Oliver's Twist (27 page)

As far as anyone could tell, MacKay had thrown away his party for a song. He did not even drive a bargain for the post of deputy prime minister in any future government, which left
many believing he had been badly outmanoeuvred by the more cunning Harper. In March 2004, Harper took the helm of the united Conservative Party, having dropped the “Progressive” from its name, and pulled off a historic coup.

Soon after my return to Ottawa, Anne-Marie Bergeron and I were married. Little more than nine months later, enough to claim truthfully to her parents that Anne-Marie was not pregnant at the ceremony, we had a daughter, Annie Claire.

This time around, the role of father was a revelation. In the sixties, when my son, Murray, was born, the hospital would have considered my presence in the delivery room peculiar, if not medically unwise. But in 1989 I was there as Annie emerged into the world. She was silent for the first few seconds, but my apprehension ended soon enough and then it was bawling all around. Like all fathers at this moment, I was awestruck—a brand new life, safely delivered, and from where? I understood the mechanics of the process, but the train of events that had created a human being totally unique among the billions of others in the world remained a mystery. Albert Einstein was right when he observed that God does not play dice with the universe.

Unfortunately, the joys of second fatherhood coincided with my mother's accelerating decline. Her depression had led to heavy drinking bouts and recurring health problems. Every attempt I made to spend time with her ended in calamity, as if she couldn't bear to be with me for more than a few days. Perhaps my presence reminded her of the years we spent apart in Rupert, a period she was unwilling to confront or explain.

At my wedding, she became inebriated and created a scene by shouting racy obscenities at me during the after-dinner speeches. This was acceptable behaviour at most of the weddings I had attended in Prince Rupert, and Mom was truly funny, but my in-laws must have wondered what their daughter was in for. Even then, Mom's self-loathing was such that she refused to appear in any of our wedding photos.

Two years later, there was a less forgivable incident when Mom came to Ottawa for Christmas. My wife and I went off to work leaving two-year-old Annie in Mom's care. When I tried to call at noon to see how things were going, I got no answer and rushed home full of foreboding. I found Mom drunk and out cold on the floor, my daughter howling beside her. Fortunately, Annie had not crawled away or come to harm elsewhere in the house, but the incident was enough to shatter my composure. I shook Mom violently to wake her up and then refused to help as she crawled up the stairs to her room on her hands and knees. To this day I regret my reaction and wish I had understood more about the nature of manic depression. In the years following, Mom sent wonderful gifts and delightful books to Annie, but I was too frightened ever to have her in our home again.

I made a last attempt to save Mom from herself. She realized that the time had come to leave the stifling confines of Rupert. All her closest friends had died, many of them too soon from cancer. Sometimes I wondered if the heavy pollution of the air and water by a once highly toxic pulp mill might have contributed to so many early deaths. I bought Mom a two-bedroom condo near Vancouver's Jericho Beach, where I hoped she might find some peace and serenity. For a year or two, she seemed to manage, but the old demons eventually returned. Once again she
was incoherent in phone calls, even as she tried to persuade me she was not drinking. Then came messages from well-meaning friends with reports of “falls” at the golf club and fender-bender car accidents.

I proposed an evening together in Vancouver on a working trip. She seemed enthusiastic. When I arrived at the condo, I found Mom's car parked outside with her beloved dog locked inside, gasping in the heat. There was no response to the buzzer, so I summoned the building security man who had to force the door. We found Mom face down on the kitchen floor, unconscious and intoxicated. More was to follow, including warnings that she was trying to kill herself. Twice she overdosed on pills and alcohol. On one occasion she refused to go with the ambulance attendants. There was no reasoning with her, nor would she accept professional help. Her two-pack-a-day habit inevitably led to lung cancer and a series of surgeries.

Like many in their late fifties, I found myself caring for a parent at long distance while coping with the needs of my own family and a demanding professional life. Mom's parting words on her last visit to Ottawa had been, “You will never have to look after me.” I feel still a keen sense of guilt in confessing that, in my heart, I had hoped she was right.

Before leaving Washington, I had drawn another significant inspiration from the example of Ronald Reagan. His Saturday morning ritual of a horseback ride at Camp David and the obvious joy it brought him recalled for me those carefree summers on horseback at the ranch in Williams Lake. I decided to reclaim
that pleasure permanently. Over the next few years I took winter vacations at guest ranches in Arizona and Texas, avoiding the big resorts in favour of small operations that focused on horsemanship rather than golf. Adherents of the equestrian sports insist there is scientific evidence that the four-dimensional movement of a horse releases a chemical in the brain that creates a feeling of well-being. It certainly did so for me.

For my fiftieth birthday, Anne-Marie bought me a fifteenhand Chestnut mare named Katy. She was four years old and we had a lot to learn together, but after years of lessons from an Austrian riding master, I was able to compete in amateur horse shows, jumping fences. Charging at a three-foot fence on a cantering horse was almost as exhilarating as heading into a swirling rapid, except that hitting the ground was considerably more painful than plunging into the drink. The challenge became greater as my vision dimmed, but Katy was a natural Seeing Eye horse. I found the physical relationship between horse and rider so intimate that it seemed I had only to think about our direction before she responded as if reading my mind.

An engagement with horses also brought me closer to a colleague. Lloyd Robertson and I had been friends since his earliest days at CBC, but any time together was usually work related. That changed in 2002 when Lloyd was invited to be parade marshal at the annual Calgary Stampede, an honour extended in the past to sports heroes, Hollywood celebrities, leading politicians, and even royalty. Lloyd was unfamiliar with horses, so he was expected to ride in an open convertible. I thought this would make him look like some effete entertainer or politico, and I held out for horseback. When Lloyd put this to the organizers, they proposed to put him in the saddle but have
his horse held by a cowboy walking ahead. This was even worse, the eastern dude being pulled along by his nose.

Although the stampede folks were thinking purely of Lloyd's safety, they did not know him. He took himself to a western-riding school near Toronto and spent hours learning to get comfortable in the saddle. When the day of the stampede arrived, Lloyd was greeted with roars of approval from the crowd, especially when the horse got it into his head to turn around and go back to the stampede barn. With a command reminiscent of John Wayne himself, Lloyd calmly reined in the animal and legged him on. Lloyd had found his sport.

Thereafter we took many horseback vacations together at a ranch I had frequented in the Alberta foothills near Bragg Creek. The Homeplace Ranch is owned by one of Alberta's leading horsemen, Mac Makenny. One day he took us on a mountain ride with trails so steep we had to climb up, leading the horses behind. Reaching a stone outcropping at the peak, we were able to view the mountains on all sides and found that our voices echoed across the valleys. Lloyd could not resist shouting to the peaks, “Good evening, I'm Lloyd Robertson and this is the news.”

It was one of countless delightful moments in a friendship that has deepened with the years. Both of us experienced hard times and dysfunctional families growing up, but we learned to look to the future rather than regret the past. After such a start, we agreed, life could only get better, and it did.

8

NORTH
OF
NORTH

Whatever upheavals or changes might attend their professional and personal lives, the members of the Rideau Canal and Arctic Canoe Club continued to meet faithfully in Toronto, by the Rideau and, come high season, in the Arctic. The Far North offered incomparable obstacles but abundant rewards. With the confidence of a decade's adventures behind us, we joked that anything south of the Arctic Circle might as well be the Mexican Riviera.

The Arctic is still one of a few places on Earth where entire mountain ranges and ecosystems remain almost as they have been for millennia. Many people imagine a winter scene all year-round; in fact, even near the pole, there is a fleeting and urgent summer. The ephemeral nature of that season is what gives it its intense beauty. How sobering, then, to realize that global warming threatens the seasonal rhythm of life for all Arctic dwellers and may end the isolation that has been the region's best protection. Our generation could be the last to experience this terrain in its largely untouched, pristine grandeur.

Not that the conditions are always heavenly. Mosquitoes and other biting insects are plentiful, kept somewhat in check by
the relentless winds, though being wind-bound is itself a dismal prospect on a canoe trip. Days pass in a monotonous cycle of sleeping, reading, talking, and cooking. It's not uncommon to have to tie the tents to the canoes, which are in turn weighted down with small boulders. The decision to resume a trip is taken after judging the ferocity of the flapping inner and outer flies against the tent skin or, worse, the sound of nylon ripping. The din inside the tent rises and falls like an audio barometer—so loud it can be hard to carry on a conversation. Having to shout at your companion tells you it is pretty bad and likely means more hours confined to quarters.

At the conclusion of the Hanbury trip in 1979, while our canoe group waited out brutal conditions until our plane could pick us up, Peter Stollery pulled a bad practical joke. He was out of sight in his tent while the rest of the group collected at the riverside camp. Peter shouted in despair that he could take no more and let off a pistol shot. After a moment we laughed, though one of the group murmured that Peter never was a great shot.

Even in fine weather, paddling in the Arctic meant that our routines had to be especially well disciplined and thorough. The first order of business on reaching a campsite was to look after personal matters—erecting tents, laying out sleeping bags, finding dry socks. Group responsibilities came next, with the canoes dragged into a semi-circle as counters for the cooks, while a stove, rather than a fireplace, was set up. In the Barrens there was no wood.

L'heure de bonheur
found me at my customary bartending duties, but the pre-dinner gathering was more than a social nicety. It was the first group meeting since breakfast and an
opportunity to rehash the events of the day. Plans and maps for the following day were reviewed and a consensus reached on the critical question of how many miles must be covered and what hour we must start out.