A Short History of Indians in Canada

by Thomas King

  “This is Mr. Wagamese,” said the mayor. “From the Department of Natural Resources.”

  “About time,” said Durwin. “This nature thing is getting out of hand.”

  “An Indian,” Alistair whispered to Evelyn. “Now we’re getting somewhere.”

  The Indian set up a series of graphs and charts on a stand and turned on a slide projector. “We’ve always lived with animals,” he said, “pigeons, seagulls, crows, rabbits, mice, rats, dogs, cats.”

  “Oh yeah,” said Harry Austin, “well, I have a wolverine in my gazebo.”

  “Moose,” yelled John Wright from the back of the room. “Two cows and a calf.”

  “For crying out loud,” thundered Mabel Massey, who had recently retired from the stage in Toronto and could still fill a room with her voice, “this isn’t a contest.”

  “Quite so,” said the Indian, “and it’s only going to get worse.”

  “Worse?” said Harry Austin. “What could be worse than having a wolverine in your gazebo?”

  “Moose!” yelled John Wright. “Two cows and a calf.”

  Which started another round of comparisons.

  “We’ve been warning you about this for years,” said the Indian, and he brought up a new slide.

  Alistair had no idea what he was looking at and from the silence in the hall, neither did anyone else.

  “This is the boreal forest surrounding the Churchill River,” said the Indian. “Twenty years ago it was a pristine wilderness.”

  “What are all those lines running through it?” asked Alistair.

  “Roads,” said the Indian. “Those lines are roads.” “And those dark squares,” said Alistair. “What are they?”

  “Resorts,” said the Indian.

  “Skiing?” said Alistair.

  “Yes,” said the Indian.

  “Golf?”

  “Yes.”

  “So,” said Alistair, “what’s the problem?”

  Alistair was not in a good mood, as he and Evelyn drove home. “I still don’t see what the problem is,” he said. “Roads and resorts don’t take up much space.”

  “Do you think he was right?” said Evelyn.

  “Of course not,” said Alistair. “It’s just an aboriginal scare tactic to get us to recycle and use less electricity.”

  “What about Algonquin Park?” said Evelyn “Look what happened to Algonquin Park.”

  Up the block, Alistair could see several owls perched on the street signs, watching a family of rabbits work their way through the flower beds in front of the Peaceable Kingdom Funeral Home.

  “Old news,” said Alistair. “No sense dwelling on the past.”

  One of the owls slid off the street sign, pounced on a rabbit, and began ripping it to pieces.

  “Remember that show we saw about how we were destroying the ocean?” said Alistair. “Well, the ocean is still there, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know,” said Evelyn. “We haven’t been to the ocean in years.”

  The next morning, Alistair was awakened by a loud hammering against the side of the house. Evelyn was standing in the driveway with a field guide in her hand.

  “What the hell is all the noise?” said Alistair.

  “Up there,” said Evelyn. “Isn’t it beautiful?”

  On the side of the house was a huge black and white bird with a flash of red on its head. As Alistair watched, the bird used its beak to hammer a hole in the siding.

  “It’s a pileated woodpecker,” said Evelyn, holding up the guide so Alistair could see the picture. “You normally don’t see them in cities.”

  “What the blazes is it doing?”

  “Looking for bugs,” said Evelyn.

  “We don’t have bugs in our siding.”

  At the town hall meeting, the chief of police gave a talk on public safety and suggested that going for walks in the evening was not a good idea.

  “Apparently,” he told everyone, “a number of large predators are nocturnal. If you want to go for a walk after dark, it would be best to do it in your car.”

  “What kind of a walk is that?” said Evelyn.

  “Then go for walks in large groups,” said the chief of police. “Mountain lions have trouble focusing on individuals moving in a large group.”

  “Mountain lions?” said Alistair.

  “In the parking lot at the mall,” said the chief of police. “I just made it back to my car in the nick of time.”

  “What was a mountain lion doing in the parking lot at the mall?”

  “Stalking the buffalo in front of the Old Navy store,” said the chief of police.

  “That Indian still around?” said Alistair. “I think we should talk to him again before this thing really gets out of hand.”

  Everyone sat right where they were and discussed the upcoming home and garden tour while they waited for the police chief to find the Indian. This time he didn’t have his graphs or his charts or his slide projector with him.

  “He doesn’t look happy,” said Evelyn.

  “He’s just being stoic,” said Alistair. “I’ve seen it before.”

  “The animals are becoming a public nuisance and health hazard,” said the mayor. “We need to know how to get them to go to back to the forest.”

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you,” said the Indian. “The forests are gone.”

  “That’s nonsense.” said Harry Austin. “We drive through forests every time we go to our cottage.”

  “No,” said the Indian. “That’s just a hundred-yard strip along each side of the road that the timber companies were required to leave.”

  “This is beginning to sound like environmental belly-aching, ” said Durwin Milroy. “What we need to know is how to get rid of the animals before someone gets hurt.”

  “That’s right,” said the mayor. “Forests or no forests, we can’t have wolves annoying our citizens.”

  Later that evening, Alistair and Evelyn sat in the living room and listened to the wolves and the foxes and the moose and the hawks and crows and magpies and watched as a herd of elk, silhouetted against the setting sun, wandered past their picture window.

  “It’s a little noisy,” said Evelyn, “but having wild animals in the city is rather exciting, don’t you think?”

  Alistair watched as the elk moved from one lawn to another, churning up the grass with their hooves and plowing through the flower beds. He had to admit that there was a kind of National Geographic feel to the moment, but he knew that it would pass, and, in the end, he was sure that this new arrangement would never work. Living with the occasional skunk or raccoon was one thing. Living with a herd of elk in your yard, majestic though they might be, was quite another.

  The next morning, while he was watching an old rerun of The Rockford Files, Alistair realized that he couldn’t hear the raccoons in the attic anymore. He turned down the volume and listened for a while. Then he went into the garden.

  “Honey,” he said to Evelyn. “I think the raccoons are gone.”

  “That’s not all,” said Evelyn. “Lucille says her wood ducks have disappeared.”

  “The coyotes probably ate them,” said Alistair.

  “Nope,” said Evelyn. “They’re gone, too. No skunks, either. And I heard on the radio that they’ve reopened the back nine at the country club.”

  Just after lunch Durwin Milroy and Harry Austin stopped by.

  “How’s the wolverine doing?” said Alistair.

  “Vanished without a trace,” said Harry.

  “Crows are gone, too,” said Durwin. “So are the hawks and the magpies. Haven’t even seen a sparrow.”

  “Hey,” said Alistair, “maybe the pigeons will be next.” And everyone had a good laugh.

  “I don’t know,” said Evelyn. “Now that I think of it, I haven’t heard a bird all day.”

  “She’s right,” said Durwin. “It’s real quiet.”

  “About time,” said Alistair. “All that noise was keeping me awake.
”

  “You think they’re gone for good?” said Durwin.

  “One can only hope,” said Alistair.

  Bright and early the next morning, Alistair and Evelyn headed up to the cottage, and, when the road began to wind its way through the forest, Evelyn had Alistair pull over.

  “I’m just curious,” she said.

  “Worth a look, I guess,” said Alistair. “But Indians do tend to exaggerate.”

  Alistair and Evelyn walked through the trees and came out into an open field of stumps and slag piles for

  as far as the eye could see. “I’ll be darned,” said Alistair. “The Indian was right.” “So, what are we going to do?” said Evelyn, as they

  walked back to the road.

  “These things come and go in cycles,” said Alistair. “I

  wouldn’t worry about it.”

  That evening, Alistair and Evelyn sat on the deck overlooking the lake and waited for the loons to begin their haunting serenade. But that night and the next, the lake remained silent. Not even the mosquitoes came out of the cedar bush to annoy them as they sat in their chairs and watched the sun sink into the water.

  And on the morning of the seventh day, they drove back to the city.

  Domestic Furies

  My mother always wanted to be the heroine in a play, a strong woman who rose above adversity or held her family together during desperate times or died beautifully of something that wasn’t contagious or embarrassing.

  She could have been an actress, she liked to tell me, and I believe that this is true, for she would move around the beauty shop as if she knew where to place each foot, when to turn, how to hold her head so that her hair caught the light that came in through the plateglass window.

  On Sunday mornings when the shop was closed, my mother would go out behind Santucci’s grocery and pick any flowers that Mrs. Santucci hadn’t been able to sell. Most of them were in pretty bad shape, but she would trim the stems, cut off the dead parts, and arrange them in the green vase and put them in the front window. Then she would warm up the Philco hi-fimy father had bought just before he left and load a stack of records on the spindle. They were musicals for the most part or operas, The Desert Song, Carmen, The Student Prince, La Traviata, South Pacific, and Indian Love Call. She knew all the songs by heart, and her voice blended in so well with the record that you could hardly tell them apart. She followed the music around the house until all the records had dropped onto the turntable. Then she would turn off the phonograph with a quick, hard gesture that reminded me of my grandmother wringing the heads off chickens.

  My father hadn’t gone very far. He kept a small apartment out by the auction yards, and most Friday afternoons after school, I would go to his place.

  “How you doing?”

  “Fine.”

  “How’s your mother?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “She got any boyfriends?”

  “Nope.”

  “You’d tell me if she did, right?”

  “Sure.”

  Once every month on Saturday morning, he would take me to Eddie Bertacci’s barbershop for a haircut. There were four chairs in the shop, though Bertacci worked alone and only used the one chair near the front window. He was a short, dark man with knotted red hair and a thin line of a moustache so black and dense it made his lip look as if it were hiding under a ledge. My father told me that Bertacci had put in the other three chairs for each of his sons, but that all of them had taken off. There were postcards stuck around the mirrors.

  “Danny’s in Italy now,” he said, pointing to one of the cards. “Joey’s working for Rockwell in Los Angeles. That one’s from Mario. He came through last month.”

  Mr. Bertacci pointed to one of the palm trees and the ocean running up on the beach. “What d’ya think? Pretty nice, huh?”

  “Is that Hawaii, Mr. Bertacci?”

  “Who the hell knows.”

  The writing on the back of the cards was all the same, tiny, crunched letters that you couldn’t read.

  “Whatcha gonna do when you grow up?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Hey, Leo, what’s this boy of yours gonna do when he grows up?”

  “Why don’t you ask his mother.”

  “Well, ain’t that the shits.”

  Mr. Bertacci said he had cards from Japan and India and England and Africa.

  “Look at this one, will ya. You see that funny-looking building?”

  “Sure.”

  “That damn thing is in Moscow, Russia.”

  “Wow!”

  “God damn Russia.”

  All of the cards had the same tiny writing. None of them had stamps.

  “Give her a call, will you Eddie,” my father said. “I wouldn’t mind finding out myself.”

  “Well, ain’t that the shits.”

  Most Saturdays, just before the matinee, my father would drop me off in front of the Paramount, give me a dollar, and tell me he’d see me next week. After the movie, I’d walk back to the beauty shop and watch my mother sweep all the hair into neat, fuzzy piles.

  “How’s your father?”

  “He’s fine.”

  “He say anything?”

  “Nope.”

  “Did he ask how we were doing?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I said we were fine.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “What else did you do?”

  “Got a haircut at Mr. Bertacci’s. Went to the matinee.”

  “Poor Mr. Bertacci.”

  When I was twelve, the Main Street Theatre decided to do Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes. My mother got a copy of the script, and, every night for two weeks, she practised the part of Alexandria until she knew most all the lines by heart.

  “Who’s Alexandria?”

  “She’s the ingenue lead.”

  “What’s an ingenue?”

  “A very pretty, young woman.”

  “That the part you want?”

  Tryouts for the play were on a Thursday evening, and, even though it was a school night, I got to go and watch. My mother spent an hour combing out her hair. She tied it back with a yellow ribbon and put on her good white dress and heels.

  There were about forty people in the auditorium, and one by one, they read lines from the play until Mr. Lipsitz nodded to them to stop. When it was my mother’s turn, she strode to the front, dropped the script face down on a chair, and delivered Alexandria’s lines until Mr. Lipsitz nodded and said thank you and called the next person.

  “Did you hear what he said to me?”

  “Who?”

  “Mr. Lipsitz.”

  “You mean, ‘thank you’?”

  “No, he didn’t say it that way at all.”

  “Does that mean you got the part?”

  “Alexandria is supposed to be young and blonde and beautiful.”

  My mother wasn’t blonde, and she didn’t get the part. Betty Morehouse, who taught part-time at the high school, got to play Alexandria. I didn’t even know my mother had gotten a part in the play until the day I came home from the Saturday matinee and found her in the back of the shop practising lines.

  “You get a part?”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought Miss Morehouse got the blonde part.”

  “She did.”

  “What part did you get?”

  “Mr. Lipsitz asked me to play Regina.”

  “Is it a good part?”

  “It’s the female lead.”

  “So that’s good.”

  “That’s good.”

  When I saw my father that Friday, I told him about my mother getting the part in the play.

  “She going to get to play a heroine?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Heroines are women who believe all their dreams will come true.”

  “Are heroines like ingenues?”

  �
�Ingenues? What the hell is an ingenue?”

  “They’re pretty women, blondes mostly.”

  “Your mother’s no blonde, I can tell you that.”

  “Can we go see the play?”

  “Where the hell did you get a word like ingenue?”

  I offered to help my mother with her lines, but she said, no, she’d better do it herself. I asked her if I could come and watch the rehearsals, but she said that it would keep me up too late. She wouldn’t even let me read the script.

  “I thought you liked to see me read.”

  “I do, honey.”

  “Well, then, let me read the script.”

  “You wouldn’t understand it.”

  “Has it got sort of naughty stuff in it?”

  “Is that what your father told you?”

  My grandmother lived just out of town. She had a small house, a chicken coop, and a large garden. Whenever we went to visit, she would take me out to the garden, and I would help her gather up potatoes and squash and corn and beans.

  “You like squash yet?”

  “Not much.”

  “You’ll get used to it.”

  She kept the chickens in a small wire coop that stood off the ground on stilts. There were layers, she told me, and there were meat birds. These were meat birds.

  “I don’t like chicken all that much anymore, Granny.”

  “No profit in being a romantic.”

  “No, I mean, it sort of makes me gag.”

  “Light the candle and hand me that knife.”

  Afterwards, she would roll the carcasses over the flame until you could smell the burning feathers all the way in the house. Then she would scrub them down with soap and water, wrap them in brown butcher paper, and put them in the box with the vegetables.

  “Granny, have you ever read The Little Foxes?”

  “What is it?”

  “A play.”

  “A play?”

  “Mum’s got a part in a play. It’s the lead…Regina.”

  “Your father come around much anymore?”

  “But Regina is not an ingenue.”