The High Road (15 page)

“So I peacefully protested the old laws and fought for the new legislation we now have. In that process, I was arrested for trespassing or unlawful assembly on Parliament Hill along with hundreds of other protestors. This scene repeated itself some twenty-three times. Yes, I realize in hindsight that it seems an excessive number. I ascribe it to the passion of youth, yet it has not dimmed much in the intervening years. Incidentally, and for what it’s worth, I was never ever convicted.

“You should also know that I accidentally broke a window in my school when I was eleven, dented a car with a mudball at thirteen, and I may have parked my hovercraft illegally beneath Parliament Hill a few weeks ago, and I do apologize for that. These have been my only brushes with the law. I expected all of this would emerge in the campaign, so I thought I’d nip it in the bud. But I don’t wish you to misconstrue my confession. As I look back across my life, there are certainly moments of regret, embarrassment, even shame. But to be clear, I look upon those Parliament Hill demonstrations so many years ago with nothing but pride.”

Angus paused and lowered his head. A young woman I didn’t recognize started clapping. Soon, at least half the room was applauding. Angus nodded once, laid the mike on the podium, and sat down. Lindsay squeezed my right hand and Muriel my left.

Jane Nankovich, the NDP candidate, was up next. She spoke well but had the unenviable task of following Angus. The audience drifted as soon as she opened with “brothers and sisters.” If she’d been at a Canadian Auto Workers rally she’d have done
well. But there didn’t appear to be a union brother or sister in the room.

Alden Stonehouse really is a great speaker. His time in the pulpit had been well spent. His supporters seemed to have congregated on the right-hand side of the room. He tended to stay focused on them, which may have been a mistake. He already had their votes. He really needed to appeal to the rest of the room.

Stonehouse went on a rant, an eloquent and articulate rant, but a rant nevertheless, about moral decay. He seemed incensed that Angus would recall with honour and dignity his role in the abortion wars of the sixties and called it a sacrilegious assault on Christian values. There were a few boos as he said this, the loudest from Muriel, who expertly cupped her trembling hands around her mouth to help project her already bone-rattling voice. But you could hardly hear Muriel for the ovation from the literal and ideological right wing of the room.

What Alden Stonehouse was not accustomed to was having a time limit placed on his sermons. After only two minutes his vocal chords were barely warm. But rules were rules. The chair of the meeting first stood to signal that the time had expired. When this didn’t work, the PA was turned off. But Alden Stonehouse doesn’t need a PA to make himself heard. Finally, in a moment of desperate inspiration, the lights were extinguished, throwing the entire room into darkness. He stopped talking then and returned to his seat as the lights came back on.

“Just a gentle reminder that candidates have just two minutes for their opening statements. Unlike the Oscars, we don’t have an orchestra to cue when speeches stretch into overtime. Our final candidate to speak this evening is Emerson Fox from the Progressive Conservative Party, and then we’ll move to audience questions.”

Emerson Fox, beanpole thin with a grey crewcut, approached the podium in a grey suit that looked like a hand-me-down from Richard Nixon’s 1960 presidential campaign wardrobe. The
notoriously taciturn and reticent backroom legend lived up to his reputation.

“No need for me to speak for long right now. I want to make sure we have plenty of time for questions from all of you. Let me just say that Cumberland-Prescott for over a hundred years has been represented by Conservatives. We all know what happened just prior to the last election that left us with a Liberal M P, but the time has come to restore the universe to its natural order. We don’t need another tax-and-spend socialist union-loving lefty in the House. We certainly don’t want to elect a religious fanatic who would have us dissolve that critical historical separation of church and state. And above all, we simply cannot elect a common criminal and feminista who abused the electoral process last time around by letting his name stand under false pretences. He should have been prosecuted under the Election Act, not ushered into the House of Commons.”

Wow. He wouldn’t even use the names of his opponents. In a brief pause, I heard two loud cracks in quick succession that sounded like a wooden yardstick smacked twice on a desk. We all looked up to see Angus standing and holding the now broken arms of his chair in his hands, having ripped them from their moorings. Angus found us in the crowd with his eyes. Muriel, Lindsay, and I were all instinctively moving our hands in front of us, palms down, wordlessly imploring Angus to breathe deeply, calm down, and banish thoughts of medieval dismemberment techniques. He seemed to find his peaceful place and gently put the broken chair arms on the ground beside him and sat back down. Emerson Fox was grinning and shaking his head before lifting his eyes once more to the crowd.

“It’s time to let this government complete the job it was elected to do last October. It’s time to put more money back into the pockets of Canadians, into your pockets. It’s time to return the Progressive Conservatives to government in Ottawa. That’s how we’ll get out of this minor recession. That’s all I have to say now. Let’s get to the questions.”

A large and boisterous group of young Tories leapt to their feet, clapped, and waved Fox signs that they had smuggled into the auditorium under their shirts, even though they weren’t permitted under the rules of the meeting.

By the time order was restored and the offending signs collected, Angus had regained control and looked calm. Handheld mikes were given to each candidate as the moderator headed to the podium.

“The floor is open for questions from you, the voters.”

As is often the case, most of the questions were pedestrian and boring, and the candidates generally responded in kind. Angus did well, but I think he was still a little rattled from the fierce but short Fox attack. After about forty-five minutes, the line at the mikes dwindled.

One of the teenage Fox supporters moved to the mike.

“My question is for Angus McLintock. The night you were, like, elected, you, like, basically admitted that you, like, didn’t care what your constituents thought, that you were, like, going to do what you thought was right for, like, the country, even if it, like, hurt this riding.”

She stepped back. Angus stood and lifted his mike.

“Well, I’m afraid you’re wrong and you’re right.”

“No, no, I’m right. That’s, like, what you said.”

“If I may, you’re wrong in describing your words as a question. There was no question. Just a statement no doubt intended to be,
like
, provocative.”

He smiled as he said it. It wasn’t mean-spirited.

“But you’re right in recalling that I promised the voters of Cumberland-Prescott on election night that I would be guided first by what I think is in the best interests of Canada, and second by what I think is in the best interests of the voters of C-P. That is what I said because that it is what I believed then, and believe now. In my mind, that is what democracy is. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The nation has primacy over the constituency. So we must think of Canada first as a whole. Sometimes
that means sacrificing short-term local benefits for longer-term national gains.”

A smattering of applause.

An old woman made her way to the mike. She seemed somehow familiar, though I couldn’t place her. She unfolded a piece of paper and stepped up.

“Mr. Fox. Some years ago after you apparently retired, you spoke to the Ottawa Board of Trade. During an interview afterwards you said the following:

“Mr. Fox, do you stand by those specious words now that you’ve come out of retirement?”

I now remembered where I’d seen her. The GOUT operative returned to her seat. She was sitting by herself and did not even lift her eyes when she passed us. André approached her and she gave him the piece of paper she’d refolded.

Emerson Fox had stayed seated and now looked as if he were in the middle of a prostate examination.

“Um. Well. Ahhh. Don’t ever believe a reporter when they say it’s off the record.” He chuckled unconvincingly as he raked his crewcut with his left hand. “Ahhh, those comments were taken out of context and were not supposed to have appeared in the story. It was yellow journalism and I was the victim. I know policy is important but I still believe that policy doesn’t win elections.”

Fox looked chastened and dropped his mike to his side and
lowered his head to signal that he was done.

“That’s your answer?” someone shouted. The moderator took Fox off the hook.

“We have time for just one more question. Yes sir.”

Another familiar face approached the mike. It was the roly-poly young man with slicked-back black hair from the pages of
Flamethrower
. I hadn’t seen him in the crowd.

“Mr. McLintock, I’m Ramsay Rumplun and I’m a lifelong Progressive Conservative. Sir, you brought down the government because you opposed tax cuts. You denied the citizens of Cumberland-Prescott money they could sure use right now. And you’ve put the country to the enormous and wasteful expense of running another election so soon after the last one. Two questions. Aren’t you worried you’ll get less votes because of what you’ve done. And second, if you don’t like the Conservatives’ budget, what’s your prescription for getting out of this recession?”

Angus could not contain his smile as he rose and took the mike.

“Another Rumplun, eh? Like father, like son. I’m glad to meet you, young Mr. Rumplun. Your father and I, um, know each other. Let me start by saying that I may well earn
fewer
votes this time out, but never
less
votes. As for my prescription for the economy, I don’t claim to have any real expertise in what some call the ‘dismal science,’ but I’m doing my best to learn about it. I’ve become convinced that tax cuts in this climate are fiscally irresponsible. In such times, I fear Canadians will sock away their tax cut proceeds rather than boost consumer spending.

“We’ve also sadly neglected our national infrastructure to pay off the deficit. We Liberals were in on that, too, but I’m not sure replacing a financial deficit with an infrastructure deficit was wise. We’re going to have to rebuild our roads at a higher cost, refurbish our ports and bridges at a higher cost, upgrade our railroad system and power generators, all at a higher cost than if we’d sustained a measured infrastructure investment program and taken a wee bit longer to slay the deficit. So after researching this
and talking to economists I’ve come to trust and respect, I think that instead of tax cuts, we need to embark on a program of infrastructure investment. This will immediately create jobs and put our economy on a stronger footing when the recovery takes hold. Now I don’t have any particular influence over Liberal policy but that’s what I’d be recommending. I’m hoping we’ll see something like that in the Liberal platform when it’s unveiled in a few days. Please pass along my regards to your father.”

I passed André as we made our way out of the auditorium after the meeting. He leaned over and whispered to me.

“It was all square for most of the meeting, but after that old lady skewered Fox with his own words, I’d have to give the nod to Angus.”

After the meeting, we dropped Muriel off and then drove home. Angus was still seething and did little to hide it, now that he was among friends. In view of how steamed he seemed in the car, I gained new respect for his powers of restraint during the meeting. The entire drive home he didn’t talk much, but when he did, it was through gritted teeth.

We heard Angus enter the workshop below us at about eleven. The glow from the lights hung outside the front of the boathouse spilled into our apartment. Angus seldom turned on the outdoor floods, so Lindsay took a peek out the window and then beckoned me.

I was surprised to see Angus skating on the frozen river in the dim illumination offered by the lights. Up and back he’d go, striding then gliding. He wasn’t a stellar skater, given that his childhood was in Scotland, but he held his own.

“His eyes are streaming,” observed Lindsay as we sat together and watched.

“So would yours in such an icy January wind,” I replied, putting my arm around her shoulder.

But the Canadian flag hoisted on the pole down near the dock hung lank and limp.