Chapter 5
Captial Wonders and
Blunders
It was not absolutely necessary for me to detour north to Ottawa
but since I would be visiting the capital of virtually every country on my itinerary, it
seemed appropriate to visit my own. I also
wanted to touch base with Girve Fretz before I left Canada.
Having someone official to meet in the capital, someone that supported my
enterprise, gave me a sense of validity. Yet
in going up the wide driveway of Canada’s Parliament Buildings and seeing the
imposing Gothic lines of those three impressive structures, I suddenly felt like a phony
– I was not an accredited representative of my country.
I was not even a tourist. I
thought, What the hell am I doing here?
My fundamental purpose was not to portray myself as a
“Canadian” or as the national of any particular country but simply as another
benevolent citizen of the world. Unfortunately,
being known as a Canadian would be unavoidable. Would
I therefore be exploiting my country’s distinguished global reputation as a
peacemaker? Not really, I concluded. It was important that I be accepted as a promoter
of peace. I felt that being Canadian already
conferred upon me that privilege, and that responsibility.
Born lucky. But I was
bothered by a more important question: Why
can’t anyone from anywhere do what I’m setting out to do?
I sat on Melawend by the curb of the East Block. I saw tourists walking on the grounds. A group of teenagers, perhaps students on an
outing, were taking photos of themselves by the red granite fountain of the Centennial
Flame. One of green parliamentary busses
passed me on its way to Centre Block. I
watched its occupants get out. The men wore
dark suits and women wore executive skirt ensembles and many in the group carried
briefcases. I strained to see a face I might
have known from the news. No luck. Near them, tourists were disembarking from a large
tour bus.
Sightseeing was a bore – if you did not already know
something about what you were seeing. I
saw some of those tourists quickly flipping the pages of guidebooks while the tour group
they were with was slowly moving on.
I had visited Parliament Hill before. I was not here for sightseeing, but those three
mammoth buildings commanded attention by virtue of their rustic majesty. They were massive, rough-hewn from the solid earth. They were Gothic stateliness in variegated
sandstone, with snarling and smirking gargoyles and grotesques, pointed arches, flying
buttresses and carvings everywhere of national emblems and symbols.
The trio gave a feeling of an eclectic combination of medieval
English architecture – the Germanic towers, the French Mansard roofs, the Italian
lancet windows, the English “chapter house” library, all topped with fanciful,
floral wrought-iron filigree in the rose, shamrock, thistle and Fleur-de-lis. The most impressive feature was Centre Block's
Peace Tower jutting 300 feet into Ottawa’s relatively low skyline. Its lines led the eyes upward to the face of the
Roman-numeral clock (keeping good time – it was
11:05); and on up to the national flag, flapping high above the tower’s pointy copper
roof.
When I thought of this place, I remembered TV coverage of the
House of Commons, there, in Centre Block’s west wing.
In that noble vaulted chamber, evocative of utmost formality and decorum,
the eminent citizens we sent there with our votes to represent us and produce progressive
legislation, seemed to spend much of their time hooting and heckling each other and
banging their desks and shouting insults or “Hear, hear!” It seemed that what we did by voting was to give
our winning local orators a ticket to the Great Federal Jungle so they could reverse the
Darwinian theory by degenerating into wild, political primates. Still, I supposed they were more refined than their
19th century predecessors who use to hurl books and wrestle each other to the
floor.
Come to think of it, Parliament Hill was a fine, lively place
– call it “the Ottawa monkey house” (as would Mordecai Richler in his book,
Oh Canada! Oh
Quebec!: Requiem for a Divided Country, adding that 1986 was a vintage year of it).
I had come to regard politics as mostly posturing, glad-handing
nonsense. In the public's view it seemed
little more than slick partisan salesmanship. I
became apolitical.
The exception was Pierre Elliott Trudeau who was our Prime
Minister for all but nine months between 1968 and 1984.
I grew up in that era. You loved
Trudeau or hated him, he was like that: brilliant, enigmatic, eloquent, idealistic, a
political wizard – The Northern Magus as
Richard Gwyn had titled his 1980 biography of the man.
He was arrogant and flamboyant, an intellectual playboy cartooned with
squinty eyes and a rose between his teeth. He
was a charmer. He was an individualist. I admired him because he stood his ground with calm
and finesse.
He had held the French separatists at bay. His greatest success was the patriation of the
Canadian constitution from England so that we could finally stand on our own. But for all his charisma and savoir faire, he could not unify Canada with the
one thing we regrettably never had – a unified national spirit to match the worlds of
our idealistic coat of arms – A Mare Usque Ad
Mare – “From Sea Unto Sea”.
Now it was May 1986. The
Progressive Conservative Party, one of Canada’s oldest parties and the one that
formed our first government back in 1867, was governing us.
Prime Minister Brian Mulrooney headed the PC party. He had, together with other political shenanigans,
survived a scandal in 1985 over “tainted tuna”.
(And now,
writing this in 1998, I could go on to tell you how he almost single-handedly brought the
country to serious civil unrest through botched constitutional reforms and controversy
over “Free Trade” and the Goods and Services Tax (GST) with an arrogant
disregard for the overwhelming unpopularity of his policies.
I could go to tell you how he quit office while the going was still good,
for him, and how poor frazzled Kim Campbell, in becoming our country’s first female
Prime Minister, was left to take the fall for the PC Party – it was virtually
annihilated in the elections of 1993. I could
– but I would be getting too narrow and political for this story as well as getting
ahead of myself. For now, the Progressive
Conservatives – the PC’s – were in charge.)
Girve Fretz was a PC, the Member of Parliament (MP) for the
riding of Erie (which included Fort Erie). He
was Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of States (Mines). Fortunately, Girve was also one heck of a nice guy,
an accessible MP who was genuinely happy to meet his constituents, collectively or
individually, and help them. I cleared
security in West Block and met him in his office, Room 356.
He had the look of an executive: trim, with a full head of impeccable
graying hair, complimented by a pair of conservative glasses. He wore a suit that was the same brownish color as
the Nepean sandstone of the Parliament Buildings.
“Well, Tom, you’re on your way,” he said,
extending his hand. “I’m glad you
could stop by. Will you be around for
lunch?”
Lunch with a federal MP in the nation’s capital? I was flattered and tempted but my itchy feet and
lack of self-confidence won out. We talked
about the itinerary. He loaded me up with more
flag pins and desk flags and promises of continued support.
“Keep in touch and let us know if there is any way we can
help you.”
(How very
soon that would be.)
Girve was due in the Commons so we walked out
together. He suggested that we take some
photos. I got him on Melawend doing a mini
wheelie (Melawend was on her kickstand) with Centre Block in the background. After a final handshake, he was off. I watched him walk away in a proud confident
stride, with his head up, looking around the Hill. He
rounded the curve in front of Centre Block with his head cocked back a little, a smile on
his face; a happy man who loved his job.
It was time for me to move on.
First I wanted my own portrait against Centre Block. I took Melawend back to the curb opposite East
Block. I put one of my Minolta cameras on the
Manfrotto tripod, set the timer and sat on Melawend. Click. As
I stowed the tripod back atop the load, I saw a man who was wearing a dark suit and
carrying a briefcase, walking in my general direction, diagonally across the lawn from the
central walkway. I didn’t take any real
notice of him – as I mentioned, there were a lot of men in dark suits walking around
Parliament Hill. I put the camera back in one
of the saddlebags. I had my helmet on and my
back to the man when he came around and stood on the other side of Melawend.
“That’s quite a load you have there,” he said. It looks like you’re embarking on a long
journey.”
“Around…” I began.
I looked up from zipping the saddlebag.
“Mr. Clark…hello! Yes,
actually I’m going around the world… a friendship project.”
I couldn’t believe it! It
was Joe Clark, our former Prime Minister and now our Minister of External Affairs. I recognized him instantly from TV, newspapers,
magazines, but he was much better looking in person. He
had auburn hair graying distinctively at the temples, a ruddy complexion – the man
had real color – and, yes, something of a chin.
What was amazing about the man was he was one who truly could
“take it on the chin”, better than most. He
had been considered an ineffectual wimp during the nine months he had been Prime Minister,
likewise in the years as opposition leader against that most dynamic adversary, Prime
Minister Trudeau. Now he had bounced back with
aplomb to become an internationally respected statesman.
He was pursuing a policy of “constructive internationalism”,
polishing Canada’s role as a more moral than political middle power, working through
organizations such as the UN and the British Commonwealth.
While Mulrooney (the man who took the Progressive Conservative leadership
from him) was seen as rigidly partisan and sneaky, brown-nosing U.S. favor by his
pro-American rhetoric (a dramatic turnaround from the cooler, high-profile years of
Trudeau), Clark had shown himself as an honest, decent and reliable man, indeed an
effectual diplomat and a friend to his international counterparts. He was a workaholic and a family man who liked diet
Coke, John le Carré novels and baseball – a down-to-earth Joe who took his job, but
not his life, seriously.
“One thing I’ve learned about laughing at
yourself,” he would say later, “you’ve got to do it first.”
“Where did you start?” he said.
“Fort Erie…Ontario…it’s near Niagara
Falls.”
He nodded and looked appraisingly again at Melawend. Then he looked at me, smiled, and extended his
hand.
“I wish you all the best in your endeavor," he said.
I believe my hand lingered in the air after he let it go and
walked briskly away into East Block. It was
time for me to laugh at myself. One of the
country’s highest officials had just gone out of his way to greet me – the man
who was the boss of all the diplomats and embassy staff that I would be spending the next
year working through. I had just blown it as a
politician, failing Photo-Op 101, big-time. How
utterly grand – and useful – it might have been to have taken a photo of us
together, beside Melawend, Centre Block in the
background – The Man Himself and the roving ambassador, buddies in arms. While we were talking, I had considered taking a
photograph, but ashamed of the idea, I let it go. I
had not accomplished anything to make me worthy of even undertaking this trip. I told myself it would have been a lie, a document
that might be perceived as federal endorsement of my project, something that I could have
exploited to obtain what I needed overseas. Still,
for my personal record, it would have been nice to have a photo because I genuinely
respected Joe Clark and yes, I could have at least proven that I had met him. I did have the memory, but… what the heck, I
was in a place renowned for wisdom – and blunders.
I brought bread and bananas and slipped quickly out of the
capital.
With my goal in Ottawa accomplished, I wanted to make tracks for
Halifax. It might have been nice to enjoy a
leisurely exploration along the Ottawa River but I flew along the Voyager Route, stopping
only for gas in Alfred.
It was mid-afternoon when I reached the place where Highway 12
merged with 417 for the last bit of highway left to run in Ontario. I was so near to the St. Lawrence River that I felt
a chill of excitement – so near to the great waterway that had borne North
America’s discovers and conquerors deep into the continent. Now, its southerly shore would help guide me out of
it. Halifax,
dead ahead!
Well, not quite – there was one massive obstacle in the way,
and the St. Lawrence ran through it – Québec.
