The odds against spotting this unobtrusive little bird were very high; yet I had barely parked my bike under a dripping willow when a flicker of movement in the branches overhead caught my eye. And there it was! A sparrow-sized little thing, its drab plumage fluffed against the chill, it seemed completely unremarkable except for chalk-white eyes that made its identity unmistakable.
It may have been too cold or too hungry to pay attention to me. I was not five feet from it when my third shot killed it. Hurriedly wrapping the tiny body in a handkerchief, I thrust it into an inner pocket, got on my bike, and hastened home.
That night in the privacy of my bedroom I skinned and prepared the specimen and a few days later proudly displayed it to Jim Baillie. Expecting a commendation, I was shaken when he launched into a tirade, accusing me of having deprived the museum of a rare specimen staff members had been searching for. He calmed down when I assured him it had always been my intention to donate the vireo to the museum. This was a lie but I made it true, and once the specimen was in official hands I was restored to favour.
A few months later federal authorities in Ottawa issued a permit authorizing me to collect up to six specimens a year of each and every species of bird I might encounter in Canada – a limit that would be increased as my scientific status grew.
In May of 1938, while Helen was sadly packing our belongings, I was suffering through the hours school demanded of me but spending my free time flitting around the city’s parks and green spaces almost as actively as the birds I was watching. Angus, meanwhile, was devoting his weekends to sailing Scotch Bonnet west from Montreal. He had planned to bring her to Toronto but, unable to arrange a satisfactory (by which he meant free) mooring for her there, he instead chose Whitby, a small lakeshore town some thirty miles east of Toronto in whose uncrowded harbour Scotch Bonnet could lie at anchor while serving as our temporary home.
One May weekend he invited me to join him at Kingston for the last lap of the sail to Whitby. I was ecstatic, especially when he agreed to let Andy come along.
We took the train to Kingston where Andy and I got our first sight of my father’s vessel. Her sombre black hull and ochre-coloured sails contrasted sharply with the gleaming white yachts among which she was moored. Heavily built and broad of beam, she seemed a bit like a water buffalo lording it over a herd of gazelles – tough, enduring, and unstoppable.
I was instantly in thrall to her. My memory of the next three days is a kaleidoscope of happy sounds and images: the rattle of the anchor chain coming up, the snap and crackle of canvas as she took the wind, spray whipping over her bluff bows as a hard gust laid her over, and the vibrancy of her passage through the water transmitted by rudder and tiller to my guiding hand.
Our course took us the full length of the Bay of Quinte where Angus had learned to sail and I, as a two-year-old, had made my first voyage happily splashing about in the wet bilges of a sailing dinghy. By the time we dropped anchor in Whitby harbour, Scotch Bonnet had established herself as a pivotal influence in my life, and I had contracted sailor’s itch: a lively and incurable combination of exhilaration and apprehension.
That sail must have been just as memorable for my father. Not only had he brought his dream ship home but, on that same day, a Toronto firm had published his first book, Then I’ll Look Up, a novel about nineteenth-century life on and around the Bay of Quinte. As one of the few truly Canadian books to appear that year in a field dominated as usual by British and American imports, it was seen by some as a bright omen of things to come.
Things were going well for Angus. And for me. By the end of June school was over. We had moved out of 90 Lonsdale and were living aboard Scotch Bonnet. Soon after dawn most days (sometimes before the dawn) I would climb into our little pram – a bathtub-sized dinghy – and ease my way into the dense reed beds that enclosed most of the harbour and were home to many swimming beasts and nesting birds. I did not yet have a collecting permit and went among them in peace. Carrying only field glasses, a notebook, and sometimes my camera, I entered a domain of the Others, not unlike some I had known in my Saskatchewan years.
Old friends were here: raucous red-winged blackbirds, reclusive marsh wrens, pompous bitterns, sprightly teal, moth-winged harriers, skulking rails. Engrossed in mating and nesting, some birds were so incautious as to alight on the gunwales of the pram and occasionally on my head or shoulders.
I even managed to establish something of a relationship with an enormous snapping turtle who liked to sun itself on a muskrat’s floating lodge. About two feet in diameter, this hoary creature had a tail resembling that of an alligator. He (or she) may have been as much as a century old. Having survived so long it seemed to have no fear. When I approached it for the first time, it raised its gnarled old head, opened its eagle’s beak, and hissed so fiercely that I hurriedly back-paddled. Nevertheless, I visited it again and again and in time it came to accept me. Or ignore me. One sunny morning I eased the pram so close alongside as to be able to tentatively touch its armoured back. Very slowly it turned its ancient head and looked full at me. Neither of us could have guessed that, with the passage of only a few more years, its sanctuary would be transformed into a dredged and regulated basin of polluted water inhabited chiefly by ”stink pots,” as Angus called powered pleasure boats.
I was content but Helen grew increasingly despondent as the days slipped by and Angus, who always seemed to be away in some far corner of the province on library business, did nothing about finding us a house ashore.
One day she revolted, announcing she was going to Montreal to stay with her spinster sister who had a spacious apartment there. Helen wanted me to go too but I begged off on the grounds that, if I did, there would be nobody to look out for Mutt. The truth was that I had not the slightest desire to leave my marshy world where eggs were hatching and abundant new life throbbed below and above the waterline. Moreover, having just turned seventeen, I felt quite capable of looking after myself, and was happy to have the chance to do so.
Next day I rowed my mother ashore. She took a taxi to the train station while I hastened back aboard to become, at least temporarily, master of my own destiny.
Andy came to join me and we had a splendid time in the ensuing week. We lived in an aquatic Eden through most of the daylight hours. When night fell we lit the gimballed brass lamps in Scotch Bonnet’s snug cabin, cooked our supper on the cast-iron Shipmate stove, drank cider (which our imaginations transmuted into rum), and fantasized that we were anchored in the lagoon of a tropical atoll where, next morning, we might encounter a Komodo dragon or some such semi-legendary creature.
My collector’s permit arrived that week. The pleasure this gave me was marred by Andy’s announcement that he had to return to Toronto and look for a summer job to help pay the expenses of his next year at school.
Then I had an inspiration. How would it be, I asked if, instead of his trying to find a job in a labour market swamped with the unemployed, he and I mounted an expedition to collect birds and small mammals for the ROMZ, which was then paying up to fifty cents apiece for specimens.
Deluded by the wilful optimism of youth, I predicted that such a venture would earn Andy at least double what he could expect to get from any summer job available to him in Toronto. He was intrigued but dubious. Where would we go and how would we finance an expedition of our own? I first suggested Saskatchewan, but the cost of travelling so far put it out of reach. Then I remembered Hawk Lake.
”We could go to my grandparents’ place in Quebec. I heard Dr. Diamond [head of the ROMZ] tell Jim Baillie the museum needs stuff from Quebec. Hawk Lake’s real wild. We could camp out and scrounge most of our grub off of the country. Wouldn’t hardly cost us a thing. What d’you say?”
Andy said yes.
– 4 –
LOVE AND DEATH
I never knew what transpired between my parents after Helen’s return from a prolonged visit to Montreal. The atmosphere between them was glacial, mostly I think because th
e question of where we were going to live when summer ended remained un resolved. I didn’t really care where I lived because I was preoccupied with preparations for what I pompously described in a proposal given to Jim Baillie as A Zoological Investigation of the Kazabazua Region in the Province of Quebec.
Andy and I were soon in difficulties. By the time we had bought our collecting supplies (which consisted mostly of shotgun ammunition), we found we could not afford train tickets to Kazabazua. We had just enough cash left to purchase one-way bus tickets as far as Ottawa, well short of our destination. Worse still, dogs were not allowed on inter-city buses. To our great relief, Angus anted up the cash to ship Mutt from Whitby to Kazabazua by rail way express.
Andy and I set off to hitchhike from Ottawa to our destination. We walked from the city centre to the northern outskirts burdened with a bell tent, bedrolls, and two enormous packsacks. One of these was stuffed with scientific equipment, including a hundred mousetraps, cartons of ammunition, skinning tools, and lethal chemicals. The other contained clothing and fishing, camping, and cooking gear. We also carried axes, two shotguns, and a .22 rifle.
Plodding along the verges of a gravel road north of Ottawa, begrimed with dust and sweat and bent under heavy loads from which the muzzles of our several guns protruded, it is little wonder the few cars and trucks we encountered gave us a wide berth. At dusk, well into the wilderness, we came upon a hulking group of rough-looking fellows milling about a dilapidated gas station in a roadside clearing. As we drew near we saw most were armed, and none looked friendly. We had blundered into a backwoods vendetta. The garage owner and some of his supporters were anticipating a raid and their guns (which they displayed prominently) were loaded. So were they.
Neither Andy nor I spoke French and the garage’s defenders understood little or no English so attempts to explain who we were and what we were doing got us nowhere. When a black-bearded fellow pointed his .30-30 down the road we had just travelled and growled an imprecation, we hurriedly backtracked, stumbling under our loads while half-expecting to hear the whine of pursuing bullets. We retreated at least a mile before, too exhausted to go any farther, deciding to take to the woods and lie low until morning. Not bothering to erect the tent and not daring to make a fire, we burrowed into our bedrolls and gnawed on dry biscuits for supper as we tried to defend ourselves against a perfect passion of mosquitoes.
At dawn we headed north again. We had to, because Mutt was due to arrive at the Kazabazua station that afternoon and we needed to be on hand to claim him and free him from his shipping crate. We sneaked past the now ominously quiet garage to reach Kazabazua just minutes before the daily train arrived. Ecstatically relieved to see us, Mutt peed on everything in sight, including several bags of mail.
That night we pitched our tent beside a nameless little lake in a paradisiacal setting of old conifers and hardwoods that had somehow escaped ”harvesting” by timber barons. This vestige of wilderness became the centre from which we set about denuding the region of as many of the Others as we could kill. We butchered birds, from woodland warblers to hawks and owls, and trapped and snared mammals ranging from tiny shrews to a lactating vixen who probably had suckling pups in a den not far away. We also collected a wide assortment of other animals, including fishes, reptiles, frogs, and invertebrates whom we preserved in jars and bottles recovered from the Kazabazua garbage dump and filled with formaldehyde.
This slaughter of the innocents resulted in no twinges of conscience because we were able to employ that supreme achievement of the human intellect – rationality – to suppress any feelings of guilt. We believed that what we were doing was fully justified, even laudatory.
At the start of our fourth week in the woods a letter arrived from Jim Baillie. Having expressed his hopes that we were amassing ”a large and useful collection,” he gave us the bad news that the ROMZ’s budget had been cut. Consequently he would have no money this year to purchase specimens from ”outside sources” such as ourselves.
”However,” he added, ”we will gratefully receive specimens as donations.”
This news left Andy no choice but to return to Toronto where, for six dollars a week and his keep, he could get a job as a deckhand aboard a Lake Ontario cruise ship, scrubbing floors and cleaning up vomit, used condoms, and other debris left by holidaying passengers.
”It should be enough,” he later wrote to me, ”to buy my school books this fall, but I sure wish I was still up in the Gatineau with you and Mutt.”
Shortly after Andy’s departure, my mother arrived at Hawk Lake to stay with her parents until she had a home of her own to go to. Mutt and I remained with her there through the rest of the summer.
Since there was no money to be made continuing at the collector’s game, I put aside guns, traps, and poisons and again began living the life that had been mine in Saskatchewan as an observer of rather than as nemesis of the Others.
One day I was canoeing on one of the larger lakes when I spotted a porcupine waddling purposefully along the shore of an offshore islet. Since porcupines do not normally swim, I guessed this one had crossed over on the ice the previous winter. It had outstayed its welcome. Having girdled the islet’s few trees and eaten most of their bark, it was now in dire need of greener pastures.
I paddled up until only a few feet separated us. I thought its tuft of white whiskers and its yellowed, protruding teeth gave it some resemblance to my paternal grandfather and, since it seemed to be almost as amiable, I dared to gently touch it with my outstretched paddle. When it showed no resentment I grounded the bow of the canoe directly in its path. It paused, glanced at me, then reared back, and, before I could react, grasped the gunwale with its front feet, hoisted itself up and with a great rattling of quills flopped aboard.
For a startled moment I considered abandoning ship. However, this would have left me marooned on the islet. As the porky settled itself comfortably in the bow, I concluded I might be able to paddle both of us to the mainland.
I pushed off, carefully. My passenger remained motionless until the bow grated on a mainland beach, whereupon it thumped its tail, scrambled over the gunwale, and ambled off into the nearby forest. It did not give me even a backward glance but I had the feeling that if the time ever came when it could do me a favour, it would be glad to oblige.
Returning to the Thomson cottage I showed my mother and grandparents a six-inch-long quill retrieved from the bottom of the canoe and explained how it had got there.
Later I overheard Helen telling her parents:
”He takes after his father, of course. Such a vivid imagination. Perhaps he’ll turn out to be a writer.”
We saw little of Angus that summer. He had wrangled a free mooring for Scotch Bonnet at Toronto Island and was living aboard when not inspecting the far-flung bastions of his empire. He wrote occasionally to assure Helen he was diligently seeking a suitable home for us. The truth was that, having got his Dream Ship, he had no intention of taking on the financial burden of a house as well. He could hardly have afforded to do so. Buying and refitting Scotch Bonnet had left him barely enough money to rent a roof over our heads.
At the very end of August he finally appeared at Hawk Lake.
”Couldn’t find quite the right kind of place to buy so I’ve rented one until we do. Bridge End House it’s called. Twenty miles north of Toronto near a picturesque little village called Richmond Hill which has a small but excellent high school. The house is right out in the country with its own little stream running through it and birds and beasts galore. I’m sure it will suit all of us very well.”
As with so many of my father’s plans, there was a hitch: we would be unable to move into Bridge End House until mid-December when the current tenants were supposed to vacate. My mother, father, and Mutt could live aboard the boat, now moored at Toronto Island, until the house became available but I would have to start school in Richmond Hill on September 3. Angus solved the problem by finding me board and bed with an elderly
couple near the school. They made a living selling ”home bakes” and, though amiable, were not stimulating company. After the evening meal (which generally consisted of fried potatoes and fat sausages followed by stale pie), my hosts would crouch over a squawking table radio and listen entranced to Amos ‘n’ Andy.
In consequence I spent a lot of evenings in my room building model aeroplanes out of balsa wood, reading until my eyes ached, and fantasizing about accompanying a famous explorer named Frank ”Bring-’em-back-alive” Buck on exploring expeditions deep into the heart of Africa.
The bright side of that long, dark autumn was that for the first time in my life I found myself in a school I really liked.
Richmond Hill High School was a red-brick 1920s-style structure, four-square and unpretentious. Its two storeys housed just eighty students in five grades. Grade 12 (which I had managed to scrape into) had only fourteen students, and Jimmy Stewart – our class teacher and also the school principal, a kindly, somewhat myopic middle-aged man – believed in allowing us lots of latitude.
Foremost among the teachers was our hawk-nosed, piercingly black-eyed English teacher, Miss Edna Izzard. Her ”sidekick,” Miss Jean Smith, was a mousy blonde who was supposed to teach us French and who did succeed in getting us to read a lot of French classics, if in English translation. These two shared a cat, a car, and a house, but nobody in that day and age would ever have admitted to the suspicion that they might also be sharing a bed. Their home was open to any of us who might be in need of advice or encouragement. Edna (I can call her by her first name now, though I would never have dared do so in life) gruffly assured me I could write, and her recognition of my efforts to do so gave me a status I had not known in any previous school.