The Pioneer

by Paul Almond

  One more black stretch left.

  How would they handle that? The canoe had surely sprung leaks. Once they all got back in, would it sink? And dunk them into the black below as food for fish? But a few feet from the edge, Pierre commanded them back in, except Jim who he needed for help. Jim, caught up in the furor, could do nothing but obey, and stood ready to push the canoe out into the black water, though he felt sure it would mean the end of everyone. Being last, he’d wait to see if it were seaworthy. Other passengers were thoroughly panicked.

  With a great shove, the canotiers heaved the canoe forward over the edge of the ice floe, which of course broke under its weight. Nothing for it but to leap in, each man for himself, scrambling for space, just in time.

  The dugout sprouted water but held.

  “Paddle for your lives,” Pierre shouted in French and paddle they did, for down that current came another frightening fleet of jagged bergs, any one of which would definitely finish them off.

  After a time of furious exertion, all panting desperately, the canoe drew close to the shelf ice on the opposite shore. A horse and two men were racing down toward them on the opposite bank. One man threw a line to Pierre, who quickly fastened it through the prow’s ring. The man swivelled his horse which dug in its hooves and heaved the canoe with everyone aboard onto the cracking ice shelf at the shore.

  So they had arrived. Safe.

  Jim took a few minutes to collect himself. He’d never faced anything like that before. As his panting subsided, he began to feel almost proud of himself for what he had achieved, in the face, yes, he now admitted it, of almost continuing panic. But he knew that two hundred long and potentially more dangerous miles lay ahead on his route to the gleaming town of Montreal.

  Chapter Six

  Jim strode jauntily down the ravine made by steep-sided buildings whose square windows stared blankly out. Without snowshoes, his legs felt ten times lighter. He had arrived in Montreal after another arduous weeklong journey, trekking, hitching rides, sleeping in the occasional hostelry, bug-ridden but cheap. He had not stopped long in Quebec because he wanted to get straight to Montreal, a city burgeoning with all sorts of trades he might take up and factories to work in and buildings being constructed, schools for children, even a hospital. And now, here he was.

  He’d never forget the first sight of the city across the black waters that stretched beyond the shore ice: a great cluster of buildings below the low rise of Mount Royal. So many more than in Quebec, some tall, the tallest being twin spires of some basilica, bigger than anything he’d ever seen.

  After crossing the ice over the channel to the east of the island, he’d caught a ride, and though it was late, managed to find board and lodging in an attic with three other workers; Widow McMannus rented a house in a poor area known as Griffintown. One of her lodgers had just passed away and that floor space was now vacant, though not large and inclined to be chilly. Irish, probably in her late twenties, Winnie was snappy about getting her rent, that’s for sure, thought Jim, as she introduced him to her son Mikey, ten, who also worked. All the next day Jim had lain upstairs, resting, hardly able to move, letting the month-long journey seep out of his bones.

  And now today, although everything about the city fascinated him, he had first to post this letter to his parents. Winnie mentioned that along St. Paul Street, which led out from “the Griff,” a new post office had been built. He’d see about the letter there, and then look for that marvellous edifice whose twin towers he had seen from afar. Meanwhile, he enjoyed walking down St. Paul with its tall, narrow, stone buildings, behind whose square windows hid countless men likely earning good livings, as soon he would, too. But he also saw a lot of burned-out shells, vacant lots draped in snowdrifts. A fire had passed through a couple of years ago, as he’d heard on the Coast: twelve hundred buildings destroyed, nine thousand homeless. He shook his head.

  What a lot of passers-by this grey, windy morning! The occasional proud prancing coach-horse pulling a caleche caught his interest, the coachman shouting to clear the way. Yes indeed, so much lay ahead, so many experiences inaccessible to the lads back on farms in Shegouac. Girls? Lots, he had been told, and not all as upright as the ones at home. But then, how did one find a good wife? Perhaps he’d look for one smart enough to know her way around, able to avoid the tricksters apparently lurking at every corner. His daydreams were interrupted by a sign at the corner of St. François Xavier: POST OFFICE.

  He went in to join the line of three people: one woman emaciated and drawn under her shawl, another man looking equally poorly and a third rather well dressed and in good spirits. As he came next to him, Jim tugged off his farm cap. “Good day to you, sir.”

  The man looked at him in astonishment, then nodded and turned back to face the counter. The others appeared to Jim too downtrodden to offer any help. He waited.

  Getting to the wicket, he held up his folded parchment. “I’ve got this here letter I need to send to my parents.”

  The clerk, a pasty-faced man with thin wispy hair, nodded and opened a drawer. “And where might they live, young man?”

  “Shegouac.”

  “Where’s that at?”

  “Near New Carlisle.”

  “New Carlisle?”

  “Down on the Gaspé Coast. But we don’t have a post office there yet.”

  The clerk shook his head. “Don’t think we send letters down there. Halifax for sure.” He frowned. “Gaspé itself maybe, and Percé. Wait here.” He turned and went through an inside door.

  Jim waited. A man in line behind him spoke up. “They told us in the summer they send letters to Ireland. Sure and that must be a good bit further than Gaspé.”

  The Irishman had a pleasant, flat face, pinched though, as was his wife, neither looking as if they had been fed on the fat of the land. She seemed shy, holding her husband’s arm tightly.

  “You’re from Ireland?”

  The Irishman nodded. “Came six year ago.”

  “What made you leave home?”

  “Haven’t you heard? Big famine. Forty-seven. I don’t know how we lived through it. We lost two children on the voyage, one in the sheds.”

  Jim frowned. “Sheds?”

  The man gripped the hand of his wife, who was holding him close. “On the dock. No one’s ever seen the like. Thousands dying, no one got through. We did. Ship Fever. Bodies piled on top of each other, the smell, we nearly died of the smell, it was a real hell.” His wife nodded vigorously. “Then some sisters came, bless ’em, and they sorted it out...”

  “The Grey Nuns,” the wife murmured.

  “The Mother Superior,” the man kept on, “Mother McMullen, she saw us. From what they told us after, she went right back to them other nuns and told them, ‘Now that plague is contagious, and it’s terrible, just terrible. You might all be going to yer deaths,’ she said to them other nuns, ‘so I won’t ask any of yez t’come wit’ me. I leave it all up to you.’ And you know, all forty come to help!”

  “Saved us they did,” the wife went on. “Them alone. Them’s the angels what did it. The only ones, mind.”

  “The mayor of Montreal,” the man broke in, “Mr. Mills, he came, and you know, he died, too. Aye, and of them forty nuns, thirty was lost. We wouldn’t be here now, eh luv, without ’em, I swear to God.”

  “Come on now, Seamus, he’s heard enough, that’s enough.”

  “I gotta keep telling it, Shelagh, otherwise it’ll all be forgotten. And you would too,” Seamus stared at Jim with haunted eyes, “if you’d been through what we’ve been through. It’s a miracle, that’s what, a miracle we’re alive. And you know what, more sisters came—”

  “The Sisters of Providence,” his wife threw in.

  “Yessir, they came and replaced the others. Must’ve killed a pile o’ them, too.”

  “Every so often it comes over him,” the wife said apologetically, tugging at his arm.

  “You not heard tell of the sheds?” he went on. “Twen
ty-two of them, right down on the dock. You new here? I’ll show you where they was, after. My dreams is still full of it.”

  Jim nodded. “Thanks, but first, I’ve got to get me a job.”

  “They wouldn’t let us into the city. Kep’ us there to die. Don’t know how Shelagh and me made it.”

  “The Holy Mother,” Shelagh said.

  “But she watched over the rest, too, mostly Irish, thousands died, I think it was five thousand.”

  “Six,” said Shelagh.

  “But now, so long after, no man knows, I got me a job. That’s why I can send a letter home.”

  “A job? Where?”

  The Irishman glanced around as though he did not want to be heard, then leaned closer. “Redpath Sugar. On the canal. Big bugger of a building. Only took a few, mind. Stone masons. I was one of the last to get in.”

  Jim turned as the clerk came in from the back room. “We can take the letter. Threepence.”

  “All the way to New Carlisle? Do you know when it’ll arrive?”

  “No telling. Not many mail couriers goes that way of a winter. Maybe to Carleton, Douglastown, places like that. You want to take your chance?”

  Jim nodded, and found in his pocket the required three pennies which he dropped on the counter. The man handed him a stamp, which Jim studied. “You lick this here, and you put it on your letter, see, top right.”

  “That’s all I have to do?”

  The man nodded and gestured to the Irish couple waiting in line. As they took his place at the counter, Jim leaned his head towards the Irishman. “You couldn’t tell me where I might try for a job, too? I’d be mighty obliged. I don’t know a soul here.”

  “Neither did we. But you just keep trying. Keep trying.”

  Shelagh nodded vigorously.

  Jim went outside into the cold air, put on his hat, and thought: Keep trying, yes, what else?

  He walked along St. Paul and turned up St. Sulpice into Place d’Armes, a square centred by the statue of de Maisonneuve, the seigneur who defended the early city against the Iroquois. There to Jim’s left rose the twin spires of that imposing basilica he’d seen. He walked up to stare at its ornate façade, and then came to mount the steps, tugged open a small door in the larger portal, and went inside the great Cathedral of Notre Dame.

  He’d never been in a Catholic church before. In fact, some of his neighbours called it a place of devil worship. But he knew better: his Catholic friends were every bit as upstanding as the rest of Shegouac. For himself, he saw no difference, though the prejudice was that thick on the Gaspé you could cut it with a knife: Catholic to Protestant, Protestant to Catholic. And after all, wasn’t it a good Catholic widow who let him sleep on her attic floor?

  What ornamentation! In fact, what amazing decoration, all carved entirely out of wood, with dozens of niches in its curved chancel. Neither Hopetown nor Port Daniel boasted even a simple church, and in Shegouac not even one small school to use for Anglican services, as they did in the other communities. The only churches he’d been in were St. Andrew’s in New Carlisle and St. Peter’s in Paspébiac — and neither bore any relationship to this bizarre edifice with its statues of saints and angels, its spectacular stained glass, its bright, almost gaudy paintings, its huge, high altar patterned after St. Peter’s in Rome, its tall golden cross — and those black-robed priests moving about their arcane duties in the chancel. Jim shook his head. Well, progress, he supposed.

  In the vast golden silence, he wondered if the Good Lord — whom his father worshipped daily — would preside as easily here as He did in the bare Port Daniel schoolhouse where they worshipped each Sunday. For himself, he had seen no great evidence of a deity anywhere and wasn’t about to absorb that curious idea of a heaven and a hell, much as it were bruited about in some quarters. But if God did exist, he used to think it wise to spend an hour each Sunday listening to the Reverend Mr. Milne, who so often preached about the glories of heaven and the torments of hell.

  After a time, he thought, I’ve done enough sightseeing for the day — I’d better get job hunting quick. Buy something to eat and maybe bring some milk home for Mikey and his widowed mother Winnie. The father, Thomas McMannus, had died before Mikey was born. The two of them concerned Jim; they did need attention. For himself, he was not unduly worried: a job would surely be found quick.

  Chapter Seven

  So now, where to look?

  Well, Jim figured, from the amount of beer drunk everywhere, the best place would be Molson’s Brewery. They’d have the best jobs. So having asked directions, he set off east down Notre Dame Street towards St. Mary’s current.

  He kept revelling in the sight of all these tall buildings, some four and even five stories, and certainly no shortage of people passing — what a difference from the Gaspé! Countless sleighs and feet had packed down the snow so the streets were easily traversed. He finally turned down Voltigeurs Street and saw, across the road, the large grey stone–fronted brewery with other buildings behind. Fingers crossed, he walked along St. Mary’s Street and turned in at a sign indicating employment.

  It took him no time at all to find out that no position was open: this would be of course the first place called at by every immigrant. And a great many there were: thousands coming every summer. Montreal was known as the most thriving city in the East.

  From the brewery he headed north and threaded his way through more gaunt, fire-damaged ruins. The great fire of Montreal had passed through a couple of years before, especially ravaging St. Mary’s. The blackened spars and rafters, now edged with white snow, seemed to emanate silence, reflection, the impermanence of all things. His father had often spoken about a forest fire that had nearly taken his life at Jim’s age.

  He wondered how many people had died here. Death seemed to stalk everywhere, especially on those immigrant ships. Neither was the Gaspé Coast immune: he suddenly wondered when his father might succumb. Not too soon, he hoped. His grandmother, Eleanor, did last through everything, knitting furiously for her grandchildren. He treasured the scarf she had given him — today not so snugly wrapped; his brisk walk kept him warm. He loved winter and had no reason to fear its wrath, as in some of those stories his father told of the dangers of freezing, when he’d first arrived on the Coast.

  Off he headed towards Griffintown and the industrial Lachine Canal that cut through. He kept near the docks, checking also for work there. He’d heard that last summer the first screw-driven freighter had arrived, with something called a propeller that actually drove it through the waves. The channel being too shallow, larger ships were usually pulled up through St. Mary’s current by shore-based teams of oxen and so came to anchor nearby, serviced by many small craft he saw coming and going.

  Why not try his hand at whatever establishment on the docks seemed open? But from the lingering groups of men forlornly waiting for a day’s work unloading, he decided to press on. He came upon a small shoemaker’s shop. No luck there either. Then on to a nail and spike factory (no blacksmiths needed here, for sure), a cooperage (he’d rather enjoy the barrel-making trade, he decided, but again, no luck), and a small iron foundry. None of them wanted a man of his age — they were all looking for apprentices, eight to twelve years old, to whom they need pay only a pittance.

  Walking along the waterfront, he came to the Place Jacques Cartier and decided to cut up the broad avenue topped by a tall column on which stood a tiny figure. Who commanded such an honour?

  He circled the base to see if anything was inscribed: Lord Nelson! The very Admiral under whom his own father had served.

  IN MEMORY OF

  THE RIGHT HONOURABLE

  ADMIRAL LORD VISCOUNT NELSON

  DUKE OF BRONTE

  WHO TERMINATED HIS CAREER

  OF NAVAL GLORY

  IN THE MEMORABLE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR

  ON THE 21 OF OCT 1805

  AFTER INCULCATING BY SIGNAL

  A MAXIM THAT CAN NEVER BE FORGOTTEN

  BY HIS COUNT
RY

  “ENGLAND EXPECTS EVERY MAN WILL DO HIS DUTY”

  THIS MONUMENTAL PILLAR

  WAS ERECTED BY A SUBSCRIPTION

  OF THE INHABITANTS OF

  MONTREAL

  IN THE YEAR 1808

  Well well well! His father had only mentioned Trafalgar a few times, and never with these details. Imagine what he must have gone through! He moved around to the east.

  ON THE 2 OF AUGUST 1798, REAR ADMIRAL SIR HORATIO NELSON WITH A BRITISH FLEET OF 12 SAIL OF THE LINE AND A SHIP OF 50 GUNS DEFEATED IN ABOUKIR BAY A FRENCH FLEET OF 13 SAIL OF THE LINE AND 4 FRIGATE UNDER ADMIRAL BRUEYS AND DESTROYED THE WHOLE EXCEPT 2 SAIL OF THE LINE AND 2 FRIGATES WITHOUT THE LOSS OF A BRITISH SHIP.

  His father’s first big naval engagement. Too bad Jim had not pressed him for a more vivid description of what happened. It must have been quite a victory.

  He moved around, and on the west, he read:

  ON THE 21 OF OCTOBER 1805, THE BRITISH FLEET OF 27 SAIL OF THE LINE COMMANDED BY THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LORD VISCOUNT NELSON, DUKE OF BRONTE, ATTACKED OFF TRAFALGAR THE COMBINED FLEET OF FRANCE AND SPAIN OF 38 SAIL OF THE LINE COMMANDED BY THE ADMIRALS VILLENEUVE AND CARAVINA WHEN THE LATTER WERE DEFEATED WITH THE LOSS OF 19 SAIL OF THE LINE CAPTURED AND DESTROYED IN THIS MEMORABLE ACTION. HIS COUNTRY HAS TO LAMENT THE LOSS OF HER GREATEST NAVAL HERO BUT NOT A SINGLE SHIP.

  So that was the great Battle of Trafalgar that saved the British Isles from Napoleon’s invasion. No wonder Nelson was a hero. And his own father served under him. He felt such a surge of pride. How different the old farmer in his beat-up work clothes seemed from that brave young seaman manning the Bellerophon. Jim paused for a time to ponder the meaning of it all: age and youth, the glories of battle against the fruitfulness of farming.

  He stepped back to look up once again at the great man atop his pedestal to whom no one passer-by gave a thought. At least his father would leave behind the farm and many offspring to grace his afterlife. But no pedestal, that’s for sure. And he himself, what did he want indeed? A pedestal? A farm? No, he had left that behind. Money? Well, it might help. Offspring? What good would that do in this city teeming with thousands?