“He gave me a brochure.” Al pulled it from a pocket. “‘Join us at our Personal Transformation Mission Centre. Enjoy creative growth. Awaken to love. Soul attunement.’ Attunement! Have they no shame?” The good priest had a liberal view of most beliefs, but not the airy-fairy.
He had bluntly asked Silverson about his background. “Told me he made a name as a Hollywood auteur, a producer–director of small-budget films. He wrote the scripts, did it all. He obviously still loves the camera; totes it around everywhere.”
“His switch to guru suggests he didn’t enjoy a dazzling film career.”
“Told me he rejected the Hollywood lifestyle after undergoing a ‘revelational experience,’ sort of like finding God, except he gets to play the part of God. His followers are in purdah, protected from worldly concerns, no newspapers, magazines, radio — Silverson wants them to have only happy thoughts in their quest for universal love and connectedness.” Al dropped his voice to a soft, ominous whisper. “He wants to inhabit our bodies.” He grinned. “Maybe they just do a lot of drugs.”
Rumours abounded: an underground lab for meth, LSD, ecstasy; nude-fests on the beach; partner-swapping. But Garibaldi had a long tradition of mischievous gossip.
Silverson and Forbish were still at close quarters — or what would be considered close if it weren’t for the barrier of the reporter’s Falstaffian paunch. Doubtless, Nelson was cadging an invitation to Starkers Cove and a hearty meal.
Silverson would soon learn it was almost an inviolable tradition to regularly feed Nelson — almost every home on Garibaldi had had him over. He had the uncanny knack of knowing when a roast was in the oven of one of his subscribers.
Silverson moved on, prowling for new adherents, pausing to video several young women running a raffle table, a fundraiser for the women’s ball team, the Nine Easy Pieces. They bunched around him, cats lapping up the milk of flattery. He got a playful shove from Felicity Jones and slipped his arm lightly around her waist.
“Under his spell already,” Al said. “Won’t be long before they’re out there feeding slop to the pigs.”
§
Arthur and Margaret were late getting home to Blunder Bay Farm. They had to stop at the Legion for a traditional Victoria Day observance, then for a longer visit to the common room of the elders’ hostel, where a throng of descendants of Winnie Gillicuddy were celebrating her 110th birthday. “Or 109, I ain’t sure, but it’s up there.” A trooper, she had knocked on doors for Margaret.
Tea was poured. Great-great-grandchildren were cooed over. A massive heat-emitting cake was produced, requiring volunteer lung power to help Winnie snuff the candles. In the process, Arthur singed his new moustache.
Somehow, he bore up under the ritual of departure, the ghastly kissing and hugging of these touchy-feely times. Arthur had been raised in the 1950s, when restraint was still in vogue.
Twilight was setting in as they drove off in Arthur’s venerable Fargo pickup. Margaret was on a roll, tuning up for the House of Commons, lashing the cabinet. They were addicted to tar sands, that cancerous drug. They were too busy shining the boots of the resource multinationals to care about poverty, education, health. They had a scheme to Americanize Canada. A cabal of right-wing ministers was running Ottawa secretively, denying privacy to others, tapping phones, scanning emails, clamping down on whistle-blowers; 1984 had finally arrived.
Arthur managed a few intermittent phrases of encouragement, about battles not yet lost, but kept the hopelessness he felt to himself. This country, the world, was on a downward spiral; Margaret was fighting an ever-rising tide. It was easier, though more guilt-inducing, to focus on immediate concerns. For instance, he hoped the Woofers had remembered to water in his freshly planted beans and brassicas.
Woofers — Workers on Organic Farms — were mostly youngsters, travelling the world on the cheap, working half-days for board and room. Blunder Bay Farm was currently hosting two of them, just back from college in Japan: Yoki and Niko, competent, hard-working girls. (“Young women, please,” Margaret would chide.)
Arthur’s mental meandering was interrupted, confusingly, by Margaret, as they turned onto Potters Road, the home stretch. “They seem to be doing something interesting with that sustainability project.”
Arthur looked at her. “Who?”
“Starkers Cove. The Personal Transformation Mission. I don’t have time, but why not take up Jason’s invitation?”
Jason. Her new pal.
“Wander down there and take a boo.”
“A little soul attunement might do me good,” said Arthur, a failed effort at sarcasm. If the Transformers ran workshops for the grumpy, he ought to sign up. “Al Noggins has already taken a boo, and came away satisfied that Silver Tongue collected a bunch of weak egos and is emptying their minds of the ability to think critically and refilling their tanks with happy thoughts.”
“Oh, God, that’s typical Al Noggins, feeling threatened by an intrusion on his fiefdom, as if it’s some kind of competing church. He can’t abide anything that’s outside the ecclesiastical status quo. He’s got you infected, dear. I mean, you guys have become a pair of cynical old goats. I am one with the Transformers. They’re trying to make a statement about sustainability. Jason simply doesn’t seem like your typical New Ager, and I thought he showed a very good mind. Discerning. Quite charismatic, really.”
Charismatic! Arthur detested the word. What was usually meant was showy.
“And he donated two hundred dollars to the women’s ball team.”
His astute political wife was normally not so credulous. The blond bombshell had worked his magic on her today. And on others too. Before leaving the flower show, he and his underling had invited all comers to see their “digs,” as Silverson put it. For starters, they left with several Easy Pieces.
Skirting by his sheep pasture, Arthur could make out the lights from Blunder Bay’s two sturdy gingerbread houses. The larger one was home. The smaller, older one was where Niko and Yoki slept, ate, and played incessant computer games. It used to be Margaret’s, but their two farms were now consolidated into forty waterfront acres.
There’d been nibbles enough at the birthday extravaganza, so they skipped dinner, took turns in the shower, prepped for bed. This would be his last night with Margaret for the unforeseeable future, and a last desperate chance to make up for his tepid efforts at love-making — there had been bouts of impotence. “Let’s just cuddle,” she would say, letting him off the hook. But even as they cuddled, he was tormented by thoughts of her similarly entwined with Lloyd Chalmers.
Three times, she’d said. Only three times. It was over. Finito. A fling, no more. She’d been in a weak state, overburdened. She’d just needed a reprieve, a moment or two with, as she put it, “somebody with a sunny outlook.” An outlook sunnier than Arthur’s, she meant.
THE CHIEF WHIP
The daily order of business droned on: routine proceedings and government bills. The House barely had a quorum, but Margaret Blake was there, at her front-row desk, polishing her shot at the environment minister, Emil Farquist. She had fled the turmoil of her staff room for the somnolence of the Commons to rework it. It was a rare day that she got a turn during Question Period, and she intended to aim her bullet at where the minister’s heart would be if he had one.
The Coast Mountains Pipeline, that was the issue that vexed Farquist the most. He didn’t have the numbers. A poorly funded consortium was behind the project, its directors chummy with the government, and it would be a rush job, cutting an ugly scar across forest and park land and causing predictable spills. The pipeline had recently been given the blessing of the National Energy Board, composed of Conservative puppets. But several Western Tories were opposed, apparently unwhippable, and if they abstained, the pipeline bill would fail.
Here he was now, her bête noire, Emil Farquist, wandering into the Chamber, stopping to confer wi
th several of his backbench vassals. As Government Whip, he was the shepherd to his flock, summoning them for crucial votes, assigning them slots for questions and speeches. This hatchet man for the Prime Minister was former head of a supposed think tank, the Bow River Institute. He was was nearly fifty years old, still unmarried, robust, quick-witted, conniving, on TV a lot.
A right-wing economist as environment minister!
To top it off, Farquist was a quasi-denier, a member of the jury-is-still-out school. If climate change is real, he’d said, let’s regard it not as a crisis but a challenge. Free enterprise will find a way.
He was also often the go-to guy when Winthrop Fowler — Win, as the cold, soulless, secrecy-obsessed PM preferred to be called — was away from the House, as he would be today. Win was in Washington, selling out more bits of Canada, breaking bread with the nutbars in Congress.
Margaret returned to her task, altered a few words, but remained uncertain how to best frame her question. She was not good at staying on script. Maybe she should just play it by ear. Over-prepared challenges from party leaders lacked zip, intensity.
She was bothered by an unease that had stayed with her after last evening’s board meeting of the Climate Action Network, where she’d sat across a table from Lloyd Chalmers. Had she known he was on the board, she would have found an excuse not to show up. She’d barely been able to look at him, found herself repelled by his crinkly, knowing grin. But he’d played along with her pretence that they were . . . what? Casual friends, nodding acquaintances? Ottawa was a cauldron of gossip but somehow, miraculously, no one seemed to know they’d had a fling, as she preferred to call it. No one but her husband.
Why, oh, why, had she told Arthur about it? What had got into her? Some kind of ghastly, guilt-induced purging. Fed by her belief that a marriage with secrets might not survive.
Only three times, she’d told him, as if that would make him feel better. Actually, there’d been five.
And Arthur was so hurt. She feared his love had died a little.
Margaret had no easy explanation for her misbehaviour. Yes, Arthur was better at cuddling than consummation — and there were the long separations, the loneliness, a physical yearning that in the end she couldn’t suppress. Add to that a mild resentment that his distaste for politics, and for Ottawa, meant he was rarely at her side when the going got rough. But also she’d felt a little smothered by him, all his worrying and fussing and, lately, the cynicism, the crankiness. But she still loved him; she shouldn’t have to convince herself of that.
That love hadn’t happened instantly — the death of her first husband in his prime had still been fresh when Arthur first intimated his feelings, and she had gently put him off. But he was attractive, as older men can be, with his craggy, handsome face, his lanky frame. However, it was not just that, and not his celebrity as a lawyer, that finally impelled her toward him, but his humanity, his kindness, civility — and his awkwardness, his realness. She still warmed at the memory of the night he pronounced his love, so clumsily, with his ragged bouquet of garden flowers.
Then she’d betrayed him by sleeping with Lloyd Chalmers. She’d been disgusted with herself when, as the meeting broke up last evening, Chalmers took her hand in both of his. Her left hand, with the wedding ring. The ring she’d slipped off, sleazily, before their trysts.
Members were sifting in now, a few cabinet ministers, Tory backbenchers, the Official Opposition New Democrats, the two dozen Liberals who’d survived the last election, and the handful of Bloc Québécois separatists.
Her own rump group of Green MPs were taking their places behind her. Just three of them, including the whip-smart Indigenous-rights lawyer Jennie Withers, who remained a loyal friend and colleague even while many in the party were rooting for a leadership review. Of course, we all love Margaret. But her sass, her confrontational style — isn’t that holding us back just a little?
Yes, she was confrontational. A couple of thin-skinned ministers had threatened defamation suits; Margaret had had to bow to legal advice and apologize to them publicly. Pundits liked to claim she lacked the give-and-take that greased the machinery of politics. The Conservative strategy was to portray her as anti-growth, anti-industry, against jobs, a downsizer. But she was anti-growth, damn it. There was precious little room to grow on this shrinking, resource-depleted planet. Sustain did not mean grow. The far right had co-opted the word but not the philosophy of sustainability, corrupting it into a flabby oxymoron: sustainable growth.
Wally Hognut, retired grain dealer, Member for Gopher Springs, but more popularly known as Member for Monsanto, rose from his seat. He was proud to introduce twelve members of a 4-H club who had helped a widow bring in her Roundup-ready soybean harvest.
Next up was the Member for Bay d’Espoir, seeking recognition for a foolhardy fellow who’d miraculously survived a plunge into the Cabot Strait while flying an ultralight from Newfoundland to Nova Scotia.
The Member for Trout River sought to introduce a constituent who’d won a Rhodes scholarship, but forgot her name. There was an embarrassing interlude while he scrambled through his notes.
Margaret’s mind returned to Arthur. She should phone him tonight. Their parting a week ago had been incomplete, unsatisfactory, with long stretches of silence on the way to the ferry, then the ritual exchange of affection.
Seats were quickly filling for Question Period. There were a hundred and fifty on the government side, five more than the opposition across the aisle. Another non-confidence motion was expected next week. Would the Liberals, afraid of being wiped off the electoral map, wimp out again, and make sure six or seven of them were absent for the vote? Their previous administration, desperate, mired in corruption, had gambled on a snap vote in the last election, and got punished by losing 131 seats.
The NDP leader rose: Charlie Moss, with his moss-like beard and constant frown, a quick-tempered brawler, a dogged debater, but a seeker of the middle way, a reluctant socialist, touchy about that label, which the Conservatives enjoyed tagging him with as if it was an insult.
“A question for the Transport Minister. Given this government’s oft-stated pledge to end the corruption that infested the previous administration, when will it come clean on the Montreal Mafia’s infiltration of the marine division of Transport Canada?”
The minister stood. “May I remind the Honourable Leader of the Opposition that the matter is in the hands of police authorities. As a lawyer, my learned socialist friend must know it is grossly improper to comment on a case that is going to trial.”
The usual escape hatch. “Hear, hear,” came the Tory chorus.
The port scandal — Waterfrontgate, the media called it — involved a grab-bag of small-time politicians in Greater Montreal, but had spread virus-like to mid-level federal brass. All were out on bail, along with prominent underworld figures.
Margaret stood as the Speaker recognized the Member for Cowichan and the Islands. “Question for the Honourable Minister of the Environment. Given that the proposed Coast Mountains Pipeline would indelibly scar some of the most majestic wilderness on Planet Earth, with a hundred percent statistical likelihood of spills of toxic bitumen, will this government finally find the courage to withdraw its enabling legislation and stop playing lickspittle to the multinational profiteers whose exploitation of Alberta’s tar sands has become a blot on this nation’s once-proud international reputation?”
It may have been the longest rhetorical question in Parliamentary history, but she’d got it out — though found herself panting like a greyhound at the finish line.
Emil Farquist rose with a look of weary resignation. “That the honourable member’s no-growth platform has been rejected by the vast majority of Canadians is reflected in the paucity of support her party earns in the polls. Canadians know that this government will continue to be dedicated to protection of the environment, while at the same time promoting
responsible development to ensure the economic well-being of all.”
Applause, table-thumping.
Margaret wasn’t finished. “Supplemental, Mr. Speaker. How can the minister, who is a covert climate-change denier and has spent his entire career in bed with big oil and has never demonstrated the slightest interest in nature — how does he dare talk about protecting the environment when he’s taken a sledgehammer to every bit of environmental protection that this country once enjoyed?”
Applause from the Opposition side, catcalls from across the way.
“Mr. Speaker, the Green leader’s last breathless speech yielded at least four blatant falsehoods, among them an accusation that I am without feeling for nature. I should like her to know that during the annual Easter bird count in Jasper National Park, I identified twenty-three species of over-wintering and early spring arrivals.”
There were howls of delight from his cheering squad, and laughter even from Margaret’s side of the house.
§
The Commons Foyer, a lofty arcade of elaborately moulded arches and columns, was where the press routinely jostled, moiled, and grubbed as they corralled the newsmakers exiting the chamber. They were waiting for Margaret, like a wolf pack, and she was quickly engulfed in a cluster of cameras and sound-bite-ready microphones. She was still seething, praying she could control her temper. She had been bettered in that sharp exchange, a wounded bird knocked out of the sky.
Was she shocked, they demanded to know, to learn Farquist was a birder?
“Annual Easter bird count? Come on, you guys, he’s a master of the staged photo-op. He wouldn’t know a bird from a bat without some flunky whispering in his ear. I’ll give you a list of bird species that Emil Farquist isn’t able to count because they’re endangered, like the burrowing owl and mountain plover, or extirpated, like the greater sage grouse. Species that have survived hundreds of thousands of years are now on their way to being as dead as the dodo, which is the deserved fate of this government, and will be if the Liberals show some balls this week.”
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