way to the railway tracks where a locomotive with a load of boxcars was beginning to pull out of a siding. One of the doors was open, and as she ran toward it, a half-dozen hobos standing inside waved and yelled at her to come join them. She reached up and they hauled her inside and welcomed her to their world. After sharing a bottle of cheap wine with her, they told her their hard luck stories and gave her tips on how to survive in the big city.
“You being an Indian and all that, you won’t have a chance in hell of getting any sort of job. You’re going to have to use your wits to survive, bumming spare change on the streets and knocking on doors for handouts.”
“The Salvation Army’s always good for a meal and place to spend the night if nothing better turns up. But you gotta close your eyes and be polite when they pray for your soul.”
“When I was on the bum in Quebec,” another hobo said, “I used to go looking for monasteries when I was hungry. The monks were always good for an apple and a sandwich. But you had to get there early in the morning before they ran out.”
Stella jumped off the train when it slowed to a crawl approaching the freight yards in downtown Toronto. She had no friends, no money, no knowledge of the city, and she had a splitting headache. But she was free for the first time in her life to do whatever she wanted.
A hard-faced railway cop carrying a truncheon told her to get a move on. “I seen you get off that train. If I ever see you here again, it’ll be the Don Jail for you.”
“Go to hell, you asshole,” she said, and ran off when he came after her. She stopped a passerby to say she was hungry and to ask where she could find a monastery or the Salvation Army.
“Don’t know any monasteries around here. But the Salvation Army’s got a soup kitchen over on Jarvis Street and it’s not a long walk.”
The soup kitchen was closed when Stella reached it and she stood at the door waiting for it to open, asking people for spare change. Eventually, someone came out and told her to go away and come back later. She then noticed that there were women, their faces powdered and their lips smeared with lipstick, standing on the sidewalk beckoning to men in uniform. Although raised in a residential school, Stella knew they were whores. A teacher at the school had once tried to humiliate her by calling her that when she asked for money after he had sex with her, but it hadn’t bothered her. One of the women saw her and came over.
“New in town?”
“Just arrived on a freight. Don’t know anyone down here.”
“What’s this about a freight? Did you really just arrive in town?” A pimp had been listening to the conversation, and over a coke and a hamburger he told Stella that he could help her make a lot of money.
“I’ll provide you with a room to do your work and spend your free time, and I’ll be around to protect you if the johns cause trouble. You’re young and the customers like that. But you’re an Indian and a lot of guys around here don’t like Indians. Just the same, the city’s been full of lonely soldiers since the start of the war and they’ll pay one dollar for every trick you turn. My cut is fifty cents. Interested?”
One September evening, fifteen months later, Stella was standing on the sidewalk on Jarvis Street outside the King’s Arms Hotel, which rented rooms by the hour to prostitutes to carry out their business. One of her friends, a big, raw-boned Ojibwa teenager from a reserve in northern Ontario, who had likewise drifted onto the streets after running away from her residential school, was with her. The two women were doing what they did every day at that time: trying to catch the eyes of potential customers cruising down the street in their cars. But it was hot and muggy and business was slow. A car stopped, and the driver leaned out the window and motioned to Stella to come over to him. But as Stella began to discuss prices, the other woman pushed her aside and took her place.
“Goddamn Indian bitch,” Stella hissed, grabbing her by the hair, dragging her away from the car and pushing her down on the pavement.
“Goddamn Indian whore,” the other girl replied, scratching Stella’s face and pulling her down on top of her and kneeing her in the groin.
“The cops!” someone yelled.
The john drove quickly away, the crowd dispersed, and the women ran up the steps into the hotel. Shortly afterward, Stella’s father, Jacob Musquedo, entered the hotel and spoke to the clerk behind the desk.
“I’ve been told Stella Musquedo lives here,” he said. “I need to talk to her.”
“You a cop?” the clerk asked. “I guess not,” he said, glancing at Jacob’s dark brown face and not waiting for an answer. “Wait right here and I’ll go get her. She just came in in a bit of a hurry.”
A few minutes later, a smiling Stella, her face swollen and scratched, came down the stairs.
“Looking for a good time, handsome?” she said, not recognizing her father. “I give special rates for Indians and extra special ones for old men like you.”
“Stella? Are you Stella Musquedo? Can we go up to your room? I’ve got something to say to you.”
2
Shortly after the start of the Great War in 1914, well before Jacob found his daughter working the streets of Toronto, a recruitment officer addressed a public meeting at the Chippewas of Rama Indian Reserve. “Our country is in peril,” he told the assembled people. “Tens of thousands of young Canadians have already fallen in battle in Europe fighting alongside their British cousins under the leadership of His Majesty King George V whose grandmother, Queen Victoria, was the beloved mother and protector of all the Indians of Canada. Men are needed to replace them as soon as possible, for the hour is late and the Hun is winning.”
With his unlined face and raven-black hair, Jacob looked decades younger than his actual age of fifty-one, and had no difficulty in persuading the recruitment officer to let him join up. In May of the following year, he received Stella’s letter pleading for him to let her go home for the summer, but set it aside after reading it, just as he had with the others she had sent him over the years. Ignoring his daughter’s correspondence, in his way of thinking, however, did not in any way mean that he was unmoved by her pleas for help. His overriding desire was to do what was in her best interest, and in his opinion she was better off staying at the residential school in the safe hands of its staff than spending the summer at the Indian Camp where she would probably start running around with the boys. And as for her complaints of mistreatment by her caregivers, he simply did not believe her. It would have been a waste of time to write to tell her what she already knew anyway.
Nevertheless, he began to worry about what might happen to his daughter if he were to be killed in action, finally deciding to marry her off as soon as she turned sixteen to a suitable Chippewa man who could take care of her if that should happen. All the eligible bachelors from the reserve, however, had joined up and were as much at risk of being killed as he was. After much reflection, he came to the conclusion that if his daughter were to marry someone who was killed in action, she would at least receive a pension. And so in the coming year, Jacob studied the young recruits from his reserve doing their basic training with him to find the best possible husband for his daughter. Eventually he settled on Amos Wolf, a hard-working young man of twenty whose elderly parents had passed away when he was still a teenager.
“I
