The Meeting
Storied, historic Macdonald Hall, built in the late nineteenth century by men whose nationalism chugged right along the lines of their economic interests, was lit that early autumn evening only by the dim brilliance emanating from its sham electric chandeliers.
Assembled in the Hall were the members of a prim audience, each adopting a presumptuous affectation of self-awareness as they settled slowly into their sturdy red-cushioned seats. As they did so, they openly evaluated each other, expressing visible but silent approval not only at the presence of their favoured acquaintances, but also at the absence of those not so favoured. For this was no ordinary meeting of no ordinary society, and membership, though not explicitly so, was in effect exclusive.
In the crowd, there were sweaters, protruding proudly beneath the sombre visages of chinless husbands; there were civil servants, of the kind mysteriously referred to as “high-ranking”, set apart by their peculiar combination of complacent paranoia and vengeful mediocrity; there were members of what they themselves called the arts community, projecting that special sense of self-importance which they share with flight attendants; to everyone’s delight, there were also members of the Canadian media, with their unique demeanour of petulant ingratiation; there were dozens of those routinely elevated in the local papers, possessing the quality of being “prominent”; and finally, there were hats, worn by wives, to signal a hint of regal import.
From the perspective of a practiced observer, appreciating the scene as a whole, their eager presence was suitably complemented by the dull, vaguely reddish glow emanating from the painted portraits of their venerable, but quite dead, counterparts, who glared soberly down upon them from a permanent vantage upon polished, oak-panelled walls.
After a moment the seated crowd hushed and turned its collective gaze upon the stage, which was raised a foot or two above the red-carpeted floor, and occupied by a stately lectern in its centre, with a modest table off to the side. On one of the two chairs set behind the table sat a figure who had adopted the air of a man looking serious in spite of himself, clearly the speaker of the evening; and beside him, from the other chair, arose the short, portly figure of a manifestly proud but secretly sensitive man, clearly the moderator of the evening.
As the moderator approached the lectern with rotund dignity, he raised his arms to silence the already silent crowd, and, after pausing for effect, he took a slow, ostentatious sip from a glass of water that had been placed there for him. With his head thus raised, and his nose in the air, he gazed at the crowd under his bushy white eyebrows in an approximation of pompous disapproval, while the mediocre light from above reflected off a spot on his balding head.
After setting the glass on the lectern, which he gazed at for a moment as though he believed it were about to say something, and after having assumed the look of a man about to engage in an act of historic importance, presumably with something on the order of national unity at stake, he began to speak with the confidence of a man known to all, who needed no introduction.
Which, for the assembled members of the Canadian Society for History, Identity, and Tradition, if not for almost everyone else in the world, was entirely appropriate. For this diminutive moderator, and as it happens one of the heroes of our story, was none other than Roderick Zulecken, now a renowned publisher of Canadian authors from southern Ontario, and formerly head of the Canadian Studies department at none other than Montreal’s own MacGulliver University.
Located in the heart of Montreal, like a minor monument to a tenacious belief in the potential for social hierarchy in Canada, the stately “MacGull”, with its ancient buildings, some of them over a century old and made of real stone, was famous amongst Anglo-Scottish Canadians all the way from Windsor to Fredericton, and had been advertised for generations, with unwitting performative contradiction, by the parents of its graduates as “the Harvard of the North”.
It was from this bastion that, throughout his academic career, Zulecken had nominated himself an arbiter of what should and what should not be counted as truly Canadian; and by his own humble admission, his status, his authority, and, indeed, his genius, had been acknowledged by experts from universities as distant as Winnipeg and Antigonish. Known by his own design to his students as Mr. Scrumptious, a nickname which he vainly promoted in playful contrast to the presumably serious importance of his literary scholarship, he was essentially harmless.
His sense of his own significance had, however, imbued him with one particularly unfortunate habit, which, though it does not redound to Zulecken’s credit, we are bound nonetheless to mention to the reader, given the importance of the role this publisher will play in our adventure. It is a habit familiar to all those who have encountered men who have achieved the pinnacle of achievement in a narrow, limited enterprise, and to which our little hero, like most of us, was by no means immune.
Not to put too fine a point upon it, Zulecken too often insulated his mostly unmerited sense of his own importance, by insulting his own students, who thus referred to him by quite another nickname of their own design, which it would be beneath the dignity of our story, and its subject, to print.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began - but beyond the first row of upright listeners no one heard him, for the microphone had not been lowered to the appropriate height for our noble speaker. Reaching up and at the same time glowering over his vintage wire-rimmed glasses at a young woman who happened to be standing by the stage, as though his indignity were somehow her responsibility, Zulecken brought the squeaking and cracking metal microphone collar down to his level. “Ah - yes - ladies and gentlemen,” he said, but once again no one could hear him.
Glaring with a mixture of indignant astonishment and growing panic, first at the device, and then at the crowd, Zulecken’s gaze fell upon a young man sitting in the front row who was making subtle movements with his mouth and hands, and trying to catch the professor’s eye. After a brief moment of puzzled astonishment, Zulecken realized the young man was signalling to him that, in fact, the microphone simply had not been turned on. The diminished professor, realizing his mistake, first turned to glare again at the young woman standing beside the stage, and even went so far as to gently wag a finger at her, before he turned the same finger to the microphone and, finding the switch, finally turned on the offending instrument.
“Ladies and gentlemen?” he said, as though asking a question, and, finding that even those in the back reacted to his words, settled his glasses on his nose with a stern flourish and gazed over them at the crowd. “I would like to thank you for coming to this very special meeting of the Canadian Society for Heritage, Identity, and Tradition. I would particularly like to thank our benefactor, Mrs. Margaret Campbell” - at this, he sent a pleasant glance and a dignified wave to the ancient, pickled heiress, who sat behatted in the audience, and who raised her eyes in a dignified manner as people turned their heads in her direction - “wife of the late Mr. John Campbell, the celebrated Bay Street financier, for having, uh, financed this special meeting, and to her daughter, the filmmaker Margaret Campbell, uh, junior” - here Zulecken sent a rather more tender glance in the direction of a middle-aged woman seated in the front row of the audience, whose ankle-length dress and expensively dishevelled hair betrayed her to be one of those who have chosen to be involved one way or another in what in Canada is called “the arts” - “who kindly contributed her influence to bring together such an assemblage of accomplished, uh, persons, the cream, if I may, of Canadian society.” At this, he paused for a moment and, noticing no applause forthcoming, began to clap his hands together, thus encouraging a few obliging members of the crowd to join him in an effort to applaud themselves.
“And our subject this evening is undoubtedly worthy of the presence of such august society.” At this Zulecken paused to take another sip of water, an oratorical habit of his which was familiar to his acquaintances and colleagues. Whether it was caused by a congenital sensitivity in his throat, or an over-reliance on one particular tactic, or was a sign of the great care that he employed in the formulation of his every sentence, or was in fact a mere affectation, was a subject of some often less than friendly speculation after each of his speeches and lectures. “For we are not here,” he continued, after having set down the glass with ostentatious care, “merely to hear about the latest research into one aspect or another of Canadian society, as important as each such aspect is to all of us. Nor are we here to debate the latest burning questions that are inspired by the ebb and the flow of the day-to-day political interests of, uh, the day, the little controversies that pass as quickly from our attention as they come to our attention in the first place. Rather, we are here to send off one of our own, very distinguished members on what, in the world of academia, is known as a sabbatical, I mean, a research project, but which, in this very special case, I think would be more appropriately described as a journey - or, if I may, a mission - or even, yes, even a quest - to discover the essence underlying and binding our society, history, identity, and tradition. To be specific, our distinguished member is setting out on an adventure, to cross our home and native land, to discover, by talking to real Canadians, what it means in and for itself, as it were, to truly be, to be truly - Canadian.” At this point Zulecken paused for another sip of water and, having finally completed his own journey to the end of that magisterial opening, the short speaker was appropriately rewarded with polite applause from the assembly.
“As we all know,” he continued, adopting a weighty tone he felt appropriate for the discussion of crucial patriotic endeavours, “there is no more important question for our country than the question of its national identity, for it is what holds us together. It is what gives us character, what makes us great, what makes us unique, and what sustains our international reputation on the, uh, international stage.” With slow nods and looks of ponderous significance, the crowd indicated its agreement. “But at the same time as we acknowledge the importance of our identity, we often hear that we have no idea whatsoever what that identity might in fact be. This is an absolute” - here Zulecken paused for effect, and took another sip of water - “an absolute falsehood, designed to pollute our national confidence, erase our noble and ancient, yes, ancient, history, and ultimately - and this is indeed a great threat - to disrupt our national unity.” At these last two words the nods became more vigorous, and were accompanied in one or two places by clapping. “Those of us who care about con-, uh, preserving our unique cultural heritage know that it is a constant and unceasing struggle - even a battle. Yes, a battle - against the depredations of those within our nation who would destroy all that our two founding peoples have fought so hard to create, and against the corrupting influence, from without, of our powerful but ambitious and intemperate southern neighbours. It is for this reason that we have created institutions, and even laws, to protect our culture - from the brave and continuing efforts of our national broadcasting corporation, to the creation of departments in our public universities devoted to the study of our culture, in which I have played my own devoted, if humble, role” - here Zulecken paused again to allow for some polite but unforthcoming murmurs contradicting his unnecessary modesty - “to the Canadian content regulations so valiantly enforced by our cultural authorities, without which many of our most acclaimed Canadian artists would have no audience whatsoever; and finally, of course, to the role played by such institutions as that represented by our gathering here today.” Applause.
“But all of our efforts at sustaining our culture in this way, as earnest as they have been, have unfortunately failed - yes, I say failed - to provide us with a single, defining source to consult when we are led, by those forces foreign and domestic that would divide us, to question what that unique cultural identity really is. The genius behind this frightening insight into such a fundamental oversight” - here Zulecken again paused for another sip of water, allowing the audience to relish his rhetorical flourish - “is the recognition that we who have been labouring to define this unifying identity have been doing so without any authoritative, established, definitive and explicit center of our own. Yes, I can see from the looks on your faces that the scales have begun to fall from your eyes, as they did from mine, when I was first privileged with this clear and ingenious insight.
“How can we have been so blind, I wondered. Between all of the classes, all of the books and magazines, between all of the films and documentaries, between all of the funding and grants and conferences and studies and plays and acts and poems and novels and awards shows, and, uh, researches and journalisms and stories and textbooks and biographies and monographs and indeed commercials, that have been produced to promote this great cultural project, there is no single, definitive, authoritative source for our people to consult when the question of Canadian identity arises.” This time it was a slow shaking of heads and an exchange of worried looks that acknowledged the crowd’s agreement. “There is no Encyclopédie, no great novel, no single work of any kind that we can consult for an answer to this great question. And of course there is no constitution to which we can refer, at least not in the American sense - and there never will be, as long as our loyal, independent heritage is conserved in the, uh, unwritten traditions preserved, ah, unwritten in the minds of our best, that is, I mean to say, ah, minds and leaders.” Sip.
“But fortunately for us, there is a man, the very man who first brought this great Canadian mistake, I mean, uh, gap, to my attention, who is willing, both willing and able to - to fill this gap, as it were, or rather, to, ah, stopper this great cultural hole.” At this point Zulecken, somewhat flustered by the turn his speech had taken, turned to his left, to direct the attention of the audience to the evening’s as yet silent speaker, who was still sitting with a dignified air at the table where Zulecken had left him. “I am speaking, of course, of a man familiar to all of us who are involved in the great Canadian national cultural crusade: Professor Gordon Donald Clark.”
Politely enthusiastic applause broke out as the audience turned its gaze upon their hero, the esteemed scholar and cultural personality, the aforenamed Clark.
To the casual observer, he appeared, naturally enough, to be just another friendly white-collar Canadian approaching the later stages of middle age, with his medium height, his greying and gradually disappearing hair, the somehow comforting paunch protruding from beneath his my-wife-bought-it-for-me sweater, his slightly weathered khakis, and his cheap dark brown leather boating shoes.
But to the informed observer, it was his eyes that held the promise that there was, indeed, a remarkable personality beneath such evident mediocrity. For those eyes, which appeared at first glance in the guise of an inconspicuous washed-out blue, and which seemed to express, with their slightly retreated focus and dim glint, nothing more than that sense of earnest distance which betrays the universal Canadian desire to be liked - such eyes could only be taken by those who knew of the man’s national achievements to be, by virtue of their evident banality, deeply deceptive.
For where, the observer had to ask, was there any indication in their humble appearance, that from behind those eyes stared the brain of a man who, in his youth, had won the silver medal upon graduating from the University of Toronto’s famous Albert College, and who as a student had had the rare honour of having been tutored jointly by those great eminences of intellectual fame, Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye? Should there not be some sign of a redoubtable, dominating personality in the gaze of a man who had since the age of 28 been a tenured professor at that very same college, who had for decades been a leading figure in his chosen academic specialty, Canadian Literature, and whose renown was unmatched amongst CanLit professors across the country? Why was there no mark in his sensitive brow of his deep connection to the land, which he had expressed in his many groundbreaking articles on the subject of nature and landscape in the Canadian novel? For what reason was there no indication in his bearing or his countenance that this was a man who had won the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction, not once, or twice, but three times, and who had even met the Queen once at Rideau Hall in Ottawa?
Surely, faced with the fact of such weak eyes on such a celebrated man, the observer had to conclude that the answer to this paradox must lie in his own internal failure of judgment, in his own personal incapacity to recognize the signs of true greatness; and it must be the limitations of his own intelligence which cause him to see only cheerful mediocrity where so many awards, and indeed induction into nothing less than the nation’s pantheon, that elevated institution nominated with grand quixocitism the Order of Canada, proved without question that there must be much more dwelling somewhere within the acclaimed man than his apparent ordinariness, and his habitually sweet confusion, would indicate.
In response to the applause, Clark slowly inclined his head, as though to suggest that he did not deserve such recognition, but at the same time to acknowledge that he politely accepted the fact that the audience genuinely believed he did.
Suddenly, however, he redirected his gaze, with something approaching a stern look, towards Zulecken, who had joined in the applause, but had unfortunately kept his hands too close to the microphone as he had done so. As a result, the heavy moderator’s own enthusiastic clapping was reverberating painfully and awkwardly around the room. Zulecken, though, mistakenly took Clark’s attention as a sign that he should continue clapping, and so only redoubled his efforts. Indeed, he began to drown out the applause of the audience, and many stopped clapping in order to put their hands to better use - that is, to protect their abused ears. Finally, Clark was driven to raise and lower his outstretched right hand, glaring angrily as he sent the unfortunate signal to a confused Zulecken, who only redoubled his adulatory efforts before he finally stopped clapping on his own account, and turned to face the audience, which stared at him in stunned silence.
“Professor Clark’s many accomplishments in the field of Canadian Literature require no recounting before the members of our Society,” Zulecken continued, “but it is of course conventional to list some of any speaker’s accomplishments nonetheless, and it is my great pleasure to be in a position to carry out this traditional duty. There are, of course, too many achievements to recount in the brief time we have available tonight, and so, sadly, I will cite only those works most relevant to the matter at hand, in order to limit the length of this introduction.” Some applause.
“Professor Clark first came to prominence as a contributor to our nation’s cultural self-awareness with his stunning first book, The Median is the Message: Canada’s International Literary Reputation, which bravely investigated the cunning manner in which Canadian authors have spread their unnoticed influence all over the world, eschewing the blunt instrument of writing so-called “great” works, and thus by writing “mediocre” works carrying out a sophisticated critique of that, uh, outdated colonial fiction of hierarchical superiority in the evaluation of literature, so selfishly abused by our self-promoting southern neighbours in the establishment of their competitive form of literary fame and the correspondingly vulgar form of their unfortunately vast influence.”
Particularly pleased with that one, Zulecken rewarded himself with another sip of water, as he let the impact of his words sink in to his evidently stunned audience.
“And, as though he intended with sublimity to stun our nation out of its unreflective apathy, by confronting Canadians with too much to consider at once, this first work of the young Professor Clark, which sent shockwaves throughout the emerging institution of Canadian Studies, was followed a mere eight years later by the equally brilliant and groundbreaking From Me to Thee to We: The Role of National Unity in Literary Representations of Canadian Identity, a remarkable work which established in a new critical language the connection between Canada’s unique brand of cultural nationalism, which combines keeping us together into both an end and a means, and the literary representation of its people.” A sip from Zulecken, and squinting contemplation from everyone else.
“But as great as these two seminal works were, it was Professor Clark’s next contribution to the Canadian literary community that was destined to utterly change our understanding of the crucial role played by nature and the landscape in Canadian literature. I’m speaking, of course, of the even more seminal Peace, Order and Good Wonderment: The Use of Awe in the Representation of Landscape in Canadian Literature, which has been a standard reference work in Canadian Literature courses since its publication.
“And most recently, of course, there is his Governor General’s Award-winning masterpiece, Now You GG, Now You Don’t: The Ups and Downs of Fame in Canadian Literary Biography, which charts with exceptional circumspection the commanding position that is held by our national awards system as it guides the establishment of literary reputation in the self-perception of our nation.” Sip.
“Half of any one of these works,” continued Zulecken, “would have been enough to earn tenure and establish a significant presence on the CanLit stage. But taken together, and even excluding his many articles and conference papers, they have established Professor Clark as the leading authority on our nation’s literature. That great accomplishment, however, has not been enough for this industrious figure, and it leads me to the subject that has brought us together on this historic occasion.
“For Professor Clark, after many years of contemplation, has come to the radical and, if I may, revolutionary conclusion that the study of fiction cannot offer a complete account of Canadian identity.
“He has seen that what is missing in this analysis is an account, a comprehensive account, of real Canadian lives, real Canadian stories - and especially of the way everyday, ordinary Canadians conduct and, crucially, describe themselves. And it is for this reason that he has conceived his latest project, the grand cultural project for the better understanding of our national identity, and, indeed, for the betterment of our nation, which he is here tonight to announce to the public formally and for the first time.”
Here Zulecken paused, taking another sip of water and allowing the importance of the grand undertaking to sink in to the sympathetic audience, which had at once grown silent and restless - a sure sign, Zulecken was convinced, that his words had achieved their intended stunning effect.
“And so, without further ado, I would like to make way for a description of this great endeavour by the great man who will himself undertake it, and who just happens to be the Lieutenant-Governor of our distinguished Society - Professor Gordon Donald Clark!”
Whether it was because of the rhetorical flourish with which he delivered these rousing final words, or because Zulecken began at the same time to move away from the microphone and towards his seat, the audience was once again roused, and raised its heads to welcome the doughty leader with vigorous applause.
Clark rose with some impatience from his seat and, gracefully squeezing his relatively modest paunch past the portly Zulecken, approached the lectern, upon which he placed the pages of his speech. As the applause ceased, he began to speak.
No one beyond the first row, however, could hear him, for the microphone was set too low. Blushing at the mistake, the humble Clark tried awkwardly to glance with a mixture of apology at the crowd before him and anger at the startled Zulecken behind him. Seeing what was wrong, the also blushing Zulecken made an awkward attempt to rise, as though he were going to approach the microphone and adjust it himself. Clark, however, stopped him with a look and clumsily raised the microphone, with the instrument emitting the obligatory squeaking and crumpling sounds.
“HELLO?” Clark bellowed, far too loudly, into the now properly adjusted microphone. “CAN YOU HEAR ME?” The crowd, some of whom had once again placed their hands over their ears for protection, nodded and murmured their affirmation, and one man near the back even found the courage to shout “IT’S TOO LOUD!” Still embarrassed, but gathering his pride and composure, Clark spoke again, this time more carefully, and in a milder tone: “Is this better?” Heads nodded, murmuring ceased, hands were removed from ears, and Clark, his dignity recovered, arranged the pages of his speech with a professional smack on the lectern and began to speak.
“It is always a pleasure, as a scholar, to receive funding after successful submission,” began the professor, “of a cultural proposal, especially in an era when politicians place more value on things than on culture.” This introduction drew loud performative applause from the audience, many of whom took collective action by spontaneously curling their lips, and furrowing their brows.
“And I am very pleased to say that the great and crucial project which I am about to undertake has received generous support from various official agencies. This affirmation, of the deep and abiding connection between policy and the production of culture, shows that while our system may be under threat, it has life in it yet, and all is not lost in the great battle we fight, armed with that which is mightier than the sword, if not bloodier.” Applause. “I say we, to include everyone here - not just the artists, but everyone who participates in guarding our culture, by reading and writing and attending talks such as this.” Light applause. “And it is a battle, and we are without question standing on guard for our country, what with the onslaughts from without, and from within, that would surely overwhelm us if it were not for our deliberate and systematic efforts to protect our people from foreign, or alien, rather, cultural influences.” Some serious murmurs and nods of assent emanated from the audience, clearly excited that this was a speaker who would not hold back from articulating the high importance of the issues at stake in the activities of their Society.
“But insofar as it is a battle to defend our culture and our identity and indeed our unity, we must have a united answer to the question: what is that identity?
“As many of you know, I have devoted my life to answering that question, discovering our identity in the creative representation of Canada in literature, in fiction, that is, in cultural representations of our nation and our people. And without question, we all agree, that the objects of cultural production - poems, short stories, novels, films, paintings, and such - play a crucial role in the establishment of our cultural identity, the way we see and describe ourselves.
“But some time ago, I had a disturbing revelation, one morning as I went for a walk in the snow. The study of fictional Canadian identity, to which I had devoted my life, I realized, would be of limited value - if it could not be compared with the study of fact! In other words, without a comparison between the representation of the landscape, for example, in the depiction of characters in novels, and the representation of landscape in the words of ordinary, actually living Canadians - it would be impossible to see if the fiction reflected the reality, or had indeed had any impact whatsoever on the reality of actual Canadian life.” At this pronouncement, the sombre audience was moved to solemn head-shaking and serious shoe-contemplating.
“The need to fill this gap, to provide this comparison, became something like an obsession with me. The traditional representations of Canada - the Canada of novels and poems and the NFB and the national news and elementary school classrooms and everything from The Beachcombers to Danger Bay- would not be authoritative without being informed by the representations of ordinary Canadians in their ordinary lives. And so I formulated a plan, a project, to undertake a great journey across the land, in search of real stories and real people, to make contact with real ordinary Canadians, whose words and deeds could complement, and indeed complete, the great cultural task to which I have devoted so many years. And it is the announcement of the beginning of that project which we are here to commemorate tonight.”
At this point Clark paused to clear his throat, and an enthusiastic listener in the back of the room began applauding. He stopped almost immediately, however, when he realized he was alone in his act, and so quickly hid his hands behind his back as he confronted a few superciliously turned heads.
“Now, I had considered the option of delivering this speech informally, going into some of the details of the journey and its goals, and leaving out the finer details and articulations required for a fuller understanding of my project. But then I decided that - given the fine nature of the members of this society, which includes some of the leading lights of our country’s intellectual and cultural establishment - or community, rather - I decided that I would instead deliver an address worthy of such highly accomplished people.” Here Clark paused, and every member of the audience stared deliberately forward, as though to confirm that he or she knew that he or she was surely included in Clark’s description of this elite, but also that he or she had the good grace not to appear overly proud or self-conscious at this recognition. “And so I will read for you the text used in my various applications for the funding which will fund my great - ah, expedition, if I may, in search of real Canadian stories.”
At this point Clark retrieved from beneath the neckline of his sweater an exquisite set of reading glasses, complete with thick, black rims and strung with a thick, black cord, so that they could be hung around his neck when he was not wearing them on his nose. Though in fact he had no optical need for the glasses, they were nonetheless necessary to Clark, affording him an opportunity to look dignified as he read, and to look powerful when he chose, his gaze directed at one moment down at his paper, and the next, before you knew it, over the rims of the glasses with his head inclined. It was indeed a powerful technique, and one that Clark had mastered over the years. Unlike many of his colleagues, including the aggressive Zulecken, who attempted this trick with ordinary glasses, Clark knew that its highest powers could only be invoked with reading glasses, given their size and shape, and the difference they presented from the wearer’s normal appearance.
But though they were an essential part of his academic armour, they were yet a cause of occasional concern to Clark, whenever he fell into one of those secret moods so familiar to all honest professors, tormented by the possibility that he was in fact a fraud. When he looked back on the path of his career, he sometimes wondered about the impact these devices had had on his success. Without them, would he have impressed so many professors when he was still a mere undergraduate? Would he have been offered a tenured position at so young an age? Would so many of his books have been published and been so well promoted by suitably impressed publishers? Would he have been asked to chair so many committees? Would the awarders of grants and prizes have considered him worthy of so many grants and prizes if he had not so much looked the part of what in his country passed for an intellectual?
Fortunately for the force of his present performance, however, such doubts did not haunt our hero’s consciousness as he placed the prized glasses with a practiced flourish on his high nose, the cord dangling down elegantly on both sides of his vaguely patrician visage, nor did any internal criticism disrupt his consciousness as he then dropped his eyes to the papers on the lectern before him. And then, as everyone waited for the briefest of moments and turned all their attention upon Clark in his silence, the professor quickly raised his suddenly piercing blue eyes over those thick black rims and those unprescribed half-lenses and glared sternly at the immediately captivated audience. Only then, when he was sure of having established his proper authority, did Clark again lower his eyes to his papers and begin to read from them, speaking in a slightly deeper, more portentous voice than he used naturally.
“There is no question that there is no question of more importance in the Canadian cultural and political landscape than the question of Canadian identity. From the moment of our culture’s emergence in the conflict between its two founding nations, and in the shadow of our dominating imperial neighbour to the south, the importance of addressing the question of Canadian identity has been universally acknowledged across the land, from sea to sea to sea, as crucial not only for the purpose of sustaining national unity, but also for protecting the distinct cultural and political interests of our two founding peoples.
“The question of Canadian identity, in other words, is a question of survival, establishing a unity of form and content between the history of our struggle for the physical development of our nation and for the cultural development of our national unity.” Some applause.
“The material importance of this question is evident in the creation of a vanguard of public institutions devoted to the protection and promotion of Canadian identity, especially on those boundaries where it is most at risk - our cultural Mounties, as it were. These brave groups range from the Department of Canadian Heritage to the Canada Council for the Arts, to the Office of the Minister for Interprovincial Dialogue, to the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, to the recently established Federal Bureau for the Investigation of Foreign Internet Content, to the National Film Board, with its mandate to represent Canada to Canadians, to the Commission for Textbooks to Preserve Canadian Tradition, created to protect the transmission of our cultural inheritance across the generations; and of course they include the Institute for the Study of Canadian Identity, the Organization for Canadian Cultural and Social Cooperation, the Canadian Historical Association for the Promotion of Cultural Sovereignty, the Victorian Society for Canada’s Royal Heritage, and the Royal Canadian Commission for United Diversity, to name a few.
“And finally, but most importantly, in any act of cultural communication there is always already the crucial defense provided by the transparent hand of the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, as it preserves and strengthens our social and economic structures in the face of the neverending threat of invasion, of the infiltration of our national airwaves by foreign content, and clears the cultural atmosphere, the very air of ideas that we breathe, as it were, of the pollution of our cultural purity, commanding broadcasters to conserve Canadian culture by providing a minimum percentage of Canadian content, and safeguarding our official Programs of National Interest, programs such as the Junos and the Geminis, or the East Coast Music Awards and their regional counterpart, the Canadian Country Music Awards, programs which as we all know are the main vehicles we have for telling Canadian stories.
“A further role of crucial importance in the defence of Canada’s culture and identity has been played, and continues to be played, by the establishment of Canadian Studies and Canadian Literature programs in universities and colleges across the country, and indeed in universities abroad, with their significant scholarly output in journals of high academic standing, including the Journal of Canadian Studies; the National Journal of Canadian Studies; the International Journal of Canadian Studies; the Global Journal of Canadian Studies; the Multidisciplinary Journal of Canadian Studies; the Interdisciplinary Journal of Canadian Studies; Canadiana; Canadian Studies: Foreign Publications and Theses, and its supplements; ACNJDG, the journal supported by the Australian-Canadian-New Zealand Studies Librarians” Discussion Group of the Canadiast Association of College & Research Libraries and Repositories; the Canadian Studies Guide; Canadiana in the United States; the Canadian Studies Associations Monthly; CanLinks: Directory of Web Resources Relevant to Canadian Studies; the Journal of the Association for the Export of Canadian Culture; Identity: The Journal of Canadian Literature; the Theatre and Repertory Arts for Social Harmony in CanLit Journal; Current Studies in Canadian Cultural Production and Protection; and of course the Directory to Canadian Studies in Canada and Abroad.
“And to our further benefit, these publications are complemented by the work carried out by important cultural and scholarly institutions, including the Institute for the Study of Canada; the International Council for Canadian Studies; the Association for Canadian Studies; the British Association for Canadian Studies; the Association Française d’études Canadiennes; the Association for Canadian Studies in Australia and New Zealand; and the Society for the Conservation of Canadian Identity in Canadian Studies, to name only a small fraction of these committed organizations.
“But the need to address the question of our national identity and its survival has not been exhausted by these public, institutional, and scholarly organizations. A further need for cultural activity has been met through the creation of many government-funded NGOs devoted to the investigation of Canadian identity, beginning with the founding in 1868 of our own Canadian Society for Heritage, Identity, and Tradition, and followed in subsequent generations by the creation of the Canadian Identity Council; the Cultural Council of Canadian Identity; the Canadian Cultural Defence League; the Council of Canadians; the famous Colony Club of Canada; the Sovereignty Association for Canadian Dominion; the Toronto Institute for the Furtherance of Anglo-Scottish Loyalist Cultural Inheritance; the United Daughters of the Canadian Confederation; the Macintyre Society of Concerned Canadians; the Macdonald Collective for the Conservation of Canadian Culture and Tradition; the MacNab Organization for the Collection of Canadiana; the Macfarlane Social Association for Canadian Culture; the Cameron Macgregor Canadian News Media Institute; the Farquharson Canadian Media Association; the Macpherson Club for Canadian Journalists; the Heath Campbell and Clark Mackintosh Association for the Protection of Canadian Journalism; the MacCorkindale Canadian Reporters Association for Protection of Cultural Integrity in Journalistic Practice in Canadian Journalism; the Stewart Ross Buchanan Club for Canadian Tradition; the Graham Robertson MacO’Shannaig Society for the Protection of Canadian Unity; and of course, but not finally, the Alistair Corstorphine Munro Macgillegowie Gruamach MacCeallaich Carstarphen MacAÕchallies Dunnachie Macandeoir Gilfillan Maccaishe Cattanach Macthomas Arroll Reidfurd Macearachar Canadian News Media Society, to name but a few of the most influential such societies.”
“All of this effort expended on Canadian identity has, however, focused not on ordinary Canadians, but rather on those who represent Canadian identity, and their representations. That is, this sort of work takes as its subject the films of and by Canadian culture workers, the dances and poems and stories and novels and paintings and sculptures produced by Canadian arts labourers - but not the acts of other Canadians who, because they do not make their own representations, are ultimately unrepresented in our national identity discourse. In other words, none of these institutions and journals and associations actually takes into account in their account of Canadian identity the very account that real Canadians would give were they called to account on this fundamental question. Which is to say, the national discussion of Canadian identity takes as its starting point the products of Canadian identity, and the producers of those products, rather than beginning with the very ordinary people who are the ostensible subjects of these objects, with the very actual Canadian identities in themselves.
“And in those cases where Canadians who are not fictional, or the producers of fictional Canadians, have been accounted for - in works such as the Dictionary of Canadian Biography; Canadian Personalities; Canada’s Who’s Who; Well Known People Who Happen to be Canadian; Memorable Canadians; Distinct Canadians; Debrett’s Illustrated Guide to the Canadian Establishment; Canadians of Distinction; Famous Canadians You’ve Never Heard Of; Contemporary Canadian Biographies; Like a Roch: The Most Influential Juno Winners on the International Stage; The 50 Greatest Canadian Landscape Poets and Portraits of All Time; The Illustrated History of Canadians with an International Reputation; and of course the seminal Macmillan Dictionary of Canadian Biography, edited by Stewart Wallace and W.A. McKay - in all such works of non-fiction, the focus has been on Canadians who have achieved some success, and all such works have therefore failed to reflect the shared values and beliefs of authentic, truly Canadian Canadians.
“It is in the context of this politicized elision of the ontological grounds for an at once comprehensive and inclusive liminalization of both the discourse and the discursive construction of Canadian identity, in this simulated and simultaneously compromised metasimulacrum of the struggle for identity in the context of the struggle for the land, in this winter of the real, in which the material conditions for the production of Canadian culture and the establishment of Canadian identity are subject to an ideologically antimaterialist phenomenological bracketing that manifests itself in the hypostatization of the privileged representation of “the Canadian people” in the place of the Canadian people, that this proposal has been formulated, in accordance with those principles of cultural redistribution according to which the primary labour of identity-form(ul)ation and self-recognition is understood to be carried out in the work of the ordinary Canadian undergoing the rigours of self-substantiation in the world, rather than in the substitute labour of representative performance, that is, in the collective self established in public through the work of the public, rather than in the classical bourgeois psychoanalytic internal private space of the self which through its acts of artifice is taken as a mirror held up to nature, thus promoting the pretence that it is to the products of culture, rather than the ordinary producers of culture, that critical activity is most effectively directed, when in fact it is the opposite that is required in this, our radical effort to promote change and social justice.”
At this crucial juncture, Clark paused and, without raising his head, raised his eyes instead to impress upon his audience the force of his position. Its effect, he was pleased to see, had been profound: there was not a head in the house that was not bowed in a mixture of respect and contemplation; and, he was pleased to hear, the silent recognition of the grave importance of his project was unanimous.
In an even deeper and more ponderous tone, Clark continued. “The research for this project will be carried out in the form and in the course of a journey across the nation. Just as Canadians once built a great railroad from one end of the country to the other in order to unite the provinces, I will myself cross the country, from the Maritimes to the West Coast, interviewing Canadians and participating in traditional Canadian activities, like canoeing.
“The result of this project will be a book of interviews and analysis entitled Our Home and Narrative Land: Real Canadian Stories and Real Canadian Identity. Bringing to bear my particular expertise in narrative construction, I intend to link Canadians together by linking their stories of Canadian identity together. The structure of the book will follow the course of my journey west, with each chapter focused around a different event and a different part of the country. The unity of form and content evident in this narrative structure and the course and purpose of the gathering of its constituent narratives, is intended to contribute to the defence, perpetuation, and conservation of Canadian cultural tradition, in the pursuit of that vision of national unity upon which our culture depends for its existence - and its identity.”
Clark, having reached the end of his submission, and the climax of his speech, stopped speaking, and looked up, expecting the appropriate applause, but saw that his audience, rather than being moved to a state of excitement, had only been drawn deeper into the profound respect it had displayed when he first paused. Every single head, as though in prayer, was now bowed, and the crowd’s attention was so focused that even the sombre, nasal rattling that emanated from one or two obviously overworked professionals who had fallen asleep, could not disturb their collective respectful concentration.
Zulecken, however, seated at the table on the stage, appeared to believe that applause were, for one reason or another, more appropriate, and he began to clap, at which point the audience raised its communal head with a snap and began to clap along.
When the thankful applause began to dwindle, Clark removed his glasses with a flourish and, gesturing with them in his left hand, continued: “It is my great pleasure to announce formally to you tonight, my friends, that my project has received more than enough funding to make it a reality, and indeed enough to allow me to take along a research assistant, to aid me in the collection of research material and to accompany me on my historic journey.
“Of course, when I announced the opportunity to participate in such an unprecedented project, I received dozens of applications from our nation’s top graduate students in Canadian Studies and Canadian Literature. I found it difficult to choose from amongst their excellent, accomplished, and devoted number. It was my duty, however, to choose, and so, in order to complement my own Anglophone heritage, and so that the research for Our Home and Narrative Land will be undertaken in accordance with the principle of uniting our two national solitudes, I have chosen as my assistant Monsieur Frédéric Gaston, a highly recommended, and francophone, doctoral student from the Université de Montréal, who happens to be here with us tonight. A hand for Monsieur Gaston!” At this, Clark gestured to the back of the room, where he had asked Gaston to stand, anticipating the theatrical effect of a roomful of turning heads, and the visible revelation of the identity of his trusted assistant.
It was a well-staged plan on Clark’s part, for that evening the young Gaston was indeed perfectly suited, in appearance and manner, for the project. Though Gaston was rather on the short side, he exuded the kind of raffish, self-aware charm, with just a hint of sensuality, at once overt and complicated by an intimation of timidity, to ensure the effect was in no way threatening, which characterized the typical young, sophisticated Quebecois francophone from a family of means - in the imagination, at least, of middle-aged, middle-class men from Ontario.
To encourage this impression, while anticipating his debut, Gaston had that evening dressed to great effect in a white cashmere turtleneck under a very expensive tan jacket worn over tan slacks with a black belt, an outfit that to the Canadians assembled would have seemed vaguely appropriate for a European intellectual. To complete the ensemble, he wore thick, black-rimmed glasses which drew attention to his grey, piercing eyes, and conferred a certain intellectual weight to the serious expression he habitually wore, accentuated in part by a slight and unaffected habitual inclination of his head.
Although the young Quebecker played up to the various stereotypes perpetuated by the Anglo Clark, his supervisor on this project and thus the gatekeeper of his future academic career, it was not as a cover for any academic weakness. Gaston was in truth a serious and intelligent young man of significant accomplishment for his age, and was held generally to be a scholar of great promise.
And yet, for all his success, and although he had a typically French pride in his own capacities, Gaston was nonetheless fundamentally troubled, for beneath all his success and promise, he harboured a secret with respect to his identity, a secret he had been unwilling to convey to his Anglophone benefactor, given Clark’s sweetly conceited ambition to undertake a uniting of solitudes through cultural discourse.
For the reality was that, although Gaston had indeed been born and raised in Quebec, he had not spent his early years in the leafy confines of Outremont, as Clark believed, but rather in the decidedly unfashionable rough-and-tumble of the Beauce. His father, Jacques, a boozy magouilleur, had made his living smuggling cigarettes into Quebec and engaging in a wide variety of other activities of unquestionable illegality. Raised in this colourful environment, Gaston had grown up learning to navigate between the interests of the police on the one hand and his father’s “business associates” on the other, discovering at a tender age how to smuggle diamonds across the border in his teddy bear and how to bury stolen jewellery in a manner that would protect it against the elements for a full winter. There had been no hint of anything intellectual or cultural in his father’s house, and little Gaston had never even read a book, until his mother - who had fled her homeland shortly after Gaston’s birth - suddenly returned to the Beauce, having made her fortune by a strategic marriage abroad, and picked up her son and packed him off to France, silencing the strategic, disingenuous protests of his secretly relieved father with a big wad of cash. Thus it was in France that Gaston had spent the formative years of his young manhood, in the fashionable Montmartre district of Paris, and it was in France that he had attended the prestigious École normale supérieur, before he had returned to Canada, and Quebec, only in the past year, to begin work on his Ph.D.
And so while Gaston was a Quebecker by birth, and a scion of the workmanlike criminality of the lower classes in the Beauce, he had become a Parisian at heart - or so, at least, he believed. When he had applied for the position of Clark’s research assistant, he had not lied to the old man exactly, but had certainly dressed and spoken the part of what the professor took to be a typical young educated Outremonter, and had creatively tailored his CV to that effect. From that point Gaston had simply let Clark persist in his fantasy regarding Gaston’s identity, so crucial for the symbolism of Clark’s projected narrative. And it was this identity that had made Clark’s careful plan for unveiling of Gaston, the clever French assistant, the very climax of his speech to the Canadian Society’s typical crowd of Torontarian Anglophones, and had thus intended to elevate Gaston himself symbolically into the physical manifestation of the professor’s commitment to promoting Canada from its two points of view.
But at the moment, Gaston’s well-designed appearance and the various truths of his identity were, much to Clark’s dismay, rendered entirely irrelevant. For, in spite of the professor’s carefully orchestrated plan to reveal the carefully selected identity of his assistant to the assembled audience, when their eyes came to rest upon the back of the room, following Clark’s gesture, they did not come to rest on the figure of Gaston. Confusingly, and in fact shockingly, they came to rest instead on the warmly lit, decently painted figures of those great Canadian industrial magnates whose portraits happened to be hung at the back of Hall, and whose carefully preserved visages stared back at the confused audience with looks of rather backhanded authority, having been portrayed with that self-conscious attempt at a magisterial manner peculiar to those whose success is achieved at a provincial distance from the heart of the empire.
Gaston, in other words, was not there.
For the young francophone, who had not had the benefit of a seat to fortify his posture during Clark’s speech, had decided to head outside quickly for some fresh air, and a cigarette, and when the moment of his introduction came, Gaston, instead of being in his appointed position, was still outside, smoking, having cynically overestimated the length of the professor’s speech.
This made for an awkward moment for Clark, whose face became slightly flushed as the audience began to mutter and shift, and even, here and there, to titter, as they turned back towards him. Zulecken didn’t help matters by making another aborted move to stand and do something, even though no one, least of all Zulecken himself, knew what it was he intended to do.
It was during this moment of confusion that a man who had been sitting towards the back of the audience suddenly stood up and said, in a low, booming voice: “I too have an announcement to make this evening.”
This was followed by yet another a moment of confusion, as Clark raised his head in surprise, forgetting merely to raise his eyes and stare over the rims of his prop glasses. Removing them awkwardly, with the cord almost getting stuck on his ears, he peered across the crowd at the mysterious speaker, when a look of surprise and pleasure spread on his face in place of a blush. “Well - yes - most certainly, sir. Please come up, come up!”
As the man made his commanding way past the knees and handbags crowding the aisle, Clark took the opportunity to introduce him. “Ladies and - ladies and gentlemen, we have been graced tonight by the presence of a real Canadian celebrity - none other than the great Canadian poet - Hugh Duncan!” At this, the crowd’s confused murmuring was replaced by an audible gasp, and an exchange of excited glances, as the assembled members of the Society realized that what was unfolding before them was indeed an historic event. Someone even dared to snap a picture with his phone, though he immediately incurred the stern glances of those around him, who felt that such an act did not accord with the dignity of the moment, and the offender modestly returned the phone to his pocket with that peculiar speed and efficiency conferred only by embarrassment.
The man who approached the lectern was, indeed, a poet of great renown, in Canadian literary circles, and the kind of public figure whose name was uttered with special reverence on arts programs. Even when his name was printed, as it often was in the arts sections of the national papers, it was inevitably accompanied by a rhetorical flourish intended to invoke a special dignity. Duncan was “revered”, his works were “classic”, part of “Canadian tradition”, and of course “historic”, just as Duncan’s life was “storied”. And although they were rather excessive even by the adulatory standards of most Canadian cultural discourse when icons of national importance are invoked, these accolades were nonetheless justified in the most material of terms, for the indomitable poet, another hero of our story, was nothing less than a twelve-time winner of the Governor General’s award for poetry, and had been a venerable stalwart of national Canadian culture for an unbroken period of more than five decades.
It was Duncan who had first “gone platinum” in Canadian poetry, having sold more than five hundred copies of a single book, an accomplishment which would have been enough to raise him to high cultural status, but which had made him a superstar because it also happened to be his very first publication. This book, The Height of the Cedars, had garnered excellent reviews from all three of the right people, especially for the poem “Beaver on the Rapids Near Lake Nipigon under the Borealis”, which was instantly hailed as a classic. The book included other hits, amongst them a poem that became known as “the other national anthem”, “Hurrah for the Land of the Forests Grand”, the sentiment of which was only enhanced by the piercing social critique of the poem that followed it, “Bat, Bat, Come Under my Hat”. And for readers more interested in less doughty matters, there was also the rousing domestic poetry of “Ode on the Mammoth Cheese”, with its classic opening line:
Will you please let me go, Ma, To McIntyre's, to buy a Sofa
…and “In an Old Barn with a Solitary Woodsman During the Potato Harvest”, with its paternal criticism of the dangers presented by “harsh, winter-hidden, ignoble sloth”.
Duncan marched with a dignified air towards the lectern, his tall, spare frame matching the elegance of his fashionable buff suit and his wavy grey hair. In his mid-seventies, Duncan possessed a legendary strength and vitality that at once impressed and intimidated men thirty years his junior. He leapt onto the stage with the celerity of a natural athlete, which indeed he had been, in his youth, when he had captained the hockey team of King’s University, leading it to a triumphant third-place finish in the national college hockey championships two years in a row. As Duncan approached the lectern, Clark backed away reverently and seated himself at the table.
Though no one saw it, since their attention was fixed on Duncan, Zulecken had assumed a worried look that was matched by the dismay evident on the face of the young Gaston, who from the rear had entered the room just in time to see Duncan ascending the stage.
There were a number of reasons for Gaston’s complex discomfort at this turn of events. For one, Gaston sensed that Duncan was going to interfere somehow in Clark’s project, and resented the intrusion, which of course no one, including Clark, and least of all a mere graduate student like Gaston, would be able to resist and survive, professionally speaking. Besides being a man of great reputation in Canadian discourse, Duncan was notoriously overbearing, the type of man who emanated a naive moral sanctimony buttressed by a sincere belief in his own symbolic role, in the Coleridgean or even in the Hegelian sense, in the course of Canadian history, which he took himself to be marking with every step he took, figuratively and even literally speaking.
For another, Gaston considered Duncan’s verse to be terrible, not only in itself, but also for the way that its role in official national cultural discourse meant it defined what counted as Canadian poetry, and therefore determined what kind of poetry poets needed to produce in order to get the government grants that got them published, and got their work into anthologies and helped them win prizes guarded by a literary culture that Gaston, in his kinder moments, described to his French colleagues as being defined by cultural insularity and nepotism.
Duncan certainly symbolized Canadianness, Gaston thought bitterly, in the sense that he was a living embodiment of the systemic perpetuation of mediocrity in Canadian letters. How could one, such as Gaston himself, who had studied abroad, especially at so demanding an institution such as the École normale supérieure, who had survived the gruelling khâgne and been immersed in the grand history of French and European literature, be expected to read with reverence such platitudinous doggerel as Duncan’s famous “Digman’s Song”, with “classically Canadian” lines like:
Turn, plow, the clods, Turn under, plow, Turn under
…with its clunky, affected, and pastoral “worker” romanticism? And accept this as “historic” Canadian work? Clods, indeed! They needed not to be turned under, to become the soil for still more clods: better to abandon the field entirely.
But the final and most pressing reason that Gaston had for resenting Duncan’s presence was the uncomfortable fact that the young Frenchman had recently, at least in his own estimation, seduced a very pretty young woman, who just so happened to be Duncan’s 26-year-old granddaughter, and who just so happened not to understand that Gaston had only meant to seduce her just the once. She had taken the affair badly, and Gaston knew that if her vain grandfather heard about it, the young scholar’s future in the tiny world of Canadian literary academia might well be cut as short as he had cut his relationship with the belle Lucy Duncan.
On the stage, Duncan adopted a heroic stance behind the lectern and expertly adjusted the microphone to his superior height with an efficient jerk.
“Of course,” he began, in his booming voice, “I heard of Professor Clark’s proposal shortly after he began circulating his submissions. And I stand here before you to do my duty, that is, to report that there was, I am ashamed to say, as a Canadian, that there was some cynical opposition to his plan, especially amongst those with vested interests in the halls of Canadian academia and governmentia, if I may be permitted a playful….”
At this point Duncan paused; but whether he did so for effect, or because he had managed in his exuberance to get ahead of his own wit, we will never know, for after a very brief moment he carried on, still booming: “For there are those amongst us who consider themselves to be above us, to be the well-appointed guardians of our culture, who believe themselves to be, as it were, Olympian gods whose incarnation has bestowed upon them both the power and the responsibility to protect those of us who are mere…. In any case, it was communicated to me that amongst those individuals who decide how our collective funds are dispensed, that there was some offence taken at Professor Clark’s proposal for his great project, indeed it was not merely whispered but indeed openly stated, that, that… to openly question the representation of Canadian identity in the work produced by our carefully selected artists and academics, and especially to suggest that there may be a difference between this representation and the reality, was not only naive, but… but also, but also, I was told, injurious, destructive, divisive - divisive! - and an individualist, a suspiciously individualistic attack on the carefully and collectively managed voice and image of Canada - of Canadian - of the activity of generations of committees of appointed cultural, shall we say, directors, of the national identity, who have been mandated to control for the sake of the, of us, the people - and, that Clark’s project is, above all - an American-style attack on Canadian culture! American-style!”
The crowd nervously shuffled its feet and politely contracted its brow, exchanging looks that displayed the shock appropriate to the use of that last phrase, and at the same time looks of polite perplexity, as no one was yet sure exactly what Duncan was in fact trying to say.
“Yes, my fellow Canadians, they argued, these grant mandarins, these council panjandrums, these, if I may, these funding functionaries, they argued that the professor’s argument implied that he was questioning the representation of Canadian culture, the very formulation of Canadian identity, for which they were paid to stand on guard! Furthermore, they argued that he was invoking a, a naive distinction between life and art, that the work of our cultural institutions was meant to influence and sustain the national vision of national life, to represent the Canada we want Canada to be, and that to threaten this with unmediated, and therefore unauthoritative interaction with the unedited words of ordinary Canadians was to threaten unity, national unity, to threaten Canada itself!
“So there I was - I, Hugh Duncan - being told that talking to Canadians is a threat to the very concept of Canadian identity. I, who have, in my own humble way, endeavoured, and tried, and worked, and fought, yes fought, throughout my career, and all of my writings, to voice the, uh, the voice of Canadians…. Well - I was being told that my support for Professor Clark was itself suspect - yes, I was being told that I, myself, was promoting, perpetuating an - an American agenda - American! - by supporting Clark’s project to protect Canada!” Here Duncan paused, surveying the shocked crowd, and he was pleased to see that his last words had effectively roused their indignation.
Then, with excellent timing, he proceeded to magnify indignation with insult: “And it occurred to me that, by saying that Professor Clark’s project was American, and that I was American for supporting it, yes, it occurred to me, as I sat in those offices in Ottawa, that, given the fact that Professor Clark is the Lieutenant-Governor of this great Society, well, it then followed that these officials were calling the Canadian Society for Heritage, Identity, and Tradition - American! And that, my friends, they were, furthermore and finally, calling all of you, calling all of us - American!”
Pandemonium would have been the appropriate word to describe the scene that followed, if the audience had been moved to a passionate rejection of this great insult, instead of curling their lips and frowning in a united expression of moral indignation, and shaking their fists in the air and shouting, instead of clenching their fingers and waiting for someone else to break the silence of the deeply offended. What could be worse, especially for a Society formed for the purposes of protecting Canadian identity from foreign influences, than to be accused of being American? For it did not matter what was really meant by that claim; what mattered was that the person or institution so charged was being attacked not merely on moral grounds, but also as a legitimate authority on, or as a legitimate example of, Canadian society.
The insult was, indeed, so deep and pointed, that the younger Margaret Campbell was driven to point her nose in the air, and remark loudly to the unseen cultural adversaries, “Well, I never!”, to which her more experienced mother, replacing a flask in her handbag and adjusting the box on her head, added by whispering, a little too loudly, “The motherfuckers!”
Clark himself, who had heard of the internal battles fought over his funding, and felt as deeply insulted as Duncan, but who certainly never would have encouraged any controversy by announcing that fact, put on an expression of dismay as he shook his head slowly, and looked out from the stage at the crowd with a serious expression, all the while hiding his growing fear that what Duncan was doing would cause problems for him in the very near future.
Duncan knew that his words must have had his intended effect on the minds of those who were frowning at him in sympathy, and he proceeded to make himself the conduit of their offended patriotic sensibility. “But did I, in the face of this great perversion of the professor’s project, and this Society’s reputation, did I back down, and rest on the hope they would not spread their insinuation, in lies and whispers, across the land, that here in Toronto, and led by the eminent Professor Clark, was a new American rebellion being formed against the authority of Canadia, I mean Canada, and its appointed servants, its officers promoted to marshal our very culture? Did I, if I may quote from my own poem about the great mythological hero of Canadian history, the mighty Pierre MacDonald, did I do as his family wanted him to, and in the face of his challenge:
Float and pause in the fleecy gauze, Like a bird in a nest of down?
Or did I, like that great hero, instead “Rise through the dome of my aerodrome?” Or did I, as they hoped, shiver, and quail, like a, well, a …. Well, let me assure you, my friends, that I did indeed rise to the challenge, and I pointed out to them that they were themselves being - un-Canadian!” Gasps. “Yes, before those great patrimonial eminences, before those earthly elohim of national culture, those living manifestations of our principles of government, those great deciders of our nature, I, I, I invoked the right of the poet, the poet! Not the funder! Not the council! T o say what counts as Canadian, and what does not!” Applause.
“And what was the point that I had to make, what was the simple observation that I made that shamed them into silence, and provoked them to raise their pens and sign Clark’s project into existence? What did I, standing up for Canadians, like a, a proud beefeater, a noble Mountie, a, a, a very sentinel…. Well, what I did say to them was, that it was un-Canadian to silence the voices of Canadians, and that to prevent us from talking to each other about who we in fact are - that that, in fact, was un-Canadian, and was - yes, I said it to their faces - that that was, in fact - American!” At this, the crowd cheered and clapped, gratified that their hero had shown the courage to take action in the face of cultural injustice, and defend the honour of their society, not to mention that of their venerable Lieutenant-Governor.
As for the great Clark himself, he had joined in the clapping and even nodded slowly to signal his public approval for Duncan’s actions, having privately concluded that the poet simply wanted to let the crowd know what a crucial role his fame and influence had played in bringing Clark’s professorial project to fruition.
The professor, however, could not have been more wrong. “But words,” Duncan continued, “I felt, were not enough, if I were to demonstrate my support for Professor Clark and his historic voyage. And so I decided - I decided that I would join him for the duration of his proposed project, and write a new poem chronicling our great quest, our, if I may, our great unifying journey across the land, from sea to shine - from sea to sea to sea!”
Excited applause and, indeed, a standing ovation, broke out as defiant looks and virtuous expressions of pride were exchanged by all those present - with three notable exceptions, each of whom stood with the crowd and clapped along, but each of whom barely disguised his respective worries at this independent development.
The first exception, of course, was Clark, whose approval had shifted, quite suddenly, to dismay, at the thought that the obstreperous Duncan would be playing a prominent and unpredictable role in the his, Clark’s, carefully constructed drama. It was, after all, his project, a project carefully conceived in accordance within the context of the traditions and purposes of the institution of Canadian Literature, by a professor of Canadian Literature. But now, when Clark did compose, upon the completion of his project, the definitive, central, unifying text on Canadian identity, the achievement would have to be shared with a poet - and a vain poet, at that - who would now write a different account of the same project, and thus destroy its uniting purpose by perpetuating difference within the project itself. And, were it not beneath our respect for his scholastic dignity, we might say that there was something even more troubling to the humble professor: that is, Clark’s mounting realization that he would have to share any media attention with Duncan, and probably be outshone by the charismatic poet and national hero on the national stage.
The second exception to the crowd’s excitement was of course the resourceful but anxious Gaston, whose worries we have already detailed, and which the young man now expressed with a disappointed “câlisse!”
But the third exception to the crowd’s excitement was the saddest of all, a man whose silent, lonely misery had been growing throughout Duncan’s performance.
This lonely sufferer was none other than our forgotten friend Zulecken, the renowned Canadian publisher, who was, not to put too fine a point on it, feeling entirely left out of this truly Canadian project, and indeed much less scrumptious than usual. Clark had always had the glory of the funding and the leadership of the project, of course, but that had not bothered Zulecken so much, for it had been Clark’s idea after all; and he, Zulecken, had at least been given the opportunity to manage the first public announcement of Clark’s purposes, and to do so before the powerful Canadian Society, and thus allowed to associate himself in some way, however minor, with what he knew would be an historic endeavour.
But now, with Duncan participating, who would remember - who even remembered now - that he, Zulecken, had even been at this meeting? That it had been he who had introduced to Canada the final project in the articulation of its national character? No, no one would remember him - they would only remember Duncan’s surprise announcement, which is where the great tale would effectively begin, and he, Zulecken, the mere publisher, would be nothing more than a footnote, if that, in the history of the study of Canada, usurped by an overpowering hero of Canadian culture in whose long shadow he would be forever overlooked.
As Duncan left the lectern and strode back down the centre aisle dividing the applauding crowd, followed by a wave of turned heads and continuous applause, Zulecken sat down behind the table on the stage and saw immediately that, if he were to play any part in Clark’s project, he had to make a decision immediately.
As the crowd slowly began to reseat itself, Zulecken, with a look of sudden determination, began to stand up again. But, alas for our poor hero, as he had done already twice before, he found himself hesitating, and began to sit down again in despair; when suddenly, and to his own internal amazement, he found himself standing up decisively and striding over to the lectern.
The crowd, now fully seated, turned its excited eyes to Zulecken, whose agitation they naturally interpreted as a mirror of their own excitement.
As he confidently approached the lectern, the small publisher seemed to observe himself from an external vantage point. He saw himself stop and grip the lectern firmly with his hands, and begin to speak - but, to his growing horror, he saw himself once again forget to adjust the microphone. This time one or two members of the crowd, more heated and confident than they had been earlier, began to shout at Zulecken, matter-of-factly, that he needed to lower the instrument. Zulecken, suffering from his strange internal division, felt mounting embarrassment at his estranged body’s actions, and feared whatever he would do next would only make the situation worse for his wounded ego.
But after a moment, Zulecken, rather than blushing, found within himself the courage he needed. Returning resolutely to himself, and frowning at the crowd as though it were beneath him, which to his credit it very literally was, our hero began to speak with the confidence suited to his position, loud enough to be heard above the mild din without any magnification.
“Well, ladies and gentleman, we have had a surprise - a great and noble surprise. But I have another surprise for you.” Here he paused significantly and took a sip of water, turning his head in a passive-aggressive manner and glaring over the glass at an astonished Clark.
“So - now I see there will be not one, but two key figures in our cultural landscape who will be undertaking this journey - a great professor of Canadian literature, and a great poet - and that they will be accompanied by a third, the estimable Monsieur Gaston, to represent the other of our two founding peoples. But I see too that there is still something missing - a fourth element necessary to complete the group.” Another sip, and silence from the crowd.
“I am speaking, of course, of the study of the history, broadly understood, and the study of the present, and also the future, equally broadly understood, of Canada, in all its forms and manifestations, real and imaginary, a wide area which ought to be represented in this great project, wide enough indeed to be appropriate for an investigation into the nature of our wide country. I am speaking, of course, of the great field of Canadian Studies. And as a publisher in this field, I feel that it is my right - nay, my duty - to accompany these gentlemen on their quest to discover and to document real Canadian culture, real Canadian identity. Yes, friends, I would like to announce, here and now, that I too will join Clark on his holi- I mean a sabbatical, and go along with Clark and Duncan, contributing what and where I can to their investigations, and producing, at the end, a book of my own which will analyze the results of our work from the perspective of my field. Together, we will be complete, representing all aspects of the study of Canadian society, in our investigation of it!”
Here Zulecken paused, awaiting an excited reception equivalent to that which the crowd had given Duncan. Unfortunately for our round hero, however, the crowd had anticipated the nature of his announcement early on in his little speech, for it was really not much of a surprise, as it was in effect the same kind of announcement Duncan had made a few moments earlier, and Zulecken, his arts-community eminence aside, was no celebrity, lacking the electrifying presence that came so naturally to the poet. Clapping, in other words, was impatient and sparse, and from Duncan, who felt something nearly like contempt for Zulecken, the clapping was less than quiet, while from Clark, who was by now having difficulty hiding his exasperation at the hijacking of his project, there was no clapping whatsoever, as the great professor had folded his arms above his firm, besweatered belly, which appeared at that moment to protrude angrily from beneath his elbows.
Zulecken, however, was unperturbed by any of this, having recovered within himself the belief that his work was worthwhile in spite of - nay, it occurred to him as he stared at the indifferent crowd, precisely because of - their manifest lack of interest. If Canadians were not interested in his study of themselves and their nation, it was merely - no, it was precisely - a sign that, in fact, he had so much more work to do, to rouse these people from their national slumbers. He therefore allowed the sparse applause to die completely, and proudly endured what was for others an awkward moment of silence, but was for him a triumph, before he continued.
“Well, we have much work ahead of us, and it is time perhaps for us to proceed from a celebration of our work, to the work itself. Our journey” - here Zulecken again paused for a very deliberate sip of water, while off to the side at the small table, Clark winced at the use of the word “our”, and glared at Zulecken with a look that someone unacquainted with our hero’s natural benevolence might have mistaken for fuming anger - “our journey begins on the morrow,” Zulecken continued, relishing the opportunity for grand rhetorical flourish, “and there is much to prepare. And so it is - “
Although Zulecken clearly intended to continue into some kind of denouement, that internal alarm that seems to go off eventually in every crowd was sounding in the shuffling of coats, and flashing in the consulting of phones. Zulecken glanced back at Clark, who unfolded his arms to tap his watch, and then turned back to the unlistening crowd. “Well, ladies and gentlemen, and members of the Canadian Society, I see that it is time for us to bring our historic meeting to an end. This historic evening will be long remembered…”
Of course, Zulecken did not actually finish speaking there, but it was the last anyone heard of him in his capacity as moderator of the evening, for the audience was busily moving towards the great doors at the end of the Hall opposite the stage, passing under the familiar portraits, and discussing with excitement both the importance of Clark’s project and the state of the weather for the journey home.
But while the assembled members of the Society moved on, our heroes remained behind in the now rather gloomy Macdonald Hall, each preparing in his own way for the journey ahead, given its new character.
Clark, his plans sorely disrupted, stood beside the lectern with his arms folded, staring at the ground, grappling internally with a rush of ideas, as in his mind he was already changing the terms and details of his project in order to ensure he would continue to direct its significance.
Beside him stood Zulecken, who, unseen and unheard by his colleague, was talking in flushed excitement at Clark, or perhaps simply to himself, describing the high drama of the evening and the importance of his sudden involvement in the project.
Duncan, pleased with his intervention and the thought of an adventure in the spotlight, had a thoroughly more cheerful aspect, standing in the centre of the room, shaking hands with some admirers, and caught in a flash as a newspaper reporter took a picture of the poet’s distinguished countenance, which was composed with the confidence of an accomplished writer, who knew his every act was being written in the great book of Canadian history. His symbolic visage thus captured in a flash for posterity, Duncan turned magnanimously to his right to answer the questions of a pretty TV reporter and her patient, ponytailed cameraman.
And, finally, at the very back of the room, stood the despondent Gaston, waiting still under the gaze of those stern portraits, himself staring anxiously into the middle distance, as he contemplated the myriad complications he was bound to endure, and to resolve, as he assisted our three competing grandees in their adventure across the country, tilting at their respective windmills.