At times his whiteness has put him at great risk—as, for example, when he stumbled from the woods at Lake Wabatongushi one summer afternoon and came face to face with two American fishermen who, apparently forgetting or indifferent to the fact that they had chosen to spend their vacation in the world’s largest wildlife preserve, pulled handguns from their tackle box and started firing away. Being blind drunk at the time, however, they missed him wildly and, indeed, were fortunate not to eliminate each other. During the winter, on the other hand, rather than being a liability, his colouring has served as camouflage against the snow. Serendipity, one might say, or perhaps a benefaction from the Moose Manitou. And so he has been able to avoid the ravenous packs of wolves that pose a constant danger to the less exalted members of his species. And he has survived. By luck, but most of all by exercising that native intelligence possessed of all moose, he has survived.
But his soul—if we might think of moose as having souls—has been deeply tormented. For years he has been haunted by an apparition, a phantom, a spectre. Though shorter in stature than the humans who raised him, the spectre resembled them in having four limbs and walking upright. He—the spectre—was conspicuously different in one way, however. In the place where his face should have been, he had—or so it seemed to the moose, who, like all moose, was colour-blind—only a terrifying black void. He had first encountered the spectre one summer morning while he stood grazing in the clearing where he and his keeper used to pass much of their time. On seeing it he had bucked desperately, nearly yanking his tether out of the ground. But then he had noticed his keeper. And when the keeper gave his familiar reassuring smile, the moose grew calm.
After that, however, had come the frightening experience of resurrection. And when, after his initial panic had subsided, the moose—now the Great White Moose—returned to the clearing to look for the keeper, he found no one. He wandered through the woods briefly until he approached another clearing, the parking lot of the Campo de los Alces Motel. And then, peering cautiously through the trees, he saw the spectre again. But now there was no sign of his keeper, no comforting smile. And in the coldness of the moment, the moose instinctively understood that the presence of the one foretold the absence of the other. He retraced his steps the following day and the day after that. But on each occasion the outcome was the same, and each time his disquiet at the sight of the spectre grew more intense. Until finally he fled. The Great White Moose fled. Not far, just deeper into the woods. Years spent in the care of the keeper had left him familiar with the surrounding countryside and the caches of food that the local Ojibwa had stockpiled. There was no difficulty in finding refuge. And so he hid until the following summer. Then he ventured forth once again, past the familiar streams and the rusting blue Oldsmobile down to the clearing. But again there was no sign of his keeper. And again he continued on to the woods skirting the parking lot of the Campo de los Alces Motel. Again he saw the spectre. And again he fled. And the following summer, the same supernatural script was acted out once more. And the summer after that.
But the year following—we are now into the fourth summer since his keeper had disappeared—it seemed that at last his suffering must end. When he made his way to the motel and peeked fearfully through the trees, he saw, he heard, nothing. And for the first time since he had become the Great White Moose, he felt a heartbeat of peace. Until wandering through the woods beside a nearby lake he heard a tortured melody that reminded him vaguely of the call his keeper had used to summon him. And in a momentary surge of what passes for hopefulness among moose, he moved toward the sound. He reached a gap in the trees and scanned the shoreline. There, sitting on the end of a dock, was the spectre, the tortured melody emanating from the void where his face should have been. So the Great White Moose turned in horror and fled yet again. Fled this time without stopping. Fled forever from the security of the neighbourhood where he had been raised and where, up to that moment, he had spent his entire life.
Of course, all moose have an instinct for migration. But his years in captivity had surely dulled his sense of direction. And in any case, he was driven by something even more profoundly elemental than a quest for food. And so, while he encountered many moose on his travels, he charted an entirely independent course, a course of his own improvised design. First east to Algonquin Park. Then north to the woods near Cochrane and back toward Hearst, sometimes retracing his steps but in general tracking the westward route of the Trans-Canada Highway. He ranged across the full length of Northern Ontario to the Lake of the Woods and beyond. Wherever he went, however, it seemed to him that the spectre was following, tracking him, hidden in the shadows. Disturbing memories of the spectre filled his days; dreams of the spectre invaded his nights.
And then one afternoon on Lake Wabatongushi, just weeks after his escape from the drunken Americans, he heard a call that awakened distant echoes of home. It continued for some minutes, then was replaced by a refrain completely unfamiliar to him. He made his way forward, inexplicably drawn toward the sound. As he neared the shore, however, he heard a crashing just ahead. Seconds later a cow and calf careened past, ricocheting off the trees. Their hysterical retreat froze him momentarily. But then the beguiling melody started up again, beckoned him. He caught his breath, then slowly started to move, though cautiously, ever so cautiously. As he approached the water’s edge, he took shelter behind a dense row of pine trees. He peered through the branches and dimly caught sight of the figure that, at some level of his unconscious, he surely must have understood he was destined to see. Only this time the spectre was not alone. He was in a canoe with a human who evoked an indistinct recollection of the keeper whose smile had so often comforted the moose. But there was no smile this time. Indeed, the human appeared to be in distress. Back into the woods the Great White Moose plunged. North. Then west. Then, suddenly reversing himself, east. Galloping. Galloping hard.
XXIV
Some of the French explorers in Canada found there fishermen who had come from the Basque country of southern France. Meeting the animal now known as the moose, and never having seen the European elk, these fisherman called the moose by the Basque word for deer—orenac. From this is derived orignac, orignal, words used by French writers to designate “l’élan d’Amerique.” A well-known American writer on natural history makes orignal an equivalent of original, signifying “un type,” or an animal of a newly found species. But derivations cannot be established by guesswork. The Basques, untrained in zoology, in calling the moose orenac or “deer,” were doing as well as they could under the circumstances.
SAMUEL MERRILL, THE MOOSE BOOK
Scientists have now conclusively proven that a moose raised in captivity in Ontario will not be able to read a sign written in French. Nor, for that matter, will he be able to read a sign written in English. And so when the Great White Moose, in his erratic flight to escape the spectre, crossed the Ottawa River some kilometres north of Temiscaming, Quebec, and wandered into the small village of Je-me-souviens, he was quite indifferent to the language controversy that was tearing apart the local community.
It was a controversy with a long history, but the Great White Moose, never previously having set foot on the Quebec side of the river, could hardly have known that. Then again, being unable to read English, he would not have been in a position to avail himself of the opportunity, as we are now about to do, of enjoying the recounting of that history provided by the eminent historian of New France, Arlen Green, in his celebrated The People of Quebec:
Nothing better exemplifies the turbulent recent past of Quebec than the history of the small village of Harmony (in French, Harmonie). Created with the arrival of the logging industry along the upper reaches of the Ottawa River during the late nineteenth century, Harmony received its name because of the unusually congenial relations existing between the English-speaking minority, who owned and ran the lumber mills, and the French-speaking majority, who performed the labour. It is easy to understand why the two groups got
along so well. At wages of fourpence per family for a seven-day work week and with generous allowances of tree bark for their meals, the workers were substantially better treated than French Canadian labourers in other sections of the province. Even when the town came to be eclipsed in importance by Cochelin, Temiscaming, and Ville-Marie, and on the Ontario side of the river by New Liskeard and Cobalt, the mill operators showed considerable compassion for their employees by continuing the tree bark allowance after they cut wages in half, arranging for a Catholic priest to preach once a month on the mill floor about the importance of obedience and the rewards diligent workers could expect in the hereafter, and introducing Irish day labourers for the French Canadians to regard with contempt.
Still, these halcyon days proved short-lived. Railway development to the east siphoned off economic opportunities, undermining the local lumber industry. One by one, companies closed down their operations, forcing workers to seek employment elsewhere. By the time of the Great Depression there remained only a single family in Harmony: Jacques Montcalm, a third-generation mill worker turned farmer, his wife, the former Louise Wolfe, whose grandfather had built the original factory around which the town had formed, and their identical twin sons, James and Louis.
Jacques and Louise pledged to each other that they would never leave Harmony; they would keep it alive as a testament to their vision of a Canada in which people of French and English ancestry would live together in peace and, yes, harmony. They insisted that their sons become fluent in both languages, spoke of the Magna Carta and La déclaration des droits de l’Homme et du citoyen with equal reverence, celebrated Guy Fawkes’ Night and Le jour de la Bastille, and managed to convince themselves that the Seven Years’ War was nothing more than a minor squabble between otherwise steadfast friends.
During World War II, Jacques’ deep sense of patriotism led him to enlist with the celebrated Van Doos, the Royal Twenty-Second, where he was given a position in the prestigious regimental marching band. Tragically his life came to an abrupt end when he made an ill-advised attempt to catch his tuba during a parachute drop. His death was shattering for Louise, and she only managed to outlive him by a matter of months. Before she died, however, she made James and Louis pledge to her that they would remain in Harmony and preserve the village as a symbol of the dream that she and Jacques had treasured.
The brothers made their commitment to her willingly because, in those days at least, they both held to the same dream as their parents. To deal with the practical issue of how to divide responsibility for running Harmony (population now two), they decided to alternate terms for mayor. And through the 1950s, harmony did indeed reign in the village. But the Quiet Revolution in Quebec politics ushered in by Jean Lesage in 1960 had a profound effect on James. When he took over the mayoralty in 1961, he adopted the slogan “Maîtres chez nous” and implemented a series of measures to promote French in public places. It is time, he said, for “une collaboration honnête” between the English and French of Harmonie.
At first Louis was sympathetic. And when he succeeded to the office of mayor in 1963, he made clear his intention to continue the reforms James had introduced. But only months later the village mailbox was destroyed by a letter bomb. Badly shaken, Louis contacted the provincial authorities for assistance. They sent in a forensic specialist who conducted an extensive examination and concluded that the bomb could only have been planted by someone with an intimate knowledge of the Harmony postal service. Since that effectively excluded everyone except the two brothers and since Louis could not believe that James would engage in such a dastardly act, his initial reaction was to dismiss the findings. But when the mailbox was blown up a second and then a third time in less than a month, and when James organized a mass demonstration in support of le Front de libération de Harmonie (FLH) on the steps of City Hall—attended, according to one report, by fully half the population of the village—Louis began to realize that all was not as harmonious in Harmony as he had imagined.
Then one night a masked man broke into his home while he was sleeping, threw him into a sack, and took him hostage. In response Louis outlawed the FLH and brought forward the controversial Harmony War Measures Ordinance, whose unprecedented restrictions on civil liberties would no doubt have outraged Canadians across a wide expanse of the political landscape had Louis not been confined to the trunk of his brother’s car throughout the entire period when the legislation was in effect.
Three weeks later it was time for James to replace Louis as mayor. His first official act was to repeal the Harmony War Measures Ordinance. His second was to issue a general amnesty for all members of the FLH living in Harmonie. His third was to have Louis released from the trunk of his car. It seemed for a time that harmony had been restored, and for the next two years James confined his political activities to behind-the-scenes efforts to build up his power base. But then came one of those chance events that so often play a decisive role in the unfolding of history. During a detour through the village on his way to attend Expo 67 in Montreal, Charles de Gaulle delivered an impromptu speech in which he uttered the phrase that has forever altered the course of Canadian history: “Vive l’Harmonie!” he shouted. “Vive l’Harmonie libre!” The very next day James announced that he was changing his name to René Purelaine and forming his own political organization, La Partie Harmonie (PH), whose single defined goal would be securing independence for the village from Canada (while retaining the principle of transfer payments from Ottawa).
He then designated himself a municipal commission and convened a series of meetings in which he received various depositions from himself, exclusively in French, championing the principle of cultural autonomy for Harmonie. Subsequently he introduced La charte de la langue Gallique, which outlawed the use of English on commercial signs and required that all enterprises have names reflecting the brothers’ Gallic ancestry. Confusing “Gallique” with “Gaélique,” Louis opened up a pub named La famine Irlandaise and booked in the Irish Rovers.
Developments now proceeded rapidly. Attempting to follow through on his nationalist agenda, René made preparations for a referendum on the question of whether Harmonie should negotiate a new political association with Canada in which the sovereignty of the village would be acknowledged and there would be an equitable sharing of resources. The campaign for the referendum was extraordinarily heated. Signs saying “Oui” and “No/Non” went up all over the village. René made a series of impassioned speeches detailing the many forms of oppression historically faced by the French-speaking minority in Canada. Louis made a series of impassioned speeches reminding listeners that Sir Wilfrid Laurier, perhaps the greatest of all Canadian prime ministers, had assured his countrymen that “the twentieth century belongs to Canada.”* Polls conducted by Radio-Harmonie showed the voters in the village split fifty-fifty, a division that remained unchanged throughout the course of the campaign. (The polls were deemed to be accurate within 2.75 percentage points in nineteen cases out of twenty.) And indeed, the balloting produced a dead heat. A recount was held, but without affecting the outcome.
René had scheduled the referendum for the final days of his mayoralty, expecting to be able to cap his term in office with a declaration of independence. But the recount meant that he had to transfer power to Louis before he could bring down the enabling legislation, and Louis, once returned to City Hall, immediately declared the results a confirmation of the commitment in Harmony to “bilingualism and biculturalism.” Bitterly disappointed, René charged that he had been defeated by “l’argent puis des votes ethniques,” to which Louis, after hastily converting to Judaism, raised a countercharge that René was promoting anti-Semitism.
Still, Louis by nature was inclined toward policies likely to unite the village. To that end he announced an Olympic bid. “Where could one find a better place to hold the preeminent symbol of international cooperation than Harmony?” he asked. “C’est jeter de la poudre aux yeux,” ridiculed the editor of the local PH newspaper,
who kept up a drumbeat of criticism for months. Eventually, drawing on his insider knowledge of the workings of City Hall, the editor produced a National Newspaper Award–winning series of articles on the financing of the Olympic facilities, in which he exposed (or claimed to expose) “la fraude des fonds publics.” Louis vehemently denied the accusation. But on the eve of the next transfer of power he was forced to acknowledge that the six-seat stadium he had commissioned had brought the village to the edge of bankruptcy.
René took over the mayor’s office on a high note. However, his exuberance proved short-lived because shortly thereafter the Supreme Court of Canada handed down a ruling invalidating the section of La charte de la langue Gallique prohibiting the use of English on signs. The court based its decision on the little known “Animal Farm” clause of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms: “All forms of freedom of expression are equal, though some forms may be more equal than others.” René responded by introducing l’Ordonnance municipale 178, barring languages other than French from outdoor signs, but allowing some bilingual signs indoors. He then prohibited further court challenges for five years, invoking the “notwithstanding clause” of the Constitution (“notwithstanding the Constitution, provincial governments and the village of Harmony/Harmonie may do pretty much whatever they like so long as they do not directly interfere with the ability of the prime minister to assist his friends through government contracts and patronage appointments”).
In response Louis brought a complaint before the United Nations Committee on Human Rights. He and René both travelled to New York to testify at the subsequent hearings, each marshalling many precedents in both Canadian and international law and drawing on deep, if divergent, philosophical traditions on individual liberty and social obligation. In the end the committee agreed with Louis that l’Ordonnance municipale 178 violated the principles for which the United Nations stands: “A state may choose one or more official languages, but it may not exclude, outside the private sphere, the freedom to express oneself in a language of one’s choice.” This ruling, carrying the heavy weight of moral authority, was later incorporated into the North American Free Trade Agreement with the following clarification: “Under no circumstances should this provision be interpreted in such a way as to impair the ability of multinational corporations to earn those profits to which they are entitled by the grace of God.”
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