Bébé Janette was born during the hectic spring drive, when loggers work nonstop on the river drive, floating the logs downriver to the mills. He hadn’t been able to take time off to be with Rose and didn’t set eyes on their daughter until she was five weeks old. He tried to explain how the melting snow had submerged the camp’s only road, making it impossible to travel.
“Well, you’re here now”—she glared at him—“and I suppose that’s all a woman can expect.” She grasped the baby from his arms, placed her back in the crib, and marched down the hall to the kitchen to help Anne with the meal.
Her cold response made his mind race. Had he done something to offend her? Wasn’t he trying his best to provide for his family? His mother had warned him about the shifting moods of pregnant women and the warrior blood of new mothers.
“Once you plant your seed in a woman, she leaves her old self behind. Forget the silly girl who smiled at your every word and embrace the strong woman who will nurture your child.” Anne rarely gave her opinion about things, but when she did, Paul listened.
Thinking back, he might have pulled it off without too much trouble along the arduous trek through the woods. A good six-hour walk along a muddy logging road to the nearest village. Hard terrain with hungry black bears roaming around that time of year. He was sure she hadn’t wanted him to risk making a widow out of her, but why expect him to get home at all costs? His mother and Aunt Lea never left her side during the long agonizing hours of childbirth, and the doctor arrived just as she gave the final push. Her cries of pain would’ve paralyzed him, making him no help to her at all.
Her sharp comment had wedged a slight fracture in their young marriage, embedding the seed of guilt of a long-distance husband and father. When he left again in the fall, he swore on his grandmother’s grave that he’d be with her and Bébé Janette for their first Christmas as a family. He’d only go back to the bush camp after the New Year, in time to haul the logs to the banks of the river for the spring thaw.
Rose had received her diploma four weeks ago and had already started nursing at Hôtel-Dieu Hospital. The stress of starting a new job and taking care of the baby might be the reason she had missed his train arrival. The kerosene lamps at the camp hung from the pine rafters in the kitchen area. The men sat around the long rough table drinking tea and playing cards at night. They liked to bug him about his letter writing, insisting he forget about his wife for five minutes and play cards with them. He didn’t appreciate them hovering over his shoulder and commenting on everything he wrote to Rose, so he’d go and perch on the edge of his cot. The lighting wasn’t too good but at least there was a bit of privacy. With all the shouting coming from the card players, he might have jotted down the wrong arrival time.
Only two trains arrived from Montreal each day, an early one at nine in the morning and the next one at four o’clock in the afternoon. Rose knew that if he missed the morning train, he’d be sure to be on the later one. No matter the weather, she was there to greet him with that broad smile of hers. It was a chance for her to take a break from the constant grumbling of her father-in-law Roger. Bébé Janette, a happy, curious child, had started crawling earlier than most babies her age. Roger would often look down from his rocking chair to see her little fingers plucking at his shoelaces and shoving them in her mouth. He’d roar for Anne. “Get this brat away from me. All that Indian blood in her, sneaking up and robbing you while you’re not looking.”
That his first grandchild’s mother was a Huron-Métis from Loretteville was beyond his comprehension. His son, handsome and hard-working, had first pick of any good Canadienne from Saint-Roch. Why settle for an Indian girl from the northern outskirts of Quebec City? Her ancestors had long ago embraced the same Catholic faith as his, but he remained convinced they still lived in cedar longhouses.
They dig up the bones of their dead, he intoned to anybody who listened, and carry them to whichever hunting ground they move to.
Anne was forced to drop the pile of laundry she worked on and rush to rescue the child. Roger never mentioned his objections to the child’s ancestry in front of Rose. He was happy for the extra pair of hands to help with the laundry that Anne took in from the English families. Rose’s help allowed more meat to appear on their dinner plates. She never once talked back to him but flinched each time he’d say the baby crawled around naked “like a savage,” or that her wailing in the dead of night was just like “Indian war cries.”
Roger hadn’t been any easier on his twin boys when they were toddlers. He had an aversion to grubby little fingers clutching onto his pant legs. Their disgusting habit of rubbing their snotty noses on the sleeve of his Sunday shirt turned Roger off. Sunday mornings got a bit easier when the boys got old enough to sit at Mass without tugging on Anne’s rosary and scattering the beads on the church’s ceramic floor.
The tips of Paul’s fingers tingled with the cold. He stopped on the sidewalk to root through his knapsack for the wool gloves his mother had given him when he last left for the woods. He had left the ones he used for work on his cot, bringing only the other unused pair he saved for outings. She had never given up her role as a mother of twins, always knitting or sewing two of everything, even for Bébé Janette.
He crossed Saint-Joseph Street. Abuzz on a normal day with all the hustle and bustle of the hotels, restaurants, shops and cabarets, it was now deserted. The few passersby were window shoppers chatting through their protective masks of cloth. He paused at the corner to stare up at Salle Frontenac alongside Place Jacques-Cartier, the place where he had first met Rose.
The building housed a covered market below with a cultural centre on the upper floor. Local youths gathered upstairs to play card games and checkers. The Brault twins were the undisputed champions of the five hundred game until Thomas left for the war. Paul having lost his partner, his good buddy Gilles suggested he team up with Rose, who had joined the card group that week. When Paul glanced up from his hand to wait for his new partner’s bid, his heart skipped a beat. He forgot all about the intricate strategies he had planned for the cards he held. Rose placed her card trick on the table and stared up at him. He fumbled and laid down his cards before his opponent had a chance to bid. He had just lost the game and his reputation as a card shark, but he had won her heart.
They met up every evening after she came back from her nursing training until he left for his first logging camp in the late fall. Rose’s Aunt Lea, who lived in the Irish district of Saint-Roch, made a habit of holding on to Paul’s letters. Rose had to finish washing the supper dishes and tuck in her two young cousins in the bed she shared with them before Aunt Lea handed over her mail. Three years later, Paul had managed to save enough money to buy a proper ring and a wedding dress for Rose. On the day they married and moved in with Paul’s parents, the lilacs were in full bloom in the wealthy gardens of upper Quebec City.
Salle Frontenac triggered conflicting emotions for him. A slow ache tugged at his heart for the many happy hours spent here playing cards with Thomas before the war, and... after he was gone... that floating, light-hearted sensation of meeting up with Rose during their courting years. Overshadowing these tender feelings was the painful memory of last spring’s Easter riots that had taken place here. The fighting had added unneeded fuel to the already rocky relationship between the English and the French.
Canadian troops had opened fire on anti-conscription protesters with Lewis guns—the very same machine guns used to kill Germans on the battlefields. Soldiers gunned down four innocent bystanders that Easter Sunday. One of them, a fourteen-year-old crossing Place Jacques-Cartier on his way home from church. Paul’s good friend, Gilles, was one of the seventy wounded in the shootings. He died two days later from the infection caused by the explosive bullets used by the soldiers. Paul had stood transfixed by all the chunks of human flesh clinging to the wire fence alongside Place Jacques-Cartier the next morning. His stomach clenched, wondering if t
hey belonged to his childhood friend. He glared at the soldiers armed with rifles patrolling the streets. War had come to Canada after all. Quebec, under martial law, was a land occupied by soldiers from its own country—and remained so until the Great War ended in November of that year.
He continued down the narrow streets towards the tanneries and shoe factories in the industrial district. His parents lived not far from there, within walking distance of the old shipyards where most of the Irish immigrant families had settled years earlier. The burnt ash smell of coal smoke and toxic fumes from the factories accosted him—more noxious to him now after leaving the sweet smell of the pristine northern woods.
After four years working in the bush, Paul was confident he wasn’t always going to be a lumberjack. The job was demanding but didn’t rob him of his soul—not like his earlier years spent working in the shoe factory. He wanted to learn all there was to know about operating a lumber camp. One day he’d be the one in charge of the outfit and he’d treat the loggers much better than they were now. Going back to a robotic job breathing the noxious fumes of the factories was out of the question for him. He loved being outside in the fresh woodland air infused with the sweet smell of cut wood.
The woodsmen, living so close together in the shanty from late autumn to the spring thaw, soon became family. The loggers arrived with the first signs of snow in the fall and started building their shelter and outdoor toilets. Next they cleared the rugged roads needed to haul in the equipment and supplies and to haul the logs to the rivers and streams in the spring. They’d only start felling trees after all these installations were built.
Their living area didn’t allow the men much room to move around, but their camaraderie sustained a doggedness to stick it out no matter what. The foreman had his makeshift spruce desk tucked in a corner. Bucksaws hung from protruding nails in the top section of the wall near the stove. The men stood their axes against the wall below the saws at the end of the day. The cooking area had a long, roughly built wooden table for meals, and large barrels of melted snow for wash water. Cold wind blowing through the crevasses in the walls and ceiling forced everybody to sleep with their clothes on. Lice and ticks shared their straw bunk beds and mice scurried through the bags of provisions. The cook didn’t have a large variety of food to serve them. Beans, porridge and bread for breakfast; beans, salt pork with turnips for lunch; and fish with potatoes for supper. On the rare occasions when the cook received a letter from home, there’d be apple pie or cake to go with their tea.
Paul sometimes lay awake nights imagining how the loggers’ lives might be improved. On stormy days, when blowing snow made it impossible to cut trees, he’d sometimes help with the paperwork. This allowed his foreman to join the other guys howling with laughter as the cards scraped across the rough table. Paul took care of all the forms and calculations needed to run the outfit. He discovered the tricks of balancing books, the cost of provisions and equipment, and the names of the logging companies who hired teams of men to cut trees in specified areas of the Canadian forests. His most valuable lesson from all this was that food and housing for the loggers didn’t have to be cut for the contractors to make a profit.
The thought of seeing how much Bébé Janette had grown since he had left in mid-October made him quicken his steps. Rose had written that the baby’s first front teeth were now showing. Paul’s heart almost exploded when she added that ‘Papa’ was the first word Janette had uttered—loud and clear. She was the most beautiful baby Paul had ever set eyes upon. Big brown eyes, and a thick head of black curls like her mother’s.
He’d have to remember to wash his hands before picking the baby up. Rose had been strict about that since the second wave of the Spanish flu scare had started up again earlier in the fall. Hearses were so hard to get that streetcars were used to transport the closed coffins as near as possible to the cemetery. Calgary had run out of coffins and his outfit had obtained another urgent order for pine planks. When Paul first started at the camps, loggers were felling trees for the British shipyards. Now each tree that fell would become someone’s casket.
More people were dying from this flu than the tens of thousands of soldiers killed by mustard gas or bullets in the Great War. Paul’s breath caught in his chest at the possibility that anyone in his family might fall victim to this killer disease. So far there had been the sad story of his two young cousins placed in the same pine box because of lack of money, and their mother’s own coffin nailed shut the next day.
He couldn’t wait to tell Rose his good news. Sharing the flat with his parents hadn’t been easy for her and the baby. He had almost enough money saved up now to afford the furniture they needed to get their own flat. She’d have time to shop around the stores when he returned to the bush camp in two weeks and they’d buy what they needed when he came back in the spring. He’d have plenty of construction work during the summer months to keep a salary coming in until the logging camps started up again next fall.
Light snow had fallen earlier. Paul’s work boots left a trail of wide prints behind him on the sidewalk along the row of ill-lit three- storey tenements. Several other large footprints crisscrossed the sheet of snow on the front porch of his parents’ first-storey flat. He climbed the steps two at a time and came to an abrupt stop in front of the front door.
Someone had left it ajar. That never happened in this house during the cold weather. The flat was so drafty that his mother had to tuck old blankets at the base of each door and window to block the cold air from entering. Anybody who didn’t make sure to push the blanket back into place after entering got an earful from her.
Something was definitely wrong.
His hand trembled as he nudged the door open. The strong smell of disinfectant and camphor made his stomach contract. He reached back to close the door and kicked the old blanket back with his heel.
“Leave it open a crack, son. We have to clear the air in here.” Anne stood in the doorway of the kitchen at the end of the darkened hallway. A thick wool sweater buttoned up to her neck and a rosary dangling from her fingers. She didn’t come to greet him as she usually did but huddled her small frame against the wall, clutching her rosary to her chest.
“A real tragedy, my son!” She lowered her head and made the sign of the cross. “It happened... so fast. The priest got here just in time to—”
“The priest? What are you trying to say, Maman?” His heart pounded hard and his breath came out in gasps. A rosary hung from the doorknob at the entrance to the bedroom he shared with Rose and the baby.
“No... not Bébé Janette.” He bolted down the hall, shoved the door open and looked around in a panic. The smell of disinfectant was stronger here than in the hallway. The baby’s crib was missing. He screamed out his daughter’s name. “Where is she, Maman? Is she at the hospital?”
“Please... for the love of God... don’t touch anything, Paul.” Anne stood behind him in the doorway, tears running down her cheeks. Her words came out in spurts, laden with pain. “She came home from work yesterday morning. The poor girl... so very tired... she... told me to stay away... and... to take the baby to the emergency nursery.”
“The nursery? That’s only for—” He stared at the open window. A wave of cold sweat surged from his shoulders down to his lower back. “No... not that, sweet Jesus... not our Rose” The bed was down to the bare mattress. No sheets, blankets or pillows. He spun back to face her. “Where did they take her, Maman?”
Anne pressed her rosary to her chest. “A real tragedy… she didn’t... last 24 hours, son. The priest came just in time for the Last Rites. They... took her right away... that poor girl... not even a church funeral. Your father’s gone with them to... bring her to the ceme—”
He didn’t wait for his mother to finish and hurtled out the front door towards the church grounds. By the time he reached the corner of the cemetery reserved for flu victims, the priest and the caretaker were le
aving. Roger stood, shoulders slumped, staring down at the wooden cross planted in the soft ground where they had just buried Rose’s pine box. For the first time since Paul was a toddler, Roger wrapped his arms around him, letting his son’s tears soak into the fur collar of his Sunday tweed coat.
He went back to his refuge in the sanctity of the pine forests of northern Quebec. Rose often visited his dreams, standing proud among the tall evergreens of her youth, always with her gentle smile and dark, sad eyes. He’d reach out to touch her and he’d jolt awake to find himself in the darkened cabin among his snoring fellow lumberjacks. It came to him one day that if he wanted her near, he’d have to remain living among the trees that she had loved so much.
Chapter 21
Montreal
October 1970
Denis looked up from the front section of the Gazette on his lap. The rest of the newspaper sections lay scattered on both sides of him on the sofa. Janette stretched her neck from her armchair by the front window to stare down at the street.
“The elections are on today.” He lowered his gaze to read more. “The papers are claiming Jean Drapeau will win by a landslide.”
“You go on ahead without me.” She glanced at the empty coffee mug and full ashtray on the end table beside him, hoping to have time to clean up before they arrived. “I won’t bother. The only candidate worth voting for has been arrested along with all the others suspected of being sympathizers.”
His head shot up. “Well, he won’t get many votes behind bars. He should watch what he says in public.”
“You mean express the will of the people? Heaven forbid.” She looked away, raising her eyebrows. “Isn’t that what a good politician is supposed to do?”
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