Alex's Stories
Time to become Canadian
by Alex Aitken

Ann Douglas didn't care for the house. Ian thought it was fine because it was central, close to stores and the little main street where he had his law office, and because it was big enough to have separate bedrooms for their four children. Anyway it was the best they could afford. But for Ann it was a long way from home and a poor substitute for the house they had left behind in Scotland.

She had just to think of Strathalmond and the tears began to flow: Strathalmond, the great stone-built memorial to Scotland's illustrious past; Strathalmond with its high gables, it's long sweeping driveway flanked by tall beeches and splendid elms, its ancient yew hedges and trimmed lawns; Strathalmond their former home in a green valley of the Lothians, far from this bleak, wind-swept Manitoba winter.

Then Ann Douglas tried to remind herself that it was the Strathalmond that had to be sold to pay off her father's debts; that it wasn't a home any more, not hers nor anyone's, just another country hotel in the hands of a faceless corporation that had already converted it into dining rooms and cocktail bars and luxurious accommodations for aspiring socialites on expense accounts. Her Strathalmond had gone, just as her own country had gone when the Douglas family had stood on the top deck of the S.S. Stefan Batory and watched the last misty remnants of land fade from the eastern horizon.

She looked at the little plaque that Ian had made to hang above the fireplace. It was the radio telegram that a steward had handed them that first day on the ship. It was from Hugh Donaldson, their school friend, with whom Ian had climbed Sgurr Nan Gillean on the Black Cuillin Ridge on the Isle of Skye the year before. It was a private farewell, taken from their guidebook, Poucher's Scottish Peaks, where the author directed that last step to the summit over the mist-filled chasm - from the one peak to the other.

"Just a short hiatus - step boldly across!"

Ian thought it so apt to describe their emigration that he framed it and hung it on the wall. And for him it had been appropriate and he had stepped boldly. But for Ann it was just another reminder of home, and her leaving and her constant yearning that had never gone away.

The Stefan Batory was a floating hotel. It was a Polish ship with a Polish crew that sailed out of Gdynia, then on via Rotterdam and Tilbury on the River Thames to the Port of Montreal. In August of 1978, it carried the Douglases around the edge of a hurricane that rocked it like a cork in a river, on through the Belle Isle Strait into the placid Gulf of St. Lawrence. There, Ann and Ian sat on deck chairs in the hot sun, drinking gin and tonic provide by an army of attentive stewards, as the ship nosed past the picturesque villages of Quebec and under the Heights of Abraham.

It was exciting - Ann had to admit that - everything from the gourmet meals in the luxurious dining room to the tranquil strains of the ship's orchestra; from the glorious vistas of sea and sky to the periodic glimpses of distant icebergs. Even the storm, on the sixth day out, that plunged the prow deep into a chasm of churning foam and spray before raising it up on a teetering crest to dive once again. It was a new experience. It was going to a new life in a new world. Ian's enthusiasm was infectious and the children were ecstatic.

The Stefan Batory didn't cater to children in the way that North American children expect to be catered to. The promises of the advertising material regarding discos and children's entertainment were never met, but were replaced by a grim Polish steward with a big square Eastern European face whose daily tasks included setting up the large standing notice in the orchestra lounge that bore the single word "Silence". He glowered at children, frightening some and annoying their laissez-faire parents. They called him Rudolph. But for the mischievous and capricious Douglas boys, Rudolph was perfect, and they made his regimented life a misery for nine days on the ocean. Ann recalled the baiting of the hapless Rudolph and smiled to herself.

Then she thought back to how she had enjoyed the evenings in the bar, drinking Vishnoufka with Ian and a Dutch family going to Quebec whose five daughters spoke Dutch, German, Danish and English but no French, forgetting for a time the leaving of Myrestane and her home and the niggling doubts about the move, only to have them come flooding back later in their cabin when Ian played Kenneth McKellar singing The Land o' the Leal. She finally got rid of that tape. Settling in Peenawak was hard enough without reminders.

But reminders came in many forms, not least the McPakes who lived fifty miles away - not far in Manitoba, the Douglases soon discovered - and who had left Myrestane twenty years earlier.

For the immigrant Scot, just the sound of a voice from home - and sometimes just a single spoken word can reveal it - forms an immediate brotherhood. And the brotherhood cares nothing for compatibility or social class or material position - at least not in the beginning - but springs only from the tie to home, and auld acquaintance and childhood. For the Douglases, when Myrestane was thrown into the mix, the bond was powerful and immediate.Now, as Ann Douglas looked sadly from her window onto the snow bank that lined the deserted street, that bond was to be reinforced once again.

There she was, Bella McPake, head down into the wind and battling her way through a flurry of snow towards Ann's door. Behind her, stepping delicately in her tracks, came the worn and weary Shug McPake, her husband of twenty long years, a twelve pack in one hand and a brown liquor store bag in the other.

As Ann opened the door, Bella burst into the porch, pulling off her toque and brushing the snow from her ample shoulders. Shug followed, backing in, shouldering the sprung door open as he grasped his load.

"This is us since Tuesday!" Bella boomed in her big voice, wiping her beefy red face with her scarf. "Nivver aff the bloody trot." Shug nodded, to no one in particular, depositing his burden to remove his coat.

"See this bloody Manitoba," Bella went on, moving into the hallway, "it's a helluva place in the winter. Ah tell't Faither jist last night, this is the last year we're gon oot furst- fittin'. I'nt that right, Faither? Shug nodded again.

Ann smiled on the outside and winced on the inside.

It was three days after Hogmanay. The Scottish custom of first-footing, being the first person over your door after the stroke of New Year - and a man, not a woman; and a dark-haired man at that if you wanted any good fortune in the coming year - was a custom Ann never cared for. She didn't care much for drink or the company of drinkers, hadn't cared for it since that night years earlier when Ian and her brother Jonathon and big Hugh Donaldson had staged the party in Strathalmond. She wasn't tee-total as her parents had been, and she liked gaiety and music and dancing as well as the next person, but she loathed boozing for boozing's sake and what Ian called slaverin' drunks. Ian didn't like slaverin' drunks either, unless he happened to be one of them, and Ann knew that when the McPakes arrived, that was a likely outcome; especially when they were still first-footing after three days.

"Aye… Manitoba, 'a' wide open spaces and nae Saturday nights' is whit Ah said tae faither. But never you mind hen. We'll hae a wee drink the night tae bring in the New Year. When dis yer man get hame?"

Ann toyed briefly with the notion of saying that Ian wouldn't be home. That he had gone to hospital to have his leg off - something like that, something that might make them move on to first-foot at another house. But she just smiled and said she expected him at any moment.

Later in the evening when the children were in bed and supper taken and cleared away, the McPakes settled in for the night, firmly ensconced on the couch, fast by the ingle like Robert Burns' Tam O'Shanter. And like Tam,

"So yez'll be comin' tae the Burns' night this year," Bella went on. "Faither here is organizin' it, wi' me helpin' him of course." Faither nodded. "We have the haggis ordered fae Winnipeg. Wisna' yon a disgrace last year when McKenzie did it. Tryin' tae make his ain haggis in the garage, him and Podge Rafferty - the two o' them legless drunk, boiling the mixture oan a barbecue and the white smoke blawin' oot the door. The fire brigade thought the garage wis oan fire and came and put the hoses oan them! Whit a disgrace to Scotland!"

"Scotland?" Ann thought. "What did Scotland have to do with McKenzie's garage? - or the McPakes? or…" Bella dug her in the ribs with a fat elbow.

"Yer hoose is lovely, hen. I'nt it Faither? Nice that yez live in the livin'-room hen, that's whit Ah say." Another dig in the ribs to punctuate Bella's truths.

"See they Canadians! Their livin'-rooms are a' kept spotless and they a' live under the grund like pigs!"

Ann moved off the couch to avoid further digs. She didn't know that pigs lived underground. It was going to me a long night.

Soon Ian started to play the old piano that they had hauled out on the ship from Scotland and that was no longer in tune thanks to the dry climate. Shug and he got into the "auld Scots sangs" with Bella's booming accompaniment.

Ann and Ian, when they had first moved to Canada, had sought out the McPakes and their like just to relieve their devastating homesickness. Now, as she smiled a forced smile to Bella when the song ended, she was living to regret it. She had been reading about how the Metis had routed and murdered Scottish Settlers at the battle of Seven Oaks in the Red River Colony in 1816. She sat back in her chair thinking how different that outcome would have been for the settlers had Bella McPake been one of them. The Metis nation may well have been extinguished.

Ann Douglas knew that it was time to begin to be a Canadian.