Boreal

FAREWELL POSTINGS

The Day I Should Have Died

November 22, 2024

In informing me of the result of my latest thoracic echocardiogram my doctor said that I had been dodging a bullet for years, and I may continue doing so, but the odds were no longer in my favour. Her prognosis reminded me of the day I should have died.

I should have died almost 60 years ago as I laid on my back in a drainage ditch adjacent a country road looking up at the sky with a gentle rain caressing my face telling me not to worry.

“Correct conduct,” according to Mencius [372–289 BC], “arises, not through external forces, but as a result of virtues developed internally through observation of laudable models of behaviour.”

A laudable model of behaviour for me was a priest. I was particularly fond of the man for whom I was an altar boy, a Cub Scout and scout leader. My fondness for Father Tremblay was a mix of admiration and gratitude. The priest had saved my life.

I was twelve or thirteen when, with my brothers and a few friends, we hitched a large flatbed trailer used to haul heavy equipment such as bulldozers to logging or construction sites to a farm tractor and all, except for the driver, jumped onto the trailer and headed for a lake about seven miles down a solitary country road.

A short distance from Lake Pivabiska, it started to rain. We had brought a tent. To shield ourselves from the rain, we partially unfolded it and raised it above our heads. I was closest to one of the two large wheels between which the trailer bed was balanced like a seesaw.

For only a fraction of a second, I saw the wheel closest to me spinning in my direction before I felt myself floating in the air, landing on my back somewhere by the side of the road looking up at the sky. The wheel had caught a corner of the partially unfolded tent and dragged it and me with it, crushing a few vertebrae and less valuable bones and organs.

Eventually, a car came by and the driver was sent into town to fetch an ambulance. The town’s only ambulance was out on another call. Rather than wait for it to return, Father Tremblay, hearing that his altar boy was in trouble, jumped into his black station wagon and rushed to the site of the mishap.

They had laid me flat on my stomach on the trailer and everyone waited in the pouring rain for the ambulance. When the priest got there, he decided there was no time to waste. They wrapped me in some blankets and slid me into the back of his station wagon, then I was rushed to the hospital.

I thought we got there in plenty of time. I was still aware of my surroundings as the hospital's nursing staff (nuns, mostly) started taking off my clothing. I could hear them complain about boys playing with tractors before I finally passed out. I was later told that, if they had waited for the ambulance, I would have died of internal bleeding from a punctured spleen. Father Tremblay was the difference between life and death.

Father Tremblay always tried to do the right thing, even when it was not convenient—especially when it was not convenient—for that was the test; it was a test I would always try not to fail.

I often remember that day, and just as often wish for a different outcome and avoiding the life of someone who seldom fitted in and caused unnecessary hardship to a woman who deserved better.

LUCETTE AND THAT DAMNED FIRING

(Excerpt from Shooting the Messenger, Boreal Books)

I was sitting at my computer, an early Compaq portable, thinking about who to write to—after the Right Honourable Chief Justice Robert George Brian Dickson dismissed the appeal of my dismissal for alleged insubordination with a curt, cold "not a question of national interest"—when she came up the stairs, put a hand on my shoulder, and softly said: “You’ve done enough; time to move on.”

I was not ready to give up. I was not ready to move on, even if two and half years without a paycheck had taken its toll. All our savings were gone and we were deeply in debt.

“Ross said he has talked to a consultant he knows from Montréal who is looking for someone to manage some of his people here in Ottawa.”

I ignored her, not something I usually did.

“Don’t you understand? We are broke,” she said. “We have no more money. The bank won’t lend us any more; you have to get a job.”

I still ignored her. I am sorry about that.

“Won’t you at least meet with the person who is willing to give you a job?” she pleaded.

I had not looked for a job thinking it pointless! Who would hire someone who had been fired from the Public Service, especially with the Appraisal From Hell as a reference. Someone was actually willing to overlook all that. If I was not at least willing to talk to such a person, I risked losing more than mere possessions.

I only referred to Lucette twice, and not by name, in my whistleblower’s tale for fear that the government would do to her what they did to me. Her security clearance was somewhat more impressive than mine. If the RCMP, as the diplomats wanted them to, had declared me to be a security risk, as my spouse, she would have lost her security clearance and her job along with it.

I met my future partner in life while working at Communications Canada. She was a professional translator on temporary assignment at the agency.

We had been seeing each other for almost seven years when she decided it was time. We were playing backgammon at my place—I think I was winning—when she said “If I win this game, you have to marry me.” She liked to talk about how she won me in a game of backgammon. I like to think I let her win because I would have been a fool not to.

About a year after we first met, she joined the elite of government translators/interpreters: the fifty or so professionals who provide translation services and simultaneous interpretation to the House of Commons, the Senate of Canada, Parliamentary and Cabinet Committees and Party Caucuses.

It was not her Master’s in Linguistics, and later, her Master’s in Business Administration, that made for the most interesting dinner conversations, but her interest and knowledge of the Classics (literary works of Ancient Greece and Rome) and Renaissance literature, art and history.

It was a good thing that we had a wide variety of subjects to talk about because, many an evening, there was no point in asking about her day; she would not tell me, not even a hint. She had taken an oath to respect the confidence of the people she worked for, and that was that.

As part of her job, she often found herself in the same room as government Ministers and sometimes even the Prime Minister. The hardest thing for her during my confinement, with an impossible task to perform and a promised loss of employment no matter what I did, was stopping herself from walking up to a powerful Minister, or even the Prime Minister, and pleading with them to help me.

She had promised me she would never do that. She did, however, confront an aide to Joe Clark in Montréal and pointedly ask what had they done to her husband. She also recommended David Kilgour, a Member of Parliament whom, in her opinion, my former employer could not bribe or otherwise influence, to plead my case with the Right Honourable Joe Clark; but that was the extent of her involvement outside the home.

I did not want her to plead my case with any of the powerful people with whom she rubbed shoulders, not only because if she inconvenienced the wrong Minister she was out of a job, but because this was my fight and it would be won or lost on its own merit. My concern for her job was also why I did not want her at my hearing before Thomas W. Brown, or at my appearance before the Federal Court of Appeal and later, the Supreme Court of Canada.

My opponents had revealed themselves to be people without honour. Her presence could only inspire further acts of reprisal with her as the means. I would not take the risk, even if her counsel at my hearing before the Federal Court when Judge Marceau stated the obvious would have been invaluable.

In some ways, my firing had more of an abiding, deleterious effect on her than on me. She actually blamed herself for not having taken better care of me. As if any other woman could have done more, before, during and after! In any event, I would not let her, so she should not have felt bad. But still she did.