-in-law had been a member of King’s wartime cabinet.

  The senator was seventy-nine years old now, incredibly lean, wobbly, and arthritic. Weary of burying old colleagues, he had been, until Reuben took him in hand, increasingly inclined toward melancholy. For all his faults and the asperity of his manner, Joshua had come to adore the old man, if only because whenever Susy bounced into his stuffy Rockcliffe living room, her hair flying, he had the touching courtesy to rise out of his armchair, leaning on his malacca cane, to greet her. The senator had not enjoyed a happy life. The bride he took in his middle years, Madeleine de Gaspé Benoit, a legendary beauty in her day, was notoriously unfaithful to him and slid into drunkenness in her declining years. She died in a nursing home, in a state of delirium, even as he held her hand, and she called out another man’s name. Stephen Andrew Hornby had also been disappointed in his political hopes, betrayed by Mackenzie King, whose memory he still honored. He would not allow the name of his only son, Kevin, to be mentioned in his presence. His daughter, Pauline, had also been trouble from the moment she was born. His only grandchildren, her and Joshua’s lot, were half-breeds. Joshua was a prize-fighter’s son, a Jew. Even so, the senator invited him to lunch at the Rideau Club when he learned that Joshua was to marry his daughter.

  That was in 1959, shortly before Pauline’s divorce from Colin Fraser had become final, and Joshua and Pauline were already planning their eventual return to Montreal, from which he could travel in both the United States and Canada, continuing to interview survivors of the International Brigades in order to complete his long-overdue book. September it was, and flying from London to New York, on a magazine assignment, Joshua had elected to stop off in Ottawa for a hastily called Annual Day of the Mackenzie King Memorial Society and to pay his respects to the senator, whom he had never met.

  Ottawa, Ottawa.

  The founder of their nation’s capital, appropriately enough, was an enterprising Yankee colonizer, Philemon Wright of Woburn, Massachusetts. In the winter of 1806, seven years after he had first surveyed the wilderness on the Ottawa River, he was cutting white pine and assembling the “sticks” into rafts and cribs below Chaudière Falls. The timber was bound for Britannia’s fleet, temporarily deprived of its traditional supplies from the Baltic by Napoleon’s blockade. The Battle of Waterloo may have been won on the playing fields of Eton, but the Battle of Trafalgar was fought on a bed of Canadian pine. Which is to say, long before Canada achieved nationhood the country was already cast in its role as hewers of wood, typically organized by an American with his eye on the main chance. For in order to deliver the timber, Wright had to undertake something that had never been done before – he was obliged to negotiate the Carillon, the Long Sault, and the Lachine, the daunting chain of rapids between him and Quebec City. Why not by-pass Lachine, he thought, taking the timber via the north shore? “The habitants who had been settled there nearly two hundred years told me it was impossible to get timber to Quebec by the route on the north side of the Isle of Montreal, but I said I would not believe it until I had tried it.” Wright tried it and succeeded brilliantly in the spring of 1807.

  It was the existence of a flourishing lumber-and-logging trade that inspired a certain Colonel By to found a town near Chaudière Falls in 1826. Bytown became the City of Ottawa in 1855.

  And then another Yankee, this time an indigent Vermonter, Ezra Butler Eddy, came to town, opened a sawmill, and with the help of his wife began making safety matches. Within two decades he was a millionaire, soon to be the leading match manufacturer in the world.

  Ottawa did not become the capital of the United Provinces of Canada until Queen Victoria selected it from among a number of nondescript but ambitious colonial towns in 1857. Seven years later, the Fathers of Confederation grudgingly chose it a second time to serve as the capital of a dominion that was to sprawl from sea to sea. “The Westminster in the wilderness,” scoffed an Oxford don, “a subarctic lumber-village converted by royal mandate into a political cockpit.” The Americans were no kinder. Caustically observing that Ottawa had been chosen over Montreal or Toronto because it was less vulnerable to American attack, they agreed the town was safe, allowing that American troops would soon get lost looking for it. All the same, an American editor offered a formula for finding it: “Start from the North Pole; strike a bead for Lake Ontario, and the first spot where the glacier ceases and vegetation begins – that’s Ottawa!”

  The sulfurous stench from the E. B. Eddy plant was still stinging the streets of Ottawa when Joshua first arrived there, woozy from a transatlantic flight, to join Senator Hornby for lunch. No time was wasted on an exchange of pleasantries.

  “As you know, I am opposed to this marriage,” the senator said.

  “Aha.”

  “But if it lasts any longer than the other, which I strongly doubt, I will pay for the education of any children.”

  “That’s awfully white of you, Senator, but I will pay for the education of our children.”

  “I would like to see them go to proper schools.”

  “Pauline and I will be the judge of what’s proper.”

  “The Hornbys have been educated at Bishop’s for generations.”

  “You’re forgetting something, Senator. Our children will be called Shapiro.”

  “Where were you educated?”

  “Do you mind if I have another?”

  “Please do.”

  “Make it a double.”

  “Certainly.”

  “I was educated at Fletcher’s Field High, and from there I went on to do a stint at The Boys’ Farm in Shawbridge.”

  “Why?”

  “I got caught stealing a car.”

  “No university?” he asked without flinching.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “But you’re a writer?”

  “Of sorts.”

  “Where’s your family from?”

  “The shtetl.”

  “Ah,” he said, “the Pale of Settlement.”

  Joshua had underestimated him.

  “Your parents alive?”

  “Mn hm.”

  “And what do they think of this marriage?”

  “My mother has never given a damn what I do, and so far as my father’s concerned, anything that makes me happy is fine with him.”

  “What does your father do?”

  “If you don’t mind, Senator, I think I’ll have just one more.”

  “A double?”

  “Yes, please.”

  He signaled for the waiter.

  “My father was a prizefighter. He once went eight rounds with Sammy Angott.”

  “And was this Mr. Angott a pugilist of some note?”

  “Indeed he was.”

  “And what did your father do upon his retirement?”

  “Oh, many things, Senator. A good many things. A little something in the restaurant and nightclub line. Some bill-collecting. I ought to tell you that he has a prison record.”

  The waiter arrived with Joshua’s drink.

  “Oh, on second thought, Desmond, I think I’ll join
my guest. The same for me, please.”

  “But this is a double, Senator.”

  “I’m quite aware of that, Desmond.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Why was he in prison?”

  “You are asking a great many questions.”

  “Yes. I suppose I am. And I’m looking for some straight answers.”

  “Why was he in prison?”

  “Yes,” the senator said. “Why?”

  “Which time were you thinking of, Senator?”

  “Good Lord, are you having me on?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Please don’t take offense. But the Jews are usually such a law-abiding people.”

  “My father’s something special.”

  “Well, that’s something to be grateful for, isn’t it?”

  “Cheers,” Joshua said.

  “Cheers,” the senator said, raising his glass unsmilingly.

  “Any more questions?”

  “Young man, I hardly dare.”

  “I should tell you that I love your daughter and I intend to make her very happy.”

  “I’m afraid Pauline’s not much disposed to happiness. Neither was her mother.”

  Startled, Joshua drained his glass.

  “Would you care for some wine with your lunch?”

  “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just have another one of these.”

  “Mr. Shapiro,” the senator asked, calling for the waiter again, “as a matter of interest, do you usually imbibe as much before lunch?”

  “Only when I’m obliged to endure so many personal questions from somebody I’ve met for the first time.”

  “Is that how you are going to report our little meeting to Pauline?”

  “Senator, as you have already made abundantly clear, you do not approve of this marriage. Even though you’ve never met me before. Well, that’s your prerogative. But I think you are being unfair.”

  “That’s your prerogative.”

  “I did not come here to ask for a damn thing. Not for a blessing or for money for our children’s education. I came as a courtesy.”

  “But not necessarily to be courteous.”

  “The Shapiros have not been going to Bishop’s for generations, but we are not without our own family traditions.”

  “Such as?”

  “We do not take shit from anybody.”

  “I can do nothing to stop Pauline’s allowance. The bequest was made by her grandmother.”

  “What makes you think I’m in need of her allowance?”

  “Surely, as a writer of sorts, you must earn a most precarious living?”

  “I stopped off here on my way to New York. I’ve been asked to write a piece for Life magazine. They will be paying me three thousand dollars and expenses.”

  “When Mackenzie King became our first minister of labour, his starting salary was seven thousand dollars a year; he used to take the streetcar to work.”

  Flushing, all Joshua could manage was, “I was never an admirer of Mr. King.”

  “Fortunately, he was unaware of any disapprobation on your part. Will you be expecting Pauline to convert to your faith?”

  “No.”

  “How will your children be brought up?”

  “Not to get caught stealing cars. And to jab on the move. Stick, stick, and away you go.”

  They repaired to another room for coffee and cognac, and there, to his future father-in-law’s obvious discomfort, they were joined by Senator Pronovost. An avuncular man, his face wispy with red veins. Joshua remembered Pronovost. He had been one of Montreal’s Liberal MP’s.

  “Gilles,” Senator Hornby said, “I’d like you to meet my prospective son-in-law, Mr. Joshua Shapiro.”

  “Shapiro?” Pronovost asked.

  “This is indeed a pleasure,” Joshua said. “My father once worked for your party machine.”

  “Shapiro?”

  “You wouldn’t remember him by name. But he was one of many you hired. I think in the election of ‘forty-eight he must have voted for you thirty times, maybe more.”

  “Shapiro, Shapiro. Wasn’t there a trial?”

  “Yes. You see, Senator, if you were bagman for Colucci’s organization and you got nabbed, it meant three years in the slammer. But I can now see if you were bagman for the Liberal Party, you end up with a seat in the Senate. Obviously, my father collected for the wrong people.”

  Senator Hornby slapped his knee and laughed out loud.

  “Young man,” Pronovost said, “you obviously have no respect for my office.”

  “If you only knew,” Senator Hornby said.

  “I have nothing to be ashamed of,” Pronovost said, glowering at Joshua.

  “If that’s the case,” Joshua said, “then you really have a problem.”

  But Pronovost had already turned his back on Joshua, drifting toward another table.

  “Did your father really vote for him thirty times?”

  “At two dollars a crack, if memory serves.”

  “Oh dear, oh dear.”

  “Well, Senator,” Joshua said, rising, “I would like to say that this has been a pleasure …”

  His pale blue eyes watered. And suddenly he looked old, vulnerable. “Take care of Pauline. I love her.”

  “So do I.”

  They shook hands.

  “I’m sure you do, but it may not be enough.”

  Early the next morning, too early for Joshua’s taste, he was wakened by a fierce pounding on the door of his room in the Chateau Laurier. “Open up! Open up! We know you have a woman in there!”

  The gentlemen of the William Lyon Mackenzie King Memorial Society, piling into two cars, leaving Montreal at 6:30 a.m., had arrived for their Annual Day. Portly, moon-faced Seymour Kaplan was there, Max Birenbaum, Bobby Gross, Leo Friedman, Jack Katz, Eli Seligson, and Morty Zipper, all from Montreal. Momentarily they would be joined by Lennie Fisher and AI Roth, both now living in Toronto, Mickey Stein, who was doing research in social studies at Harvard, Benny Zucker from UCLA, and Larry Cohen, who had just joined the Treasury Board in Ottawa. All of them had been pimply teenagers together at FFHS and were, for the most part, still striving. Everything possible. Joshua had already booked a private dining room, large enough to accommodate their society, at the Chateau, and he counted on Seymour, Keeper of the Artifacts, to decorate it appropriately.

  As usual, the oak-framed photograph of Mackenzie King wearing his checkered tweed suit with cap to match, one hand caressing his Irish terrier Pat II, would be seated in the place of honor, to be toasted again and again. Another framed photograph of their cunning chipmunk would show him seated in his study, contemplating a painting of his beloved mum. Hanging on the wall would be a framed Time magazine cover of ice-skater Barbara Ann Scott, Canada’s sweetheart of yesteryear, and a film still of Montreal actor Mark Stevens from I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now? There would be an action photograph of Maurice “The Rocket” Richard, and another of Johnny Greco in the ring with Dave Castilloux. A Shirley Temple doll, a Betty Grable pin-up, and – a real collector’s item, this – a Lili St. Cyr poster from the old Gayety Theatre. An Al Palmer gossip column from the defunct Montreal Herald, demanding, between gutsy paragraphs, WITH BUTTER NEARLY FIFTY CENTS A POUND, WHY NOT MARGARINE? would be in evidence. They would also have a tape of an old Foster Hewitt “Hockey Night in Canada” broadcast. There would be records by Kay Kayser, Harry James, Tommy Dorsey, Bing Crosby, the Ink Spots, Artie Shaw, Nat King Cole, Glenn Miller, Spike Jones, Mart Kenney and His Western Gentlemen, and, of course, Deanna Durbin. Yo-yos would be available for their annual after-dinner competition. Copies of Sunbathing, The Police Gazette, and Justice Weekly would sit on the sideboard, as would a bottle of Kik-Cola and a sufficient number of Mae West bars for everyone. Nor would they be without stills of Bogart, Lana Turner, and John Garfield. Or their prized photograph of Igor Gouzenko, the Russian embassy clerk turned God-fearing informer, wearing a pillowslip over his head for a press confere
nce. Also, a newspaper photograph of their favorite among extant hockey players, the aging Flopper, then still tending the nets for the perfectly dreadful Boston Bruins.

  All these artifacts, and more, in everlasting memory of William Lyon Mackenzie King.

  Ostensibly bland and boring, William Lyon Mackenzie King, the prime minister of their boyhood, Canada’s leader for twenty-one years, was the most vile of men. Mean-spirited, cunning, somewhat demented, and a hypocrite on a grand scale. Wee Willie was born on December 17, 1874, in Berlin, Ontario. His mother, Isabel Grace Mackenzie, was the thirteenth child of William Lyon Mackenzie, the first mayor of Toronto and leader of the Upper Canada rebellion in 1837. At the age of seventeen, Willie went on to University College at the University of Toronto and from there to the University of Chicago. He had begun to keep a diary. And he was already a confirmed Gladstonian. Which is to say, a horny little fellow, bent on the salvation of prostitutes by day, he did in fact bend over them by night, forking out as much as $1.25 a trick, not counting gratuities. In 1900, at the age of twenty-five, he was called to Ottawa to organize the newly created Department of Labour. He became the department’s first deputy minister. It was that same year, on Thanksgiving Day, that he espied his blessed Kingsmere, the little lake in the hills on the Quebec side of Ottawa, some eight miles from Parliament Hill. King was first elected to Parliament as a Liberal in 1908; a year later he entered Sir Wilfrid Laurier’s cabinet as minister of labour. His beloved mother died in 1917, but Wee Willie was soon to commune with her spirit nightly by means of a crystal ball. In 1919, he was elected leader of the Liberal Party. Two years later he became prime minister for the first time.

  Mackenzie King already owned a cottage on Kingsmere Lake in 1920. Two years later he increased his holdings, and an estate at Kingsmere was created, King calling his house “Moorside.” Another five years passed before he became “owner of house, barns, woods and another 100+ acres of land.” The same year the perspicacious King also purchased an adjoining lot, in order to prevent “a sale to Jews, who have a desire to get in at Kingsmere & who would ruin the whole place,” possibly by opening a kosher delicatessen.