Lincoln's Briefs

by Wayne, Michael

  By then, however, Washington had adopted a new strategy for promoting Quebec separatism. Vice President George Bush, a former Director of the CIA himself, was certain that the Canadian prime minister, Brian Mulroney, could be effectively manipulated to do whatever the White House wanted. As a young man Mulroney had been infatuated with American wealth and power, and by the 1960s his name was appearing on a secret CIA list of “useful Canadian contacts.” In 1977 he secured an appointment as president of the Iron Ore Company of Canada, a subsidiary of the Cleveland-based Hanna Mining Company. He demonstrated abject submissiveness to his American bosses by shutting down a profitable mine in Schefferville, Quebec, allowing Hanna to transfer its operations to Brazil. Bush took note and advised Casey to “keep a close eye on Mulroney. He could be very valuable to us down the road.”

  In fact, only a year later, the Republican Party helped Mulroney win the leadership of the federal Progressive Conservative Party by secretly channelling funds to him through the Mormon bishop of Virginia. Soon afterward he led the Conservatives to power with the largest majority in Canadian history. He quickly set about putting in place the program Washington had outlined for him, lifting restrictions on foreign ownership of Canadian mines, pushing through free trade with the United States, and eventually putting his signature to the NAFTA agreement. Independence for Quebec remained at the forefront of the White House agenda, however, and with that in mind, Mulroney agreed to bring his old friend Lucien Bouchard into the government, first as ambassador to France and then, in 1988, as secretary of state. Bouchard, who had actively campaigned for separatism during the 1980 referendum, placed a team of his own men in the RCMP, where they quickly took control of the Canadian drug trade. He also added 5 percent to all public contracts. The goal in both cases was to generate revenue that could be skimmed off for the Parti Quebecois. To all appearances the stage was now set for the final act of the drama Washington had been scripting since 1961.

  In 1987 Mulroney had met with provincial premiers in Ottawa to hammer out a deal for amending the Constitution. The Meech Lake Accord, as it came to be known, included recognition of Quebec as a “distinct society” and the transfer of a range of federal responsibilities to the provinces. CIA intelligence indicated that such terms would never be acceptable to a majority of the Canadian people and, in fact, would help fuel the very separatism that the agreement was ostensibly designed to eliminate. However, agents had not anticipated that the premiers, driven by the promise of increased personal power, would be prepared to ratify the deal even in the face of popular indifference and, in some provinces, hostility.

  Here serendipity came to the aid of Washington, however. Elijah Harper Lookalike, a Cree member of the Manitoba legislature, used parliamentary procedures to delay ratification of the accord on the grounds that it did nothing to address the historic pattern of injustice faced by First Nations peoples and would perpetuate the myth that Canada had only two founding nations, the French and English. Anxious to avoid charges that his government was insensitive to Native concerns, the premier of Manitoba responded in the traditional way, offering to build a casino on tribal lands. By then, however, opposition to the accord had spread across the country, effectively ensuring its defeat.

  Bouchard was now free to carry on with the original plan the CIA had drafted. He made a public display of resigning from the government, then set up his own federal party, the Bloc Québécois, with the single declared purpose of preparing the way for Quebec independence. His calculated and conspicuous defiance of Ottawa had the desired effect of inflaming passions in his home province, and in the federal election of 1993 the Bloc won fifty-four seats, emerging as the Official Opposition. By now Mulroney had abandoned politics to take advantage of business opportunities in the United States. The Liberals were in power, led by Jean Chrétien, a perfect foil for the separatists because he was widely distrusted in French Canada for his perceived role in the patriation of the Canadian Constitution. In 1994 Jacques Parizeau and the PQ won a decisive majority in a provincial election and immediately called a second referendum on Quebec sovereignty. To help build sympathy for the separatist cause, CIA agents infected Bouchard with necrotizing fasciitis, better known as the “flesh-eating disease.” When doctors amputated his leg, ostensibly to save his life, his stature as an iconic figure soared.

  The referendum was held in October 1995. Parizeau proved a less than inspirational leader, and Bouchard took command of the campaign. His charisma had a catalytic effect, and separatist support pitched upward. However, at a critical moment, he made a costly error. In an unrehearsed comment intended to win favour in the United States, he referred to the Québécois as a “race blanche,” a white race. The remark caused a backlash among immigrants, especially from Haiti and Africa. Although the CIA was able to rig the ballot count in most ridings through the promiscuous dispersion of bribes, in the end the separatists fell 53,000 votes short of victory.

  Following the referendum, Parizeau resigned in disgrace and Bouchard left Ottawa to become leader of the PQ. However, the people of Quebec had grown weary of the sovereignty debate and Bouchard spent the next few years trying to overturn the social-democratic framework that Lévesque had worked so hard to put in place. The success of his efforts represented a consolation prize of sorts for Washington, but it was far from what the White House had anticipated or desired.

  George Tenet, who became Director of the CIA under Bill Clinton and continued in that office under George W. Bush, eventually came up with a new plan designed to rescue the separatist cause. An agent in Quebec had reported that the Cree in the northern reaches of the province were angry about the rumoured construction of a canal to divert water from James Bay to the Great Lakes and then on to the United States. Tenet reasoned that if the Cree could be induced to rise against the Quebec government, provincial authorities would be compelled to send in police to restore order. Jean Chrétien would presumably respond by calling up the army under pretext of protecting the indigenous population. Fighting would then ensue, reigniting calls for Quebec independence.

  In attempting to implement the plan, however, the CIA was a victim of its own careless intelligence. Agents misidentified an Ojibwa poet and restaurant critic as a local tribal leader. Attempts to blackmail him with compromising photographs proved unsuccessful, although the young female agent entrusted with the task was able to acquire, at only slightly above cost, a guide to fine dining on the coast of James Bay and a collection of limericks about moose …

  *[Ed. note: At this point the account by Professor Hill wanders off into a discussion of nefarious activities by squirrels. As his remarks on that subject are not based on any of the evidence made available to him by Bobbi Jo Jackson, the editors have chosen to omit them from the text.]

  XLVI

  “That truly is a shocking story,” said Yale Templeton.

  “Yes,” agreed Bobbi Jo Jackson, “truly shocking.”

  “But one thing I don’t understand,” he admitted. “Why should the White House want Quebec to gain its independence?”

  “To weaken Canada, silly. It’s all part of the plan.”

  “Plan? What plan?”

  “The plan Professor Hill told me about. Ever since … well, ever since the American Revolution, really … Presidents have been plotting to grab all the land in North America right up to the Arctic Ocean. Mexico too.”

  “Ah, St. Clair must have been referring to the concept of Manifest Destiny.” “Yes, Manifest Destiny. That’s right.”

  “Manifest Destiny,” repeated Yale Templeton. “The term was first employed by the New York editor John L. O’Sullivan in an article on the proposed annexation of Texas published in Volume 17, Issue 86 of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review, July, 1845.” (Here readers may feel free to let their eyes glaze over just as the eyes of Yale Templeton’s students glazed over whenever he read a quotation.)

  “‘Why, were other reasoning wanting, in favour of now elevating this question
of the reception of Texas into the Union, out of the lower region of our past party dissensions, up to its proper level of a high and broad nationality, it surely is to be found, found abundantly, in the manner in which other nations have undertaken to intrude themselves into it, between us and the proper parties to the case, in a spirit of hostile interference against us, for the avowed object of thwarting our policy and hampering our power, limiting our greatness and checking the fulfilment of our manifest destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence for the free development of our yearly multiplying millions.’ End of quotation.”

  “Later,” Yale Templeton continued, “O’Sullivan broadened the meaning of the term in an editorial printed in the New York Morning News on December 27, 1845. He was, by the way, editor of both the Morning News and the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. In the editorial he claimed, and again I quote, ‘the right of our manifest destiny to overspread and to possess the whole of the continent which Providence has given us for the development of the great experiment of liberty and federative self government entrusted to us. It is a right such as that of the tree to the space of air and earth suitable for the full expansion of its principle and destiny of growth—such as that of the stream to the channel required for the still accumulating volume of its flow.’ End of quotation.

  “However, most scholars argue that the idea of Manifest Destiny was already implicit in an essay he wrote in 1839 for Volume 6, Issue 23 of the United States Magazine and Democratic Review. I quote, again:

  “’We must onward to the fulfilment of our mission—to the entire development of the principle of our organization—freedom of conscience, freedom of person, freedom of trade and business pursuits, universality of freedom and equality. This is our high destiny, and in nature’s eternal, inevitable decree of cause and effect we must accomplish it. All this will be our future history, to establish on earth the moral dignity and salvation of man—the immutable truth and beneficence of God.’ End of quotation.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Bobbi Jo Jackson. St. Clair Russell Hill had shown her the very same passages by John L. O’Sullivan, and she knew them by heart. It was the one characteristic she and Yale Templeton had in common: a photographic memory.

  “Only the thing is,” she said, and now she was pouting, “it just doesn’t seem right to me, the presidents plotting to take over Canada. I mean, Canadians are pretty much free already, aren’t they? So what if most of them are transvestites? Abraham Lincoln was a transvestite, and he wrote the Emancipation Proclamation. And,” and she shook her finger to give the point emphasis, “he decided to move here.”

  “Yes,” said Yale Templeton, nodding his head. “He most certainly did.”

  “So that’s why I’ve decided to write about it.”

  “Write about what?”

  “About the American plot to take over Canada. It was Professor Hill’s idea. I just have to get my hands on some more secret documents. He even told me where to look for them.”

  She went on to describe her plans for circumventing the security forces in Washington, but Yale Templeton was no longer paying attention. He was thinking about footnotes again. Not his own this time, but the ones Bobbi Jo Jackson would have to prepare. She would most certainly need his help. “Scholarly presses are especially demanding when evaluating manuscripts written by authors from outside the academic community,” he reminded himself. And he looked around for his copy of Turabian.

  XLVII

  In his Maine Woods, Thoreau relates the circumstances of a visit which he paid in 1853 to Neptune, then, at 89 years of age, the head of the Penobscot tribe. The old Indian gave an account of the origin of the moose, as follows: “Moose was whale once … Sea went out and left him, and he came up on land a moose.”

  SAMUEL MERRILL, THE MOOSE BOOK

  When Governor Neptune Lookalike (to use his full name) made the comment “Moose was whale once” he was, of course, speaking metaphorically. Alas, being American and therefore rather credulous, Thoreau accepted what the Penobscot chief said at face value and undertook a series of anatomical investigations intended to verify the ancestral links between whales and moose. It is most fortunate for his reputation that, immediately upon his death, his heirs disposed of the unfinished manuscript he produced on the subject, Fluke and Antler, before its existence could become widely known. In Thoreau’s defence, while his interpretation of moose fossils may have been deficient, at least he understood, as Herman Melville apparently did not, that the whale is a mammal. “Be it known,” wrote Melville in Moby Dick, “that waiving all argument, I take the good old fashioned ground that the whale is a fish, and call upon holy Jonah to back me.” But then Melville, like Governor Neptune Lookalike, was more concerned with the whale as metaphor than biological reality. Or so the literary critics inform us. Myself, I have more than a few doubts. And even if the literary critics are correct, I think a reasonable case can be made that Melville should have checked his facts a little more closely before putting pen to paper. Personally, I would not expect a reader to take my own metaphoric excursion seriously if I had begun by claiming that moose were a species of fish.

  And so we arrive by a somewhat circuitous route back at that creature of legend and lore, the Great White Moose. He has finally started to recover from the painful wounds he suffered while straddling the plastic white pine sapling along the shores of Lake Lokash. A period of convalescence in a corner of the old growth forest not yet ravaged by the logger’s axe has left him refreshed, his spirits lifted. He is ready to begin his perambulations once more.

  First, however, I wish to introduce a new theme for your consideration: Manifest Destiny. Yes, I know. I discussed Manifest Destiny in the last chapter. Indeed, I—or rather Yale Templeton—subjected you to a series of (admittedly) tedious (and certainly in one case virtually impenetrable) excerpts from the writings of the New York editor who coined the phrase. But in the last chapter I was speaking about Manifest Destiny as a concept developed by American politicians to describe and justify their continental aspirations. Here I am referring to the Manifest Destiny of the Great White Moose. Not a subject that John L. O’Sullivan cared to comment on. Nor anyone else, so far as I can determine. In other words, in revealing to you the Manifest Destiny of the Great White Moose, I am breaking new ground in the same way Yale Templeton was breaking new ground when he published his seminal article on boot sizes among Union cavalrymen. The feeling is intoxicating, let me tell you.

  Whether the Great White Moose himself fully understood his Manifest Destiny is an interesting but ultimately unanswerable question. Did the Great White Fish understand the Imperative Force that drove him on to his final confrontation with Captain Ahab? …

  But wait. Now that I think about it, how likely is it that you would have read Moby Dick right through to the end if Melville had chosen to divulge the elements of his dramatic climax at some midpoint in the novel? Be honest now. Remember all those passages on cetology. (And who knows? I may yet feel prompted to regale you with more recitations by Yale Templeton.) No, prudence clearly dictates that I allow the Manifest Destiny of the Great White Moose to become evident allusively, through the gradual unfolding of events over the remaining chapters. For the time being you will have to content yourself with the following information: After recovering from his wounds, the Great White Moose did indeed start on his travels again. But his course was no longer erratic, driven by troubling, if dim, memories. His stride was now purposeful, and in his mind’s eye he had a clear picture of his destination. He was on his way to that vast tract of land known as the Chapleau Crown Game Preserve. You may remember it better as the home of Slinger the Trapper.

  Joel was in love again.

  XLVIII

  Joel was in love again. With Maureen, the new assistant in the Office of the Registrar. He fell in love with her when she told him about the Committee on Standing.

  His final course at the university—or what he had expected would be his final course—h
ad not turned out at all as he had intended. The graduate student who had replaced Yale Templeton in History 393, Todd or Tom something, had set a very difficult and unfair examination, filled with multiple choice questions that only someone who had taken notes in lectures and actually done the assigned reading could have answered. In keeping with departmental policy, Todd or Tom had posted final grades on the Internet, with students listed by their identification numbers to ensure privacy. Not that Joel had difficulty interpreting the results. The two students who sat side by side at the front of the lecture hall—he had never bothered to learn their names—had each received an A+, and Moira (or was it Monica?)—had ended up with a C–. But even Vince Gionfriddo had apparently passed the course, scraping by with a D. “Obviously the athletic director made some deal for him,” Joel told himself.

  But now he faced a truly unsettling prospect. His parents would not be at all happy when they saw another F on his transcript, and he had little reason to hope they would be willing to subsidize the next stage of his search for meaning in life. At twenty-five he had already managed to extend his time at the university three years beyond what they had anticipated and increase their financial burden by thirty thousand dollars beyond the savings they had put aside for his education. He had felt confident when he assured them that he would pass the course. After all, Professor Templeton had never failed a student in over twenty years of teaching. (Possibly because he always gave the same examination with the same single essay question: “Provide a representative sample of facts, statistics, editorial opinions, and related material regarding the American Civil War as published in the British press between April 9, 1861, and April 12, 1865. Use footnotes where appropriate.”) Surely the university had some policy to protect students who were innocent victims of developments beyond their control.