day’s light and love’s warmth. We let him stay on, a deranged boarder. We owed him that.
But the rain fell so hard and for so long it seemed unnatural. It was dark inside our little house. My father had gone to Winnipeg two days before. Sir John A. Macdonald had sent Col. Garnet Wolseley and twelve hundred soldiers out here to
save
us from “the Half-breeds.” It was a
friendly
expedition, with some British regulars and a whole lot of Orangemen aiming to avenge the death of Brother Thomas Scott. The troops had stormed Lower Fort Garry, hoping to wipe out Riel and his men, but were disappointed to find the front door open and the fort abandoned. A short distance away, Riel stood watching them awhile before he turned to the south and walked into exile (and in exile he would be elected to the House of Commons). It was open season on the Métis. The soldiers set up the Loyal Order of the Orange in Winnipeg, and that grand organization began to rule us all. Inspired by booze, the soldiers beat up Métis men and raped the women. With all the brawling, Dad told Alice she had to stay home with me. My mother was feeling a certain ambivalence towards being a woman.
I had an earache and told her so the only way I could. She paced, patient, singing old Wesleyan hymns that depressed her. But the downpour drowned out her singing and my crying drowned out the downpour and she began to hold my wailing little body just a bit too tight. At last, when she heard me sharply cry out and understood it was from the tiny, secret pinch she’d given my thigh beneath the shawl, she stopped. She put me down. Very carefully, she wrapped me in fresh moss and put me in the sling and covered it all with her old capote. She left my dad a note. She took a bit of dried moose meat, a few cold pancakes and—selfish thing—a small bag of sugar, for she was becoming secretive and liked to wet her finger and suck on sweets. A coal lamp burned over the wash basin. She blew it out. We headed for Winnipeg, a ten-mile walk.
My father hurt like a virgin at an orgy. A weaker idealist would have lived at O’Lone’s saloon. But pain never scared Dad. He held the hurt bundle of his idealism like it was a puppy in a blanket. He had visceral humility, a thorough fidelity to being alive, even when it hurt. He felt such gratitude for the privilege of taking part in life’s adventure that the tears would bite his eyes and his laughter was a cry with joy in it, and my mother would touch him, struck by awe for the spirit she saw there.
Idealism made him suffer. And his pain, on the raining afternoon my mother tried to walk to town, was an astonishing hot red thing. Dad had been on his way back home, worried about Alice and me, when he first saw Col. Garnet Wolseley trot by wearing bright red trousers and a tunic adorned with loops of gold thread and brass buttons and medals for heroic deedsfor the British army in China and India and Crimea. Wolseley’s cherry-red gallantry glowed like embers, receding as he rode wetly north, back to the Lower Fort, downriver from Fort Garry, to dinner and a fire. If you followed Colonel Wolseley down the muddy road towards his comfort and his cognac, it would have been a peaceful little scene deserving of our nostalgia for British soldiers come to save the English-speaking pioneers from impulsive half-breeds who had, without provocation,
dyed their hands in the diabolical butchery of the brave, young Orangeman Thomas Scott
. If you were deaf, if you kept your sentimental eyes upon the heroic coloner’s blue-blooded slog home to his toddy and his bath.
My father began to hurry home. Just south of the St. Norbert church, in Métis country, the soldiers were hunting for Riel. They had tracked a man they thought might be him right onto our property. Dad could hear the whooping and shouting in the bush quite near our house, and he ran towards the sound with his heart in his mouth. He stumbled into a clearing, and there he found the
But the rain fell so hard and for so long it seemed unnatural. It was dark inside our little house. My father had gone to Winnipeg two days before. Sir John A. Macdonald had sent Col. Garnet Wolseley and twelve hundred soldiers out here to
save
us from “the Half-breeds.” It was a
friendly
expedition, with some British regulars and a whole lot of Orangemen aiming to avenge the death of Brother Thomas Scott. The troops had stormed Lower Fort Garry, hoping to wipe out Riel and his men, but were disappointed to find the front door open and the fort abandoned. A short distance away, Riel stood watching them awhile before he turned to the south and walked into exile (and in exile he would be elected to the House of Commons). It was open season on the Métis. The soldiers set up the Loyal Order of the Orange in Winnipeg, and that grand organization began to rule us all. Inspired by booze, the soldiers beat up Métis men and raped the women. With all the brawling, Dad told Alice she had to stay home with me. My mother was feeling a certain ambivalence towards being a woman.
I had an earache and told her so the only way I could. She paced, patient, singing old Wesleyan hymns that depressed her. But the downpour drowned out her singing and my crying drowned out the downpour and she began to hold my wailing little body just a bit too tight. At last, when she heard me sharply cry out and understood it was from the tiny, secret pinch she’d given my thigh beneath the shawl, she stopped. She put me down. Very carefully, she wrapped me in fresh moss and put me in the sling and covered it all with her old capote. She left my dad a note. She took a bit of dried moose meat, a few cold pancakes and—selfish thing—a small bag of sugar, for she was becoming secretive and liked to wet her finger and suck on sweets. A coal lamp burned over the wash basin. She blew it out. We headed for Winnipeg, a ten-mile walk.
My father hurt like a virgin at an orgy. A weaker idealist would have lived at O’Lone’s saloon. But pain never scared Dad. He held the hurt bundle of his idealism like it was a puppy in a blanket. He had visceral humility, a thorough fidelity to being alive, even when it hurt. He felt such gratitude for the privilege of taking part in life’s adventure that the tears would bite his eyes and his laughter was a cry with joy in it, and my mother would touch him, struck by awe for the spirit she saw there.
Idealism made him suffer. And his pain, on the raining afternoon my mother tried to walk to town, was an astonishing hot red thing. Dad had been on his way back home, worried about Alice and me, when he first saw Col. Garnet Wolseley trot by wearing bright red trousers and a tunic adorned with loops of gold thread and brass buttons and medals for heroic deedsfor the British army in China and India and Crimea. Wolseley’s cherry-red gallantry glowed like embers, receding as he rode wetly north, back to the Lower Fort, downriver from Fort Garry, to dinner and a fire. If you followed Colonel Wolseley down the muddy road towards his comfort and his cognac, it would have been a peaceful little scene deserving of our nostalgia for British soldiers come to save the English-speaking pioneers from impulsive half-breeds who had, without provocation,
dyed their hands in the diabolical butchery of the brave, young Orangeman Thomas Scott
. If you were deaf, if you kept your sentimental eyes upon the heroic coloner’s blue-blooded slog home to his toddy and his bath.
My father began to hurry home. Just south of the St. Norbert church, in Métis country, the soldiers were hunting for Riel. They had tracked a man they thought might be him right onto our property. Dad could hear the whooping and shouting in the bush quite near our house, and he ran towards the sound with his heart in his mouth. He stumbled into a clearing, and there he found the
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