Exceptional Circumstances. James Bartleman
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may be a greasy spoon,” he said when the parade of admirers trailed off momentarily, “but the greatest people in the world come here every day for coffee — people whose first love is the Department, people who aren’t afraid to pack their bags, gather up their wives and their children, and leave to spend the best years of their lives in the hottest, most unhealthy and crime-ridden parts of the world. In this place, former ambassadors mix as equals with secretaries and clerks and communicators. Sometimes the minister comes over from the East Block to shake hands and say hello.”
Just then I spotted Longshaft coming our way, a cup of coffee in his hand. “I hope your presence here means you haven’t given up on us,” he said.
“Mr. Burump wanted to see me.”
“Oh, did he now?” he said, nodding to Burump who nodded back. “Well, don’t believe everything he tells you. And now that you’re here, you might as well see me as well. My offices are on the ninth floor. Tell the guard at the door I told you to drop by.”
On our way back to his office with coffee and muffins, Burump continued greeting friends and acquaintances. “This is one of my oldest friends” he said, introducing me to a middle-aged woman who stopped to ask him if he had opened his cottage for the season. When the friend departed, Burump told me he had served with the woman in New Delhi after partition. “It was a dreadful time, the Hindus were slaughtering the Muslims and the Muslims were doing the same to the Hindus. Millions were killed. Trains would pull into the railway station in New Delhi filled with the corpses of men, women, and children slaughtered by their communal enemies.”
Another person, a registry clerk, had been with him in South Africa. “Do you remember,” Burump said to his former employee, more for my benefit than for his, “the Afrikaners were introducing Apartheid. The African National Congress was fighting back under Nelson Mandela, the greatest man who ever lived. They caught him and jailed him on Robben Island where he remains to this day. It was heartbreaking to witness the black people being rounded up and transported like so many cattle to far-off townships, out of sight of the whites, and there was nothing we could do about it.”
“Now come in and make yourself at home, Dear Boy,” Burump said, when we reached his office. I took a seat in front of his desk but he sat down on a sofa, took a sip of his coffee, and waved me over to join him. “This is where I receive my special guests,” he said. “And you are more special than most. Do you know why?”
I was put off by the overly intimate tone, and so I fixed my gaze on a half dozen framed photographs on the opposite wall and waited for him to answer his own question. The pictures were impressive. In one, a much younger Burump, in the World War II battle dress of an officer of the Canadian armoured corps, was poking his head and shoulders out of the turret of a tank somewhere in Western Europe. In another, in formal diplomatic attire, he was shaking hands with Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister. In still another, he was having coffee with a smiling Nelson Mandala.
“I’ll tell you why, Dear Boy,” Burump said, after giving me time to admire the pictures. “I’ll tell you why you’re special, and I think you’ll be pleased. It’s because you’re a Métis, that’s why.”
“What’s so special about being a Métis?” I asked, afraid of the direction the discussion would now go.
“I don’t want to sound patronizing, but a lot of us here in the Department have long believed that Canada will never live up to its potential as a force for good in the world if the voice of its Aboriginal people isn’t heard.”
“That’s not the fault the Aboriginal people.”
“I know … I know the history,” he said, cutting me off before I could get launched on Louis Riel, the Indian Act, and residential schools. “Your people were treated badly by settler society and are still subject to discrimination. But in a perverse way, as a result of your history, you’re in a better position than someone like me, who comes from a long line of Scottish-English lawyers, to understand and show compassion to the downtrodden people of the Third World. At the moment, many of them feel compelled to take up arms against their governments to obtain equal treatment. Even in Quebec, that same sense of historic injustice is what drives the FLQ to violence — although everybody says it’s just a fringe group and nothing to worry about.”
I had never heard anyone say being oppressed could turn you into a better, more compassionate person. “How can understanding the misery of the Third World people serve Canada’s national interest,” I asked.
“Don’t be obtuse, Dear Boy. Look at it this way. In my opinion, the championing of Canadian values abroad is a national interest as valid as national unity, trade promotion, peacekeeping, protection of the Arctic, or any other interest you can think of. That’s why we need Aboriginal officers in positions of influence in the Department. But that will never happen unless they are recruited just after they graduate from university, and, like everyone else, are given every opportunity to become ambassadors and deputy ministers. Now after years of waiting for it to happen, you come along — a first-class Métis university graduate who has applied to become a Foreign Service officer. The results of your written exam were outstanding and you did an excellent job on the oral exam. I called you here to be sure you kept an open mind on the subject should you get a job offer.”
I wasn’t at all convinced that Aboriginal values were any different from Canadian ones. Or that Canadian ethics were any different than the beliefs held by people anywhere else in the world. Or that it should be the business of the Canadian government to push moral principles down the throats of foreigners. But I didn’t want to say that to Burump. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings when he had taken the trouble to call me at home and to receive me in his office. So I fixed my eyes on the floor and muttered, “Thank you sir … very nice of you to take time out of your busy schedule to tell me that.”
I then looked at him — asking myself what further nonsense he was about to tell me — to see him vigorously rubbing his glasses with his tie. His face was lit up with a huge smile and tears glistened in the corners of his eyes. It was as if I had given a treat to a large affectionate puppy. After looking at me tenderly, he reached over and patted my knee. “I always get choked up in moments like this,” he said. “I’ve spent my life helping others … nothing gives me greater satisfaction.
“Dear Boy,” he said, smiling and speaking at the same time, “I knew you were a Métis as soon as I saw your name and hometown in the file. For generations, my family has vacationed on an island on Georgian Bay, close to Penetang. Our cottage is my real home, not the house I own in Ottawa. There’s something wonderfully primeval and Canadian about the place. It’s Tom Thomson country — wind-swept bent pine trees on rocky islets, magnificent sunsets, tremendous summer storms, moonlit nights, the call of the loon, fresh-picked blueberries, pan-fried fresh pickerel, windswept cliffs, noble Indians paddling by to sell beadwork and deerskin moccasins.”
“Yes I like it too,” I said, hoping to bring this part of the conversation to an end. But Burump was unstoppable. “Above all, it’s the land of the Métis. I know the history of your people, how French courier de bois in the upper Great Lakes took Indian women as wives in the eighteenth century, how they fought with the British against the Americans in the War of 1812, how they left their community at the north end of Lake Huron to make new homes at Penetang when the peace settlement handed their lands over to the Americans. When I was a child, Métis people with names like Langlade, Bottineault, Comptois, and yes, Cadotte, used to come to our cottage to have coffee and a piece of pie with my grandparents. I love your people, Dear Boy.”
By that time I was staring once again at the floor. I then heard him say, “I’d give anything to have been born a Métis.”
Without looking up, I said, “I don’t believe you.”
“What’s that, Dear Boy? What did you say?”
With my eyes still locked on the floor, I repeated, “I don’t believe you … you wouldn’t have wanted to be born a Métis.”
“You’re probably right, Dear Boy. You must forgive my presumption