his head as if he didn’t believe me. He then made a great show of removing his glasses and polishing them with his tie, like an eccentric university professor. “I’m going to give you another chance to answer, Dear Boy. In the Department, we always take the word of a gentleman. Are you a gentleman, Dear Boy?”
I’ve never been afraid to speak my mind and let my irritation show. “Probably not,” I said, “but I have a special memory and can remember most things I read or hear. That accounts for my score.”
“Oh I see. That must mean you’re an idiot savant,” he said, smiling condescendingly, “like the people who perform in circus sideshows. But isn’t using those powers a form of cheating?”
“I’m neither an idiot nor a cheat,” I said, somewhat defensively. “I’m no more intelligent than anyone else but I have an ability to remember things.”
I wasn’t sure if he was some sort of malicious jokester who liked to humiliate people he had just met, or whether he had put his questions in good faith. Whatever it was, I didn’t like it. To make it worse, the others had laughed when he asked me if I was an idiot savant. I felt they were all putting me down. They probably knew I was a Métis — my name would have given me away —and wanted to have some fun at my expense before dismissing me out of hand. I’ve always had a problem with my temper and I now wanted to tell Burump to go to hell, to tell him to “Dear Boy” somebody else, to tell him he was a snob with his talk of what constituted gentlemanly behavior. I wanted to get to my feet and tell everyone in the room that they could take their job and stuff it, and then stalk to the door, shove it open with one great push, step out, and slam it as hard as I could behind me.
But something told me that was exactly what Burump and the others wanted me to do, to provoke me into abandoning my attempt to join the Department. So I forced myself to smile and made a superhuman effort to laugh and pretend Burump had just been joking. And when I came out with my feeble little laugh, more a humourless chuckle, everyone in the room burst out with great guffawing and hooting. It had just been a harmless joke after all — I had almost let my temper disqualify me.
One after the other, the now-friendly board members threw questions at me, asking me to comment on issues as diverse as growing tensions between Israel and its neighbours, the Unilateral Declaration of Independence of the white regime in Rhodesia, border clashes between Indian and Pakistani troops, race relations in the United States after the Harlem and Watts riots, and the changing face of the United Nations in a decolonizing world. I did my best to provide good answers but couldn’t help noticing that nobody other than Longshaft appeared to be paying attention. Two of the members were reading newspapers, someone was scribbling notes on what looked like a draft memorandum, and others were staring out the window. Burump was the greatest offender, smiling with great animation and encouragement most of the time but falling asleep periodically, letting his head drop on to his chest, and snoring noisily for a moment before waking up with a snort and turning his attention back to me.
The first time that happened, I stopped speaking and looked to Longshaft for direction.
“He has a sleep disorder that makes him drop off like that. He means no disrespect.”
It was then the turn of a board member in his mid-fifties named Jonathan Hunter, a senior officer sitting beside me, who I later learned was on sick leave, to pose his questions. Long and gaunt with thinning brown hair, he turned his weary blue eyes toward me, fixed his gaze at a point just over my head, and asked me for my views on the American involvement in Vietnam. “The tragic war in that country keeps me awake at night,” he explained in a low gentle voice. “I was one of the longest serving members of the International Control Commission in Hanoi in the 1950s and still have friends there. I can’t imagine what it must be like to live under the constant American bombardment.”
The stench of Hunter’s breath, more sewer than medicinal, reached me at the same time as his words and almost made me gag. I suddenly felt ill at ease and on high alert. I knew very well that almost nobody in Canada supported the American position on the war. Demonstrations were taking place every day outside the American embassy in downtown Ottawa, not two hundred yards from where we were meeting, and in front of American consulates across the country. The Canadian public was enthusiastically welcoming thousands of American draft dodgers and deserters pouring over the border each year. The Canadian prime minister had just delivered a speech in Philadelphia in which he urged the United States to withdraw its troops from Vietnam — to applause in Canada but provoking the outrage of the American president.
I assumed the board members would share those views and question my judgement if I went against the consensus. However, in those days I accepted the domino theory, the argument that a communist victory in Vietnam would lead to a communist takeover of Southeast Asia, and then to gains elsewhere in Asia. I couldn’t and wouldn’t say something I didn’t believe even if it ruined my chances of joining the Department, and so I said, “I watch the news on television like everyone else and am well aware that thousands of American soldiers and tens of thousands of Vietnamese civilians have been killed in the war to date and that many more will die before victory is won. But that’s the cost of freedom.” And to make it worse, in words that embarrass me today for their ignorance, I said the Americans should continue the war to defend the security of the free world against communist aggression.
Hunter reacted by gasping and clutching at his heart. I thought he was playing a prank on me as had Burump, and smiled at him in appreciation. But it was not a joke. Someone got up and offered him a glass of water, but he waved it away saying he was fine. I waited for the others to challenge my position, but other than looking deeply concerned, nobody said anything, or even glanced my way for that matter. It was as if they had just discovered I was so hopelessly pro-American and reactionary, there was no point in spending more time with me.
Longshaft, who had not participated in the discussion to that point, addressed his colleagues, “Everyone who appears before this board is entitled to his opinion, and it’s refreshing to hear someone speak so candidly on such a controversial a topic.” Turning to me, he asked if I knew the writings of Albert Camus, the great French humanist winner of the Nobel Prize for literature.
“I do.” I said. “I’ve read most of his books.”
“And so you’re familiar with what he said about the struggle of the Algerian people for their independence from France — the struggle in which France used torture as an instrument to fight the National Liberation Front?”
“He was torn between his support for the Arabs and Berbers who were native to the region and his own people — the Pieds-Noirs — the European settlers who had lived in Algeria for generations.”
“Camus once told a journalist that if he had to make a decision between Justice and his mother, he would choose his mother. What did he mean?”
“Camus was saying that whatever the merits of the Arab and Berber cause, he would support his mother’s people — the Pieds-Noirs — in the conflict. Blood and family came before Justice.”
“Do you agree with Camus?”
“I do. When two values conflict you should support your family.”
“You would have opposed the struggle for the independence of Algeria?”
“If I had been Camus I would have. If I had been an Arab or Berber I would have supported the fight to end French rule.”
“Your file says you’re a Métis. If you had lived a hundred years ago, would you have supported Louis Riel in his fight against Canada?”
“Yes, of course … unreservedly and blindly if need be.
