Reparations

by Stephen Kimber

  “Just having a smoke and enjoying the air.”

  “You missed your phone call,” Jack said. “We looked everywhere but we couldn’t find you. It was your new boss, Premier Seamus O’Sullivan himself, calling to congratulate the new MLA for Cabot County.”

  Junior handed a glass to Ward and one to Jack, then raised his own. “To our new MLA—”

  “Not just MLA,.’’ Jack cut in. “Our esteemed Premier asked me to ask you not to make any plans for next Tuesday.”

  Ward looked puzzled.

  “Next Tuesday. Swearing-in day. New Cabinet. He said you have to keep it under your hat until he makes it official, but you’re going to be his Fisheries minister. The youngest Cabinet minister in Nova Scotia history. I’ll have to check to see who the youngest premier was. So, Mr. Minister, Mr. Future Premier, congratulations.” He paused, raised his glass. “To the Premier-to-be.” Jack clinked his glass against Ward’s and took a swallow of the straight dark rum. Ward and Junior followed.

  So this is what it feels like to win, Ward thought. He took another mouthful, bigger this time, and swished the harsh liquor around inside his mouth, felt it anesthetize his tongue and teeth. If only it could do the same, and as quickly, to his brain. Ward raised his glass in the general direction of Jack and Junior. “And to the men who made him what he is today,” he said.

  The two men offered up their glasses in response to his toast, but Ward had already emptied his. He looked at them, looked away, and threw the glass as hard as he could into the night.

  “Good morning, Mr. Carter.” Cecil Montague smiled, nodded and continued on his way down the long corridor that connected the professors’ offices with the law school’s main classrooms.

  “Sir,” Ray acknowledged, then thought: What did Montague mean by that? Was it simply a tossed-off greeting from professor to student as they passed in the hall? Or was there something more . . . sinister behind it? And why had Ray deferentially called him “Sir” in reply?

  Before he’d joined the Dalhousie Law School faculty a decade ago, Montague had been one of the most successful criminal defence attorneys in Nova Scotia. His two most famous and discussed cases involved white men killing black men and getting away with it.

  In the early sixties, he’d won an acquittal for a white policeman charged with murdering a young black man by shooting him five times in the back. The man’s crime: looking too much like someone the police were seeking in connection with a shoplifting incident earlier in the day. Montague’s defence was that the young man had turned away from the policeman to grab for a gun so the officer had no choice but to fire in self-defence. Montague did not produce the alleged gun, if there was one. But Montague did do his lawyerly best to put the victim on trial, slipping in hints about the deceased’s lengthy criminal record without ever qualifying them with the fact that none of his petty crimes involved violence.

  The Crown—out of laziness? stupidity? collusion?—never corrected the record. The judge let it pass. And the jury, all white men, of course, needed only enough time to finish their free lunch from the Department of Justice to acquit Montague’s client and send him back out into the streets to serve and protect.

  In 1964, just before he surprised the legal community by giving up his lucrative practice for what had turned out to be an almost monastic life as an academic, Montague helped another white man get away with murder. The man and his black neighbour lived next door to one another in backwoods Nova Scotia. One day, the two men argued over some trees the black man claimed the white man had cut from his property. So the white man got his rifle and shot his neighbour in the stomach. According to evidence at his trial, the gunshot didn’t kill the black man immediately; he slowly bled to death while the white man finished splitting the wood in dispute and then stored it in his shed.

  Montague’s defence was that the black man had been drinking, though the autopsy report showed no evidence of alcohol in his system, and had threatened his client with physical harm, though there was no one other than his client alive to corroborate this. As for the four-hour delay in contacting the police to tell them what had happened, Montague explained that his client had just finished painting the floor in his kitchen and had to wait for it to dry before he could get to the phone. He too was acquitted.

  There were those who suggested that Montague had become so disillusioned by his own success he decided to go into teaching to atone for it. But others believed there had to be something more than coincidence at work in Montague’s choice of unsavoury clients and crimes.

  Not that Ray found any evidence to support that belief in Montague’s classroom. Indeed, Montague frequently admonished students that “defence lawyers do not have views, they have clients.” Ray wanted to ask why he’d chosen to represent white clients who’d murdered black men, but he didn’t. Montague intimidated him.

  So did law school. Ray was the only indigenous black in the entire school. There had been days, especially during his first year, when Ray would have preferred to be white. Anything to disappear into the sea of white maleness around him. Though he’d never lived any place where he was a member of the majority race, there had always been other blacks around, and Ray had gravitated to them. Here, his difference made him an object of curiosity for faculty, students and staff, inspiring double takes and stares, or, worse, furtive glances. What were they thinking? That he didn’t belong?

  Ray thought that, too. Often. Not because he was a black man in a white institution, but because he was one of only a handful of students who’d been admitted to the law school without first having completed at least a few years of an undergraduate degree.

  He had Mr. Eagleson to thank—or blame—for that. Jack Eagleson had written a glowing letter of recommendation to the Admissions Committee arguing that Ray should be admitted as a mature student based on his life experience. Not that Eagleson would have known very much about Ray’s life experience. Or him, for that matter. Ray knew even less about his benefactor.

  Ray hadn’t even remembered, until Eagleson reminded him, the first time he invited Ray for “coffee and a little chat,” that they’d met before, at Ray’s high school graduation. “I was there to see Ward graduate and I was introduced to you and your father, and an older woman, I believe she was your aunt?”

  “Oh, right. Aunt Annie. She’s not my aunt really. Everyone just calls her that.” Ray hadn’t intended to make polite conversation with the man who’d tried to bribe his father with a suitcase full of cash. He wasn’t sure why he’d agreed to meet him in the first place. Eagleson had called the day after the demonstration against the hiring of the police chief, four years ago now.

  Ray almost hadn’t shown up; what if someone from Black Pride happened to be at Calhoun’s at the same time? What would they think? In the end, he’d arrived fifteen minutes early and taken up a strategic position in a booth at the far end of the narrow, train-car-like restaurant, partly so he could see everything and everyone coming in or leaving, and partly so Eagleson, when he sat opposite him, would be hidden from public view by the booth’s high back.

  “Nice woman, that Annie,” Eagleson said after they’d ordered their coffees. “And she clearly thought the world of you.”

  Ray said nothing. The waitress came, put their coffees down on the green arborite tabletop in front of them. Ray drank his black, Eagleson emptied two creamers and two spoonfuls of sugar into his.

  “So what’re you hearing about the campaign?”

  “What?”

  “The election campaign. Sorry. I get so immersed in it I forget there’s anything else going on in the world. Which is why I like to get out of the office now and again and talk to real people.” Eagleson laughed. Other customers turned to see who was making the racket; Ray looked down at his coffee.

  “But even when I’m supposed to be thinking about other things,” Eagleson continued, “I can’t help myself. I still have to a
sk how it’s going. Especially here. We’re convinced we’ll form the next government but we’re still not sure our leader’s going to win his own riding. So . . . what’re you hearing?”

  “Haven’t been paying much attention,” Ray said. “Been kinda busy.” It was true. He’d been busy organizing last night’s demonstration, and the picketing at the landlord’s the week before. And he was starting work on a new project to expose the electoral fraud and vote buying he knew went on in the black community every election. Ray didn’t know at the time that Eagleson himself would turn out to be involved. But he did know that this election, like every election, was between two white men leading two white political parties whose only interest in the black community was in how many votes they could take from it.

  Ray didn’t say that to Eagleson. It sometimes annoyed him that he would think such things, even form the sentences in his head, but never speak them when he was talking one-to-one with a white person. Was that a hangover from slavery? Telling the “massa” only what it’s safe to say? For some reason, Ray was much better in front of a TV camera, or performing for a crowd.

  “That was quite a demonstration last night,” Eagleson said. “Four thousand people, at least that’s what they said on the news this morning. Pretty impressive.” He paused, took a noisy slurp of his coffee. “I only wish Seamus could have been there. One of the problems with being party leader is that people expect you to be everywhere. So he was down in Digby talking at some old folks’ home. They tell me he had twenty people, probably half of them senile and the other half Tory . . . maybe that’s the same thing.” Eagleson laughed again. Ray wanted to shrink into the seat. “Seriously, though,” he continued, after a moment’s silence, “I wish Seamus had been able to speak at your rally last night. He really is sympathetic to your point of view on the new police chief, you know.” Ray didn’t say anything, so Eagleson continued. “But it’s more important right now for him to win the election so he can do—”

  “I’m not sure I’m—”

  “No, no, sorry. I’m sure you’re not interested in my politicking. And that’s not really why I wanted to talk to you anyway.” He paused, collected his thoughts. “I’ve been keeping my eye on you, Raymond—do you prefer Ray or Raymond? Okay, Ray then—as I was saying, keeping my eye on you, partly because I remembered meeting you at the school that time but also because I’ve been very impressed by what you’ve been doing this past year.”

  Ray tried not to look puzzled, to keep his face impassive. Where was this guy coming from? Where was he going?

  “I went down to City Hall myself last night. I thought you might be speaking. I was looking forward to hearing you speak to a crowd. I’ve watched you on TV a couple of times and thought you really had the gift, the speaker’s gift.”

  For a coloured boy. Was that the subtext here? Was Eagleson complimenting him or insulting him? Ray tried to keep his face a mask.

  “Do you know anything about the program for mature students at Dalhousie Law School? No. Well, it’s for people like you, smart people who, for whatever reasons, don’t meet the usual admission criteria but who’ve had the kind of life experiences you don’t get from a B.A. and—”

  “But I have a B.A.”

  “From Rochdale?” Eagleson laughed. How did he know that? “If you thought any university would accept that, you’re not as smart as I thought.”

  “How did you—?”

  “I make it my business to know things, Ray. That’s what I do. The fact is you’re smart, you know how to think on your feet, you speak well and you’ve got passion. The law could use more people like that.”

  “More coloured people, you mean?” Ray jabbed. He didn’t, couldn’t, shouldn’t, wouldn’t trust this white man, and he wanted to let him know.

  “Coloured, white, black, green, who cares?” Eagleson parried his jab. “Smart people’s what I mean. And smart isn’t about race. You want to change the world? The law. That’s the ticket.”

  “Tickets cost money,” Ray replied.

  “Money’s easy. If you want something badly enough, you’ll find the money. The question is, do you want it? Because if you do—and you should—I’d be happy to write a letter to the Admissions Committee on your behalf. I’m on the university’s board of governors so a letter from me would carry weight.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I like smart young men. And you’re a smart young man.”

  That was the beginning. At first Ray had said no, not interested, too busy, too happy doing what I’m doing. But Eagleson kept calling every few months, even after the vote-buying incident. Ray knew from the reporter at the Tribune that Eagleson had somehow been involved in squelching that story. Eagleson must have known Ray was behind it. Still, he kept inviting Ray for coffee, bringing along brochures about the law school on one occasion, on another a book about how to prepare to take the LSATs, the law school admission tests.

  The seed Eagleson had planted slowly took root in Ray’s head. In the end, however, it wasn’t Eagleson’s blandishments so much as frustration with his fellow staff members that watered the seed, and anger at Black Pride’s board that finally nurtured it into full flower.

  Calvin had turned down Ray’s plan to bring Tyrone Vincent from Black Hands to Halifax. “Board’s against it,” Calvin told him directly. “They say, ‘What’s any of that got to do with us?’ Besides, they think it’d stir things up right when we’re trying to convince the government to fund us for another year.” The board, it seemed, was against anything that might generate media attention of any sort, assuming any publicity would be bad publicity in the white community, which was the only community they seemed to consider.

  But attracting media attention was Ray’s special talent at Black Pride. He’d learned that game watching Bartholomew Andrew Jackson III play to the cameras during “Halifax 2000.” He’d learned well.

  One week, Ray had organized three black men and three white men to go into a downtown barbershop, one after the other. The whites came out after a while with their hair neatly trimmed, the blacks immediately and unshorn. This was all faithfully recorded by the cameraman from CHAX-TV; Ray had chosen the barbershop in part because there was an alley across the street where the cameraman could film without being seen from inside. After interviewing the men who’d been refused service—“He said my hair’s too kinky. I’d break his scissors,” one old black man told the reporter—the reporter and his cameraman tried to interview the barber. He chased them out of the shop with a broom. The cameraman was still filming when the barber told them to “Get your nigger-loving asses out o’ my place.”

  “Great TV,” the reporter said, thanking Ray. “Keep us in mind next time.”

  But Ray had taken his next scheme to a reporter he knew at CBC, partly because he realized he’d get better play by spreading his exclusives around and partly because he was sure CHAX wouldn’t be interested in a story about the hiring practices at Levant’s, a women’s clothing store that was one of its biggest advertisers. The story, this one filmed from down the block, featured a well-qualified black woman with a college degree and a resumé that included retail experience in Toronto. She was told the sales job advertised in the shop window had just been filled, but thanks for asking. After she left, a white woman—whose doctored qualifications showed her to be a high school dropout with no work experience—went in, applied and was hired.

  “No more,” Calvin said after that story appeared. “The board says enough, at least for now.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, Ray, no ifs, no ands . . . Enough.”

  But Ray couldn’t help but attract media attention, even when he was trying not to. Soon after he was told to stop staging events, he set up a drop-in centre for black teens from the projects. No publicity. But around the same time, the National Film Board decided to make a documentary about the racial situation in Halifax. Who
better to centre the documentary around than those teens and the young black man whose media-savvy stunts had bubbled the smooth veneer on the city’s self-image? That didn’t sit well with some of Ray’s fellow field workers, who toiled anonymously to convince local businesses to hire unemployed black kids or lobbied provincial politicians to raise the minimum wage. A few of them had taken to calling Ray “Hollywood,” one to his face.

  Perhaps the incident that marked the beginning of the end of Ray’s career at Black Pride would have happened anyway, or perhaps, as some later suggested, it was the presence of the documentary crew that had precipitated the chain of events. Whatever the cause, the result was that, one afternoon while the cameras rolled, a half-dozen young people at the drop-in centre formulated a plan to stage a demonstration at the Department of Education. Initially, it was to protest descriptions of black people as savages in a world geography textbook. But it quickly became a demonstration against the entire racist education system.

  They tried to enlist Ray to organize it; he demurred, but they persisted so, eventually, he agreed to help: “But you’re going to have to do the work yourselves. I’ll just be there to help when you need me.”

  Ray would marvel later to the interviewer from the NFB that “the kids did such a great job. They organized everything themselves.”

  In the end, more than one thousand blacks, many of them adults whose own humiliations in the school system were still raw, protested in front of the department’s downtown offices. After about an hour, the Deputy Minister emerged to address the crowd. He defended the textbook. “Our experts have examined this textbook and they’re satisfied it is an accurate representation of the places and events portrayed,” he said, reading from a prepared statement. The reason there were not more “Negro” teachers in the classroom was that not enough black people chose to study education in college and university. “Perhaps,” he told the young people, “you need to ask your parents why more of them didn’t choose to become teachers.” And he announced that any students who didn’t return to their schools immediately would be suspended from classes for five days. He’d barely finished speaking when the first rock smashed through a second-floor window and into an empty department boardroom. Within seconds, the police riot squad emerged from nearby side streets dressed in their new, never-used riot gear, carrying full shields and heavy nightsticks. The next day’s Tribune called it Halifax’s first ever race riot and showed pictures of policemen clubbing demonstrators.