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  We were talking about journalism. I had asked him why he turned so often to magazine work. Wasn’t it getting in the way of his novels?

  He said, as he had said before so many times, that his sole purpose as a writer was to be an “honest witness” for his times. He needed real material to create that real world in fiction. And journalism provided this.

  “It gives me entrée,” he said, “into worlds I could not otherwise be a part of.”

  Exactly. This was precisely the sense I felt on VIA Rail no. 638 that morning. We were witnessing the times, history in the making. It was like being a Canadian Zelig, the Woody Allen movie character who keeps showing up everywhere but never actually takes part—just some face in the background of significant events. When you are a Zelig, no one is ever quite sure how you got there or exactly what you’re doing. It can be an awkward feeling at times—a sense that you don’t belong—but more often it’s a quiet delight that you’re somehow there and no one has yet thought to kick you out.

  I once came across a wonderful short story called “The Leper’s Squint” by Vancouver Island writer Jack Hodgins. It was about a fiction writer and the gathering of material for his work. Hodgins’s narrator finds himself visiting Ireland’s Rock of Cashel, where a guide points out the wall of rock and the tiny opening through which the outcasts were once allowed to watch, but not participate in, the religious services of the day. It was “like looking through the eye of a needle.” No journalist could read that passage without relating.

  And yet there’s a difference in what’s done with the gathering. Journalism isn’t, or at least shouldn’t be, fiction. The journalist can sometimes become a small part of whatever’s happening. Once Richler’s lovely notion of entrée has been gained, there’s a responsibility to be that dependable witness to what journalists like to call “history on the run”— but also a chance to determine, even if ever so slightly, even if accidentally, how fast the run and what shifts in direction it might take. A very small part, often insignificant, but still one to be taken seriously.

  Looking back on more than three decades of this work, most of it spent running around this impossible and impossibly huge country, usually alone, I’ve often felt like a bit of an outsider–insider. I’ve been privy to so much thanks to this strange job where each year tends to begin and end with a blank daybook. Most people fill in their days and weeks in advance, but a journalist has to look back—usually through clippings rather than a pocket calendar—to know where he or she was on a given day. It might be a federal or provincial election. It could be a trip through the Far North. It could be time spent on oil rigs, following Royal tours or the Stanley Cup playoffs, reporting on a Native standoff, analyzing a farm crisis, or simply doing one of those marvellous “people” stories that give this massive body called Canada its face.

  Of all those privileged experiences over those years, perhaps the most moving was being allowed on-board VIA Rail no. 638 as it made its way toward Montreal that day. Standing in the rocking train car, periodically greasing the window with my nose, I was acutely aware of the gift entrée had given those few of us who decided to look out rather than in during this remarkable journey.

  In this part of the country, it was quickly becoming clear, Pierre Trudeau still held an office that had nothing to do with elections or titles.

  THE FUNERAL TRAIN picked up speed between the small villages and towns that line the Ontario side of the lower Ottawa River. In a way it was a shame, in that the leaves were late turning that mild fall: poplar just starting to yellow, maple but a hint of the orange splash to come. Only the sumac had already turned dark as dried blood in the sharp light of mid-morning.

  The effect, even with the blurring from increasing speed, was of a countryside so soft and warm it seemed winter should be hemispheres away rather than weeks. Not far from the small town of Maxville the train rocked and hurdled through a marsh where a great blue heron lifted off, slowly banked to the north, and was instantly gone from sight. Nearer the Ontario–Quebec line, thousands of gathering Canada geese—suddenly spooked by the train whistle blown for an upcoming crossing—rose as one, all but darkening the eastern sky before they, too, instantly vanished.

  It was such magnificent scenery, the October light playing across finished fields, the water along the South Nation and Ottawa rivers military-still on such a windless day. And yet the natural beauty of the countryside lay far more in the people and their faces. Those who had been waiting at crossings in lawn chairs stood and cheered. Youngsters sat in trees and waved small flags. Older couples pulled their cars over on gravel shoulders, got out, and stood silently at attention as the train passed.

  To the two of us at the window, these emotions seemed to come from another, less cynical time, as if this train had somehow headed backward into, say, 1967, when everything seemed so possible for this little country then celebrating its hundredth birthday, or 1968, when the curious-looking man from Montreal won his party’s leadership and burst on to the Canadian political scene, as CBC broadcaster Gordon Donaldson once so dramatically put it, like “a stone through a stained-glass window.”

  Near the outskirts of little Alexandria, something else began to happen. The train jerked, lost speed, then shuddered even slower. One of the funeral officials had earlier announced that the train would be moving at “an especially dignified pace,” but this seemed but a few turns short of a full stop. The conductor working our car seemed nervous, checking his watch as if playing a part in a French mystery film. Munson and I tried to lean as tight to the glass as we could to look ahead and see what the problem was.

  It turned out that, as no. 638 began passing through Alexandria, the crowd, six and eight people deep in places, had pushed forward. Boy scouts and girl guides at attention were squeezed until they were forced to stutter-step closer. Aging members of the local Royal Canadian Legion branch—chests out, service medals flashing—were forced to edge in, the small corps of young cadets lined up beside the Legionnaires following suit as the growing crowd pushed ever nearer to the slowing train.

  Through the glass we could hear a single piper playing “The Last Post.” The train slowed to a bare crawl. And this was when we heard the hands of Alexandria. Neither Munson nor I knew what it was at first. There was this sound, this rubbery … squeak … that we couldn’t place. Not the wheels. Not the brakes. But something else.

  And suddenly, instantly, we realized what it was.

  Skin.

  The people of Alexandria were reaching out to touch the train carrying Pierre Trudeau home. They were, literally, feeling his passing, their hands rubbing along the metal of the cars as the train slowly made its way through the small town and on to Montreal.

  Munson and I looked down at hundreds of hands—some so young they had to reach up, some so old they shook helplessly—reaching out to touch the funeral train. Their faces, many openly weeping, were the faces of Canada, every age, both sexes, different languages, old Canadians and young Canadians, old Canadians and new Canadians, all reaching out to touch the train that was carrying Pierre Trudeau to his grave.

  Jim Munson broke down first. But he was not alone for long.

  I do not believe I have heard anything quite so moving as the sound of the skin of Canada on the history of Canada. It sent chills up and down the spines of every person in the funeral car and still, today, sends chills up and down mine to remember that oddly mouselike sound that had baffled us in Alexandria.

  But there was more to it than just confusion. It was the surprise—there is no other word for it, the surprise—of staring out at a country and seeing a face you had no idea was there, even though your job, day in and day out, is to describe this face and give it voice.

  It was also the stark realization that you were staring out at one small corner of a country so large it defies generalities; defies, we sometimes think, even slight understanding.

  Staring out at Canada … and yet acutely, startlingly aware that if VIA Rail no.
638—carrying the man who said the state had no business in the bedroom, who brought in bilingualism and biculturalism, who brought home the Constitution, who brought in the Charter, who called in the troops and called out the energy producers—happened this same soft October day to be passing through, say, Salmon Arm, British Columbia, rather than Alexandria, Ontario, the people of Canada would also be reaching out.

  But not to touch the train. Rather, to give back the finger.

  THAT REMARKABLE EXPERIENCE—the hands of Alexandria contrasted with the fingers of Salmon Arm—accelerated my growing fascination with the contradictions of this bewildering country.

  The Europeans believed they had “discovered” a New World that was of course neither new nor without people holding prior claim. They found a vast, rich, fertile country and, initially, actively discouraged settlement. They found a sprawling, seemingly impenetrable land of tree and rock and bog that already had in place the best highway system the country would ever know: the rivers. They arrived thinking themselves the advanced civilization and found that the most ingenious, most necessary engineering marvel had already been invented: the canoe.

  What did Giovanni Caboto think of this place that late June day in 1497 when he sailed into Bonavista Bay and discovered the waters so teeming with cod that his men had only to drop weighted baskets to begin hauling in the fish? What, on the other hand, did Jacques Cartier think when the inside walls of his Stadacona shelter coated over with six inches of ice in early 1536 and 25 of his 110 men perished? What was it that Captain George Vancouver, explorer, is supposed to have seen as he sailed up the west coast in search of the Northwest Passage in the early 1790s, something so disturbing to him that he decided to keep it secret? We don’t know. We will never know.

  Perhaps, like George Vancouver’s great secret, such a country is ultimately unknowable.

  The political lines run east and west, the economic lines mostly south. We are some thirty million people who line up along the southern border like goldfish against the glass, all the while leaving the North so empty the rest of the world can say, with some legitimacy, that we aren’t even in it.

  We have a jagged line far up this empty northern stretch with trees on one side and no trees on the other. We begin the real New Year the day after Labour Day Weekend. We celebrate Groundhog Day when winter has just settled in, not when it’s supposedly ending. We complain about the cold and yet, in places like White River, Ontario, and Snag, Yukon, we argue over and boast about record lows. We revere our anthem although only professional anthem singers know the words. We mostly like Americans and often dislike America. We drive from flat prairie into mountains. We have three ocean shores—one with high rocks at the Atlantic, one with shrinking ice over the Arctic, one with inviting beaches into the Pacific—and a fourth shore, freshwater, along the Great Lakes, where for long stretches we stare across to the United States at night as if that country were lighted store windows on the far side of a street that’s mostly vacant lot on ours. And yet we consider our vacant lot the superior property.

  Thanks to journalism’s entrée I’ve seen the sun rise at Cape Spear, Newfoundland, knowing there is nothing but water between my sneakers gripping that rock face and Ireland. I’ve watched that sun set off Long Beach on Vancouver Island and known there is nothing but sea between my bare feet and Japan. I’ve felt the shine of that sun for days and nights on end in the Far North, and stood on the most northerly spot of Ellesmere Island knowing there is nothing but ice between my rubber boots and Russia. I’ve touched salt water east, west, and north—and even bathed in salty Little Manitou Lake in the heart of Saskatchewan.

  I have travelled the country by train, bus, ferry, camper, car, bicycle, canoe, foot, and thumb. I have flown by helicopter over the harsh coast and breathtaking fiords of Newfoundland; I have flown by bush plane over the wild white rivers of northern Quebec and the ice fields of the Arctic; I have stared down from passenger jets enough to know what early explorer David Thompson meant when he stared up into the Rockies and thought the mountains looked rather like “the waves of the ocean during a wintry storm.”

  Like any Canadian, I’m familiar with the touchstones: the Canadian Shield, Peggy’s Cove, Old Quebec, nuisance grounds, curling, Georgian Bay, Nanaimo bars, maple syrup, the Rockies, muskeg, road hockey, weather talk, late-night newscasts being bumped by Hockey Night in Canada, place names like Climax, Saskatchewan, Dildo, Newfoundland, and Medicine Hat, Alberta, soapstone carvings, legends like Mufferaw Joe of the Ottawa Valley and the Windigo of the northern Crees, the Avro Arrow, May two-four weekends, Screech, Céline Dion, the lake, John Deere caps, fiddleheads, Morningside, Razzle Dazzle, Corner Gas, Trailer Park Boys, Don Cherry, Michel Tremblay plays, Anne of Green Gables, poutine, “peace, order and good government,” with everything held together by Red Green’s duct tape.

  I have seen flax in bloom, read Sinclair Ross, been to the Quebec Winter Carnival, tried to play Gordon Lightfoot songs on a guitar, skinny-dipped in northern lakes, removed bloodsuckers, figured out the Toronto subway, portaged canoes, trapped beaver, whined about trivial matters, eaten wild as well as flour-and-sugar beaver tails, cheered for fringe theatre, drunk Keith’s draft beer to Stan Rogers songs, toured a northern diamond mine, picked Saskatoons, played hockey, swatted mosquitoes, stood at both Mile 0’s on the Trans-Canada Highway, made love under the northern lights (just kidding, children), shovelled roofs, jogged the Hotel Macdonald stairs in Edmonton, boiled sap, kissed a cod, slept on an offshore oil rig, complained about banks, used an outhouse, attended the Calgary Stampede, and even rubbed Timothy Eaton’s bronze toe in Winnipeg for good luck.

  But do I know the country? Sometimes I think so; more often I feel I know nothing.

  Canada, I sometimes think, is a country that, like Einstein’s theory of relativity, is impossible for virtually any of us to grasp.

  Einstein’s theory can be worked out on a blackboard. We have a thousand books, dozens of royal commissions, hundreds of learned papers, and millions of panel discussions and late-night bar conversations—yet none has ever satisfactorily worked out the equation that is Canada. All we know for sure is that for every sign that points one way another seems to be pointing back. We are a country of endless contradiction.

  Canadians have two languages but rarely speak them both; they have two official national sports but hardly ever play one, lacrosse; they fret over other provinces’ separation threats and race to threaten separation themselves; they use Ottawa as both capital city and swear word; they have politicians who are elected to the federal government to work for the elimination of the federal government; they have academics calling for the end of provinces, premiers working for ever-increasing provincial powers, and mayors hoping for the creation of city states at the expense of provincial powers; they argue, still, over whether Louis Riel should have been hanged as a traitor back in 1885 or deserves a statue on Parliament Hill as a Father of Confederation.

  It should come as no surprise, then, that this country that saw 42,042 citizens pay the ultimate sacrifice in the Second World War, that takes such enormous pride in its contributions to both wars, would have as a celebrated novel about those times Earle Birney’s Turvey, the story of an enlisted man who never sees battle.

  Not only did different sides of the country hold different views on Trudeau—Salmon Arm, B.C., never forgiving him for giving them the finger—but time, as well as space, also saw him differently. Pierre Trudeau died the ultimate symbol for a strong, central government. He left behind, as his legacy, a Charter of Rights that is based on tolerance and equality. A half-dozen years after his death, however, a book appeared—Young Trudeau by Max and Monique Nemni, two Trudeau contemporaries—showing that he began his political life sympathetic to fascism, thought democracy bad for the sort of elite he himself came from, considered himself a revolutionary capable of open insurrection, and once called upon a crowd to “impale alive” those who supported the conscription intended to send more Cana
dians off to fight for their country. Thirty years later he would himself call out the army, thinking it necessary to save the nation.

  No surprise, then, that when John English published his first volume of Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau in the fall of 2006, the official biographer would conclude, after years of studying Trudeau’s public and private writings, that the man was “contradictory and conflicted.”

  Just like the country itself.

  IT WOULD BE SIMPLER, perhaps, if Canada were only smaller.

  When Luigi Barzini set out to write The Italians in the early 1960s he fancied himself a portrait painter whose “sitter happens to be my country.” To capture Canada, however, you’d have to be not only a portrait painter but also a cartographer, for the central personality of the Canadian is landscape. You’d also need to be an analyst, for Canadians often seem far more interested in what they think—or, more accurately, what others think—than in how they look. And you’d have to be a seer, to know what lies ahead, if anything at all.

  A friend once said, almost as a joke, that “Canada is the painting that Tom Thomson never finished.” The final strokes forever out of reach.

  How could you ever expect to properly capture such a country? Can you even try to talk about a—one, single, specific—Canadian when the personality you’re trying to define speaks two official languages, hundreds of other tongues, and is made up of faces in shapes and colours more varied than in any other nation in the world? How can it be that a country so vast and so blessed with natural resources could shift from a place where four of every five lived on the land to a place where four of every five live in the city—and in so short a time that there are Canadians alive who have lived in both realities?

  And how, others must wonder, can a people apply such ridicule to government—even to the very notion of Confederation—and yet take such annual pride in being named by the United Nations as one of the very best countries in the world to live?