The Redemption of Oscar Wolf

by James Bartleman

  Later that night, hunched over and trembling from delayed shock in the waterlogged trench he and his comrades had dug on the brow of the hill they had just seized, Oscar was still savouring the praise he had received from his commanding officer for killing the sentry. It was not the first time he had carried out such a task and he liked to think he was chosen because he was the one who stepped forward when volunteers were needed for dangerous missions. He was the one who had distinguished himself by acts of bravery, leading the men of his platoon in attacks on enemy tanks and machine-gun nests as his regiment participated in the liberation of town after town from south to north in Italy. But these reasons aside, he had always welcomed the chance to show his solidarity with the men of the 48th Highlanders; they were his brothers-in-arms and his family, and family members helped each other, even at the risk to their lives.

  The rain ended and Oscar got to his feet and looked out over the top of the trench at the tracer fire coming from the nearby German lines. As he waited for the enemy counterattack to begin, he remembered the soldier he had killed and the rush of adrenaline mixed with elation that had engulfed him when he slit his throat. He had felt the same way, he recalled, when he had set fire to the general store at Port Carling. A wave of shame swept over him, making him wish he had never been born. There was something despicable, perhaps evil within his soul that made him rejoice in the harm he inflicted on others. The depression that had plagued his life during his years in California was creeping back.

  Afraid he wouldn’t be able to participate in the coming engagement and be called a coward, he squeezed shut his eyes; he tried with all his might to fight off the mental anguish. He then remembered that years ago, when he was struggling to come to terms with his paralyzing fear of Jacob’s shadow, he had realized that the gods were but figments of his imagination that he could drive away by an act of will. The guilt he had been carrying around with him for years, he saw, was something similar, a self-inflicted mental wound brought about by worrying about all the stupid things he had done in life. He needed to take control of himself. He needed to stop brooding on the past. If his mind threw up painful memories of the past, he would fight them by telling himself that that was then and now was now. He would remind himself that he had made a contribution to his country as a soldier that more than compensated for the errors of his youth. And should he survive the war, he would do even more for his people and his country.

  Thus, at war’s end, after two years of positive thinking, Oscar lined up with hundreds of other demobilized comrades-in-arms to register at the University of Toronto for his first year in the Humanities. This time, his fees and living costs were paid by the Canadian government under a program to help veterans reintegrate into society rather than by benefactors with their own agendas. This time, he felt at home studying with men and women his own age who had experienced war as he had, and who had no time for petty social snobbery. Three years of hard work then paid off when he graduated close to the top of his class and won the gold medal for International Relations and Modern History.

  Faced with deciding what career path to follow, Oscar thought back to the evenings in the living room at the manse in Port Carling when Reverend Huxley had told stories about his journey back to Canada on the eve of the Great War. He remembered the hint of longing and lost opportunity in the reverend’s voice when he talked about the sons of missionaries who had become diplomats and gone on to help solve the big international problems of the day. Inspired by his newfound confidence, Oscar decided to pursue the career denied to his benefactor, wrote the Foreign Service exams, and was rewarded by being offered a job as a junior foreign service officer. It had all seemed so easy.

  But it was just as well for Oscar’s morale that he did not know, and would never know, that he had almost been barred entry into the Foreign Service by the unchanged systemic prejudice against Indians. When the results of the country-wide examinations to select recruits came in, the selection board had been surprised to note that an Indian by the name of Oscar Wolf, a decorated war veteran and student in his final year at the University of Toronto, had scored high enough to merit entrance into the service. Such a thing had never happened before and they consulted the Department of Indian Affairs on the eligibility of Canada’s First Peoples to become civil servants.

  “Indians are indeed eligible,” came back the Delphic reply, “as long as they are not Indians. The Indian agent on Mr. Wolf’s reserve should obtain from him a sworn declaration that he renounces his status as an Indian as well as his right to live at any time at present or in future on his reserve. He will thus have the legal status of a real Canadian and be eligible to accept an appointment of Junior Foreign Service Officer in the Department of External Affairs.”

  The head of the selection board, afraid that Oscar might make a fuss, called on the undersecretary of state for External Affairs, the top-ranking official in the Department and a personal adviser to prime ministers going back for decades, to seek his views. The undersecretary, a man with a conscience who thought it was high time Canada began to practise at home the values it preached abroad at the United Nations, found a way around the regulations to let Oscar join the Department without renouncing his birthright.

  2

  When Oscar left the Indian Camp, he decided to call on the Huxleys, but when he went to the manse and knocked on the front door, nobody answered. However, the curtains parted and someone looked out at him. It was Mrs. Huxley and she did not look happy. The curtains closed, he heard footsteps retreating into the interior of the house, and then all was silent.

  James McCrum greeted him coolly when Oscar dropped in to see him at the general store.

  “What can I do for you today, sir,” he said, glancing up from his desk as if he was meeting Oscar for the first time.

  “Just thought I’d come in and say hello,” Oscar said. “It’s been a long time.”

  “Don’t have time to talk, Oscar,” he said, returning to his paperwork. “This is my busy season.”

  Oscar asked him about Clem.

  “Oh, he’s no better or worse than he’s ever been,” McCrum said, not looking up. “Spends his time drinking wine with that crazy mother of yours at his cabin on the Dump Road. He’s still the village drunk.”

  Oscar was shocked at the changes in Clem when he went to see him. His face and eyes were yellow, his hair was sparse, his face was thin and haggard, and he limped when he walked.

  “It’s been so long, it’s been so long since I seen you last,” he said, wiping away with his hand the brown tobacco juice mixed with spittle that drooled from both sides of his mouth. “Why didn’t you come back to see me, or at least write?” he asked, his eyes filling with drunken tears.

  “I’ve got no excuse,” Oscar said. “I should have. I was out west for years. I was in the army, and then at university.”

  “You Indian guys were always good soldiers, Oscar. I’m happy for you, I really am. But I’ve had a tough time, Oscar, since I seen you last. Honest to God, it’s been tough. When I was in jail, they sold off all my pigs. I bought some more and when I couldn’t keep up the fences around their pens and when they escaped they slapped the biggest jeezily fines on me you couldn’t never believe, Oscar, again and again and again, until I used up all my money and had to go out of business. I looked for work but no one would give me a job, not even my own father. Then the war came along and our guys took so many German prisoners from downed planes and sinking ships in the Atlantic and Mediterranean there wasn’t enough room in England to hold them. They turned the old TB sanatorium at Gravenhurst into a prisoner of war camp and started shipping them over here. They put out a call to Great War veterans to work as guards and I got taken on. But I felt sorry for those German fellows. I could tell they were homesick by just looking at them and so I started slipping them chewing tobacco to cheer them up, but I got caught and was fired. They said I was fraternizing with the enemy and that wasn’t allowed.

  “So they brought
me to my knees, Oscar. I needed you, and you weren’t there for me,” he said, reaching for a tumbler of chokecherry wine. “The old ticker’s been acting up and I use this as my medicine.

  “Excuse me,” he said, after taking a drink, “I should’ve offered you a glass.”

  “That’s okay, Clem,” Oscar said. “I’m not in the mood.”

  “Your mother and I have been drinking all day,” Clem said, “and she‘s sleeping at the moment. She’s a big-hearted woman, makes my meals and shares her pension cheques with me. Just wait a minute; maybe she’ll want to say a few words to you.”

  Although he had seen her around the village often enough during his high school years, Oscar hadn’t spoken to his mother since she had come to the door of the manse looking for him when he was living at the Huxleys. He hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with her then, and he wanted nothing to do with her now.

  “Don’t go to the trouble, Clem, I’ll see her some other time.”

  “But it’s no trouble, Oscar. It’s no trouble at all,” Clem said, getting up and going into the bedroom.

  “I’m sorry, Oscar,” he said, coming back few minutes later. “She doesn’t feel well enough to see you. Maybe she’ll be her old self after when she’s had a little more sleep. Why not come back later? Maybe have something to eat with us?”

  “I’m sorry, Clem, but I can’t stay. I’ve got to make it to Ottawa today. But before I go, do you have any idea why everyone around here is giving me the cold shoulder?”

  “I think they know you started the fire, Oscar. Might even be my fault. I sometimes talk too much when I’m drunk. But they got no proof and they can’t do nothing to you. They aren’t about to make accusations they can’t back up against a war hero.”

  Seeing Oscar’s look of alarm, Clem blundered on.

  “Actually, I’m not too sure what I said. It was after I got out of jail and found out they had sold off my pigs. I had a lot to drink and went downtown and told anyone who would listen that I had blown up their road because I wasn’t going to let them push me around. I might have said that you had once done something like that. I might have mentioned that you torched the business section to pay back the villagers for stealing the land of your ancestors. The first thing I knew the constable was up at my cabin to take a statement. But I wouldn’t make one. ‘I say lots of wild things when I’m drinking and most of it’s lies,’ I said. And so they dropped the matter. I sure hope I haven’t caused you any trouble.”

  “No, Clem, you didn’t mean to cause me any harm. I’ve paid my debt to society through my service in the war and nobody has come after me in all these years.”

  “That’s because they don’t have a leg to stand on. The word of a drunk won’t hold up in court. Your problem is the people around here don’t like you as much as they used to. But that don’t matter, because you still got me as a friend.”

  Two weeks later, a letter addressed to Oscar Wolf, Foreign Service Officer, Department of External Affairs, Parliament Buildings, Ottawa, and postmarked Port Carling, Ontario, was sitting on Oscar’s desk when he came to work in the morning.

  Dear Oscar,

  I am sorry I wasn’t home when you dropped by the other day. Isabel said you came to the door and she didn’t answer it. James McCrum has also told me that he sent you away when you went to see him. And everyone in the village is talking about how you were turned away at the Legion. You must feel hurt, but people who rejected you feel betrayed. I am sure you are aware by now that after you left Port Carling in the mid-thirties, a lot of rumours were spread about your possible connection to the Great Fire.

  I want you to know that whether or not there is any truth to the rumours, I will stand by you. Everybody makes mistakes in life, sometimes big ones. And I for one made more than my share. I’m certainly not happy at the things I did in the war, killing Germans who were just doing their duty for their country. I hope God forgives me someday for I know I never will. It’s something I’ll carry to my grave.

  Please come and see me sometime. We’ll talk and it’ll do the both of us a world of good.

  Your Friend,

  Lloyd Huxley

  P.S. I understand that you have been accepted into the Department as a Junior Foreign Service Officer. I am so happy you managed to accomplish what I never managed to do.

  Oscar read the letter and carefully filed it alongside the things most precious to him such as the medal for bravery in action His Majesty King George VI had given him at a ceremony at Buckingham Palace, a fading photograph clipped from the Gravenhurst Weekly Gleaner showing the Manido of the Lake against the setting sun on Lake Muskoka, and the pictures that used to hang on the wall of Jacob’s house of his father and grandfather in their 48th Highlanders uniforms, saved from the trash by a neighbour back on the reserve and given to him after his mother had thrown them out.

  Chapter 8

  CLAIRE AND ROSA

  1

  Early in July 1948, Oscar reported for work with great hopes as a foreign service officer at the Parliamentary East Block headquarters of the Department of External Affairs. In Canada, he was Oscar Wolf, unclean, untouchable, outsider, Indian, forbidden by law by His Majesty’s Government from drinking a beer at the Royal Canadian Legion at Port Carling and at every other legion post across Canada despite having served his country with distinction in the front lines in the army. But Oscar Wolf, member of Canada’s Foreign Service, was someone who had gained entry entirely on his merits and was a respected insider among the architects of Canadian foreign policy when serving in Ottawa. And when posted abroad, he would be a distinguished diplomat representing all Canadians whatever the colour of their skin.

  In the beginning, his expectations were fulfilled. He quickly adapted to the Department’s quasi-military, quasi-ecclesiastic culture, especially the way its members behaved as if they had been initiated into holy orders. The recruits who entered with him that summer of 1948 were mainly former servicemen who had fought in the war and they welcomed Oscar, as a fellow veteran, into their ranks. Several of the senior officers treated him with some reserve, but they were graduates of Oxbridge in the 1920s and 1930s and they looked down on anyone who had not studied in the Old Country.

  In September 1948, Oscar’s staffing officer posted him to the Canadian mission to the United Nations in New York to assist Canada’s representative on the United Nations Committee on Human Rights. Throughout the fall, he carried out research, wrote position papers, sent reports to Ottawa, lobbied other delegations, and to his great satisfaction was present on the historic day of December 10 when the General Assembly unanimously adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Spokesmen for the Canadian delegation told the press that acceptance by the international community of the declaration meant that victory over the evils of Nazism and Fascism was now being followed by triumph over injustice toward peoples and individuals. Soon the colonized peoples of the world would form countries of their own, which would take their places in the United Nations as members equal in status to the countries of the old imperial powers. But best of all, they claimed, the signatories to the declaration were bound to accord equal rights and freedoms to all their citizens, whatever their “race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.”

  Oscar rejoiced. The Native peoples of Canada, he believed, would soon have the same rights as white Canadians. No longer would they be wards of the Crown. No longer would they be under the control of the Indian agent. No longer would they be deprived of the vote. No longer would they be forbidden to hire lawyers to defend their interests in court. No longer would Indian women who married white men be expelled from their homes on reserves and be stripped of their identities as Treaty Indians. No longer would the police come and take away their children to residential schools. And he, Oscar Wolf, had played a part, however small as a foreign service officer, in bringing this new world into being.

  But when Oscar
returned to Canada in 1952 at the end of his posting, he found that nothing had been done to improve the lot of his people. The Indian agent still reigned supreme on the reserves and Native children were still being separated from their families and dragged off to residential schools. Elsewhere, the other countries that had signed the declaration in December 1948 with such great fanfare were likewise not doing anything to help their impoverished and marginalized peoples. In the United States, the Ku Klux Klan was still lynching blacks. In Latin America, white settlers were still stealing the land of the Indians. In Australia, the police were still tearing babies born to Aborigine mothers and white fathers from their families to be educated in special institutions away from their families. In South Africa, the ruling Afrikaner National Party was implementing its apartheid policy to keep blacks, coloureds, and Asians in a state of perpetual institutionalized servitude.

  “Don’t be discouraged,” the undersecretary told Oscar when he went to see him. “Governments around the world, including Canada, are busy fighting the Cold War, and as soon as that’s over, they’ll get around to living up to their international human rights obligations. Just be patient.”

  2

  In the meantime, Claire, who had played such an important part in Oscar’s life back in the summer of 1935, was facing a crisis in her marital life. She had studied Art Appreciation and Home Economics at the University of Toronto and married Harold Winston White, a stockbroker from an old Toronto family, long-time friends of her parents. After the wedding, her husband’s opinions became her opinions, his friends became her friends, and his passions for golf, tennis, and bridge became her passions. They had two children, a boy and a girl who were boarders at the same schools their parents had attended. In addition to doing volunteer work with wounded veterans at Sunnybrook Hospital, Claire was active in the University of Toronto Alumni Association and contributed used clothing, worn-out suitcases, chipped cups and saucers, discarded electrical appliances, and second-hand romance novels to the annual spring charity bazaar sale in her church’s basement.