20 Years of Sensational Crimes in Hong Kong: The Murder of Ian McLean

The following is a translation by the poster of an account found in the 1983 crime report, published in Hong Kong, originally entitled《外籍古董商裸體倒斃巫山雲屋》:

“Foreign Antiquarian Found Lying Naked in Wu San Cloud Villa”

Though already past fifty, Ian McLean was still a bachelor. Not only had he never married, he had never so much as expressed interest in a woman.

His friends were all young fellows – boys, really. The majority of them were ethnic Chinese, and, owing to this, there were rumours floating around that McLean preferred the intimate company of males – rumours he never sought to deny. McLean was Australian by birth, but he had obtained American citizenship. After residing in Hong Kong for over two decades, he regarded it as his second home. Among the local Cantonese, he went by the surname “Ma” ( 馬 ). The antique shop which he’d opened also bore the Chinese character 馬 as part of the store’s name.

His shop was located on Wyndham Street, in Central District, but his house was on Plantation Road in the exclusive district known as The Peak.

This house was a lavish, garden-ringed mansion in which he lived alone on the ground floor. It was called “Wu San Cloud Villa.” The architecture and décor was a hybrid of Chinese and Japanese styles, luxurious and refined, perfectly appropriate to the tastes of its owner.

When McLean went out on the town or to work at his shop, the Filipina maid would prepare breakfast and supper and clean the place.

There were also his three dogs, all imported foreign purebreds, which the Filipina maid also looked after. In the late evening, the maid would retire to her quarters elsewhere on the property, and, in the morning, she would return to her duties. Over the past two or three years during which she had been employed by McLean, she had settled comfortably into her routine.

McLean often said that he was a man who liked peace and quiet, and his home at Wu San Cloud Villa provided it. As huge as the house was, he was by himself in the evenings, while the Filipina maid would be off in the servants’ apartment behind the garage. The maid well knew her master’s temper: after dusk, unless she was specifically asked to attend to something, under no circumstances was she to set foot within the main house.

The maid – whose name was Maria – had a somewhat different impression from what things appeared like on the surface.

In the spacious living room of Wu San Cloud Villa, the lights would come on at odd hours and the sound of laughter could be heard, indicating that there were guests. This would continue into the wee hours.

Though Maria refrained from prying too much, there was one thing she could be sure of, and that was that the guests were always males. Maria knew that her employer did not appreciate woman guests, especially not at night.

Because of this, Maria thought that her employer was an odd fellow, maybe even mentally unbalanced.

She said, McLean’s mother, who lived in America, came to Hong Kong on vacation last year. When she stopped by the villa on Plantation Road, she appeared to be quite unsettled by her precious son’s unusual lifestyle. What bothered her most was that, despite his age, he did not have a wife to look after him. She made a great fuss, trying to encourage him to find a woman and to be done with his irregular habits.

McLean’s reaction?

As Maria told it, he hummed and hawed, made excuses and scrupulously avoided following through with any of his mother’s attempted matches. He kept this up for half a year. The master of Wu San Cloud Villa remained a queer bachelor.

Once, somebody told Maria that McLean’s lack of interest in women was due to a medical condition; that he had the desire but was lacking in some portion of his anatomy. Maria pretended to know nothing, but revealed later that, when McLean’s mother was staying in Hong Kong, she had mentioned to a neighbour that her son had an illness for which he had to take regular medication. The old woman said that it was something wrong with his heart, but it had nothing to do with relations between men and women.

On the 2nd of October, 1980, this bachelor with an alleged heart affliction was found lying deceased atop his bed. His death clearly had nothing to do with any physical ailment: it was an obvious case of murder. The body was completely nude, the hands and feet bound with electrical wire. McLean’s mouth had been stuffed with a bundle of cloth, leading to death by asphyxia.

The coroner found no signs of external injuries. However, owing to the fact that the victim was found unclothed and given his well-known predilection for wild escapades with young boys, it the coroner determined that the case had a sexual aspect.

At approximately 8:00 o’clock that morning, the Filipina maid, Maria, had just finished cooking breakfast. Carrying everything on a polished silver tray, she walked into the main dwelling, set the table and waited solemnly for her employer to come out to eat.

Ordinarily, by this time, McLean would have already risen and dressed. Moreover, he was exceedingly punctual and did not like to waste time on trivial activities, like meals taken alone. After he ate breakfast, he would drive out of the gate, leaving Maria to tidy his room and go about her other duties on the grounds.

There was something unusual about this morning. After waiting longer than she could recall ever waiting before, Maria’s employer still hadn’t emerged from his bedroom, nor was there any sound audible from within. She knocked on the door. There was no response.

Maria waited further, anxious of causing trouble as people in a subservient and insecure station in life often are. With there still being no sound or activity, she began to worry for her employer’s safety. Mustering her courage, she opened the door and charged inside.

The door had been left unlocked. McLean was indeed lying on his bed, but, scrutinizing the scene more closely, her ears grew hot and red – the scandal! She could hardly bear the embarrassment!

Her employer was laying unclothed, contorted, resembling a great pallid maggot. It was revolting! She thought to herself, her employer, despite his appearance as a mild-mannered businessman, was not only short-tempered but could become physically violent. Had he caught her barging in without permission…it made her wince to think of the punishment which would be meted out to her.

But, as she was retreating, she discovered something strange…Her employer’s feet and hands were both tightly bound with electrical wire and his mouth seemed to be stuffed or gagged with something. No wonder he didn’t react when she entered his room.

Could it really be as it looked like?

Maria speculated that there must have been a burglar who broke in during the night and hogtied her employer.

Some cash and valuables being stolen was a small matter. Most important was the issue of a human life: she glanced again towards the bed, at McLean, and saw that his face was ashen. Daring to shove him with her hand, he didn’t respond. If he wasn’t dead already, death was not far off.

This was no laughing matter. The first thing to do, obviously, was to call the police, but when she snatched up the receiver, there was no dial tone. The phone lines chad been cut; there was no way for her, a foreigner who didn’t speak Cantonese, isolated up on a mountain top, in that lonely walled mansion, to contact the outside world. However, just then, she remembered that there was another Filipina maid who worked in a neighbouring villa. She went to the gate of that premises, waving and shouting in Tagalog to get the attention of her sister from another mother, who immediately called the police.

Within a few minutes, police cars began pulling up outside the premises on Plantation Road. They quickly confirmed that McLean was, in fact, deceased and that he probably met his end sometime between 10:00 pm the previous night and 1:00 in the morning. The police also discovered that the door and window frames showed traces of being attacked with a pry bar or lock pick. Accordingly, they inferred that the killer or killers were known to the victim and were invited into the room by him. The struggle and eventual murder occurred after they were already safely inside.

There were signs that the contents of the room had been rifled through, as by a burglar. There might have been homicidal intent to begin with, but investigators were not willing to rule out the possibility of a robbery gone wrong.

The victim was tall and massively built, fat but also robust. It was not likely that one person, especially a small, underfed local petty criminal or street urchin, could have dealt with him by themselves, therefore the police concluded that there must have been at least two culprits.

McLean owned a navy blue Toyota Corona sedan, license number BT…He drove it everywhere, loathing to walk. Clerks at his store told investigators that they had seen him driving the car the previous day when he stopped by his business.

Later in the day, when the Corona could not be located either at McLean’s house or near his place of work, it was reported stolen. Presumably, the murderers had used it to escape the scene of the crime.

Subsequent events proved this supposition correct. The very next day, a neighbourhood patrol (all units having been alerted to be on the lookout for the navy blue Corona sedan), strolling along Ventris Road a couple hundred metres north of Happy Valley Racecourse, came across a traffic accident. A car which had been parked on the roadside had been struck and seriously damaged by another car, likely driven by someone driving under the influence. Thankfully, there was nobody inside the damaged car at the time.

This severely damaged vehicle was none other than McLean’s 1980 Toyota Corona sedan. In accordance with procedure, the car was towed to the Moreton Terrace impound lot in Causeway Bay, to be kept until its owner arrived to claim it. On being notified, the homicide investigators took charge of the vehicle and transferred it to the Central Police Station to carry out a thorough forensic examination.

As anticipated, the examination revealed a plethora of clues which assisted the police in speedily apprehending the careless suspects.

The victim was a fat man who could speak fluent Cantonese. He liked to refer to himself as an “Old China Hand,” borrowing the archaic term for an experienced Oriental trader or colonial official in the glory days of the British East India Company. Unlike a lot of tourists or ex-pats, who revel in their connection to the exotic while understanding practically nothing of the place they live, McLean could walk the walk. His knowledge of Chinese arts and crafts would qualify him for a position of director for Oriental Antiquities at a world-class museum. He often went on sojourns to the Mainland to purchase items that peasants and merchants had found, dug up or pilfered in all corners of the country. Through formalities and under-the-table arrangements in which he was well-versed, he brought them into Hong Kong and could earn a fine profit. Objects which he had authenticated and sold had been shipped across the world and his operation had branches in New York and Los Angeles.

Before he got into the antiquities trade, McLean had been a physicist. About nine years before the incident, he gave up his work as a university lecturer to focus on the antiquities business full time, rapidly becoming successful and a figure of note in the field.

After his death, a neighbour living down the street offered witness testimony confirming that the victim had homosexual tendencies. On one occasion, he had seen things with his own eyes. As this neighbour told it, that time, the weather was particularly sultry. He was walking behind the courtyard of Wu San Cloud Villa. The courtyard was walled off only by a low hedge and, in a moment of idle curiosity, this neighbour happened to let his eyes wander towards the house. Through the uncurtained window was revealed a picture of sinful lust.

He saw a foreigner, tall and massive, and a waifish runt of a Chinese youth in the living room, chasing each other. From the living room, they ran into the bedroom, then from the bedroom back into the living room.

What most caught his eye and burned into his memory was the fact that both individuals were completely naked. Granted, it was a summer heatwave, but, nevertheless….

This neighbour also said, even he felt a bit awkward and could not bear to continue watching. Following this, he avoiding passing too close to Wu San Cloud Villa.

Being a resident of the same street, he knew that the foreigner was McLean. The Chinese was awfully young. He did not recognize him as someone who lived in the neighbourhood.

McLean had no relatives in Hong Kong. Regarding his funeral arrangements, the police obtained from the employees at his store the contact information of McLean’s mother in America and duly informed her of her son’s death, requesting that she come to Hong Kong to handle that end of the affair.

At the time, most people assumed that, given McLean’s wide-ranging business interests, including the two branch stores in America, he must surely be possessed of a vast fortune. Yet, when the curtain was pulled back, the reality was shown to be not what most folks had imagined. It turned out that McLean’s business empire was a castle built on sand.

The entirety of McLean’s estate, including all the inventory of his business as well as the furnishings and artwork in his house totaled some $450,000.

Now, $450,000, especially considering that it was 1980, would not sound like a trifling sum to the ordinary man in the street. However, this figure did not take into account the victim’s debts.

Based on a rough estimate, these debts amounted to somewhere around four or five million dollars. Even if all of his estate were to be sold for its proper value, it would only allow for the paying back of ten percent or so of McLean’s debts.

The police were quite eager to find out what treasures the murderers had made off with, separate and distinct from those which remained to be cataloged in McLean’s house and shop. It was simple common sense that they would not have made their way into a house full of expensive luxuries, murdered the man, and then left empty-handed.

Mind, this was a tricky question as, since the owner was dead, they couldn’t exactly ask him what was missing.

Based on all the information they had obtained so far, the lead homicide detective on the case came up with the following theories:

1) The murderers were definitely young, possibly underaged. Possibly, they had engaged in unclean relations with the victim prior to his murder.

2) The murderers were homosexual.

3) After committing the murder, the killers must have taken some valuable objects, whether antiques, designer wristwatches or other easily-pocketable items, and perhaps some cash as well.

While surveying the crime scene, detectives found an empty soda can in the victim’s bedroom. There were fingerprints on its surface which did not match the victim’s, nor did they match the Filipina maid, Maria.

Upon questioning, Maria stated that she had never seen the beverage can before. She believed it must have been brought by the killers.

Taking these clues and pursuing their theories along their natural course, homicide detectives went to districts in Central, Kowloon and Tsim Sha Tsui which were notorious as centres of gay culture, with underground clubs and dens of cruising and other such activities. They question several hundred youth who belonged to the ‘scene,’ and conducted full-scale searches of a seedy dancing bar and a disco.

After exerting all this pressure, they were able to obtain details on the victim’s movements the night of the murder. He had been loitering about a disco in Wan Chai, nursing drinks and ogling the dancers. Eventually, he left with two handsome young boys.

As for these two lads, one was a ‘professional’ of sorts. He worked for an agency where he was referred to as a tai pan of dancing girls – a twink or rent boy, in North American parlance. He was nineteen.

The police checked his fingerprints and compared them against those found on the soda can. They were a match. Regardless, the dancer denied ever having contact with McLean.

Of course, none of the detectives were buying his fervent denials. After a stern interrogation, once they showed they would not play along, he confessed everything.

This lad’s name was Hwong Chi-Kiang. He already had a criminal record. He’d met McLean in a nightclub and quickly become “friends.” Every week or so, McLean would invite him and another youth to return with him to Wu San Cloud Villa, where they would do unmentionable things.

He said these acts made him feel very ashamed. He wanted to break away, but, right now, he just couldn’t.

Hwong Chi-Kiang recalled that, on the 20th of October in the morning, the deceased had arranged for him and another boy, even younger than himself, to go to his villa. He planned special games for them; oh, it would be a fun time for all!

At that time, everyone was in agreement. Hwong would wait in the living room while the victim and the youngest lad had a go together in the bedroom.

“This younger boy you’re speaking of, he’s the one named Ma?” a detective interjected.

“Y-yes, because he isn’t seventeen yet, most of us, his friends, we call him ‘Little Ma.’”

Accorring to Hwong Chi-Kiang, when McLean and Little Ma went into the bedroom together, he felt very bored. He sat in the living room, looking at the paintings and posters.

Suddenly, he heard shouting coming from the bedroom.

This wasn’t a small disagreement or a startled remark about something during their…activities…this was a serious fight. At first, it was only words being exchanged, but soon Little Ma heard the sound of fists striking flesh and bodies ramming against walls and closet doors.

Hwong wanted to ignore it, but as he heard things getting worse, he knew he had to step in. Entering the bedroom he saw the two men – or, rather, the man and the boy- had not yet put on their clothes, though they had already ceased fighting, physically, and were now merely swearing at each other.

Little Ma, seeing Hwong, was like a child seeing a parent after a traumatic experience. He began to cry and poured out his sorrows to Hwong, saying that old McLean was not a human being; that he made him do things that he did not want to do; things that people who were without shame did. He would not and could not obey. He begged Hwong to intercede on his behalf.

McLean was also agitated. In Cantonese, he cursed the boy, telling Hwong that all Chinese were dogs.

Yet, Hwong was himself a small, yellow-skinned, black-haired Chinese. As he told the cops, although he did not have any deep friendship with Little Ma, they were both ‘yellow men,’ and he could not endure being abused like this by a foreigner, who was insulting his entire race. Who could bear it?

He resolved to stand up for himself and defend his honour with force. Hwong had not studied self-defence or any kind of fighting, but he was young and strong and there were two against one. They quickly gained the upper hand. Although the foreigner was big, he was a soft businessman and not as strong as he appeared. Once the fight began in earnest, he was overwhelmed. At last, he collapsed on the bed, panting, his face blue and white.

Hwong, on realizing what was happening in front of him, panicked. “Let’s go!” he told Ma. “It’s no good for us if we stay here. I heard the old foreigner has a heart problem; if he dies, they’ll say we’re murderers and we’ll be screwed!”

Little Ma could see the sense in Hwong’s words. They looked at each other one last time and fled the bedroom.

“Where are you going?” McLean gasped from the bed. “You boys have broken many valuable things. You will have to compensate me, or else you cannot leave!”

“It was you who broke everything,” Hwong told police he replied to McLean. “If you hadn’t hit us, then nothing would be broken. Besides, everything in this house is so damn fancy, we’ll never be able to pay for it.”

“If it is so, then forget about leaving!” McLean smiled wickedly.

Hwong understood there was no easy way out. He stopped his friend and exchanged glances with him again. Each understood what the other meant to do. They would use their own two hands to remove the obstacle before them.

“I will slaughter you, white-skinned pig!” Hwong hissed as he pinned McLean’s legs. Little Ma rushed into action, grabbing a pillow off the bed and pressing it onto McLean’s face, suffocating him. It was not long before he ceased to struggle.

The two boys had no practice in the art of murder. They were not sure if McLean was really dead. They discussed it and agreed not to leave a witness. They managed to scrounge up some electrical wire, using it to tie McLean’s hands and feet. They took a nylon stocking and shoved it deep into his mouth.

The last step was to get rich. Hwong took a small number of Hong Kongese bills, a gold wristwatch and a piece of ancient jade jewelry that McLean had brought back from one of his trips to the Mainland. Little Mao took cash and four pieces of antique jade jewelry.

The police set up a reward of $25,000 for the capture of the killers. Hwong, by carelessly leaving his fingerprints on the soda can, ensured that they never needed to pay out the reward.

The other suspect, Little Ma, was, by the time of Hwong’s arrest already serving a sentence in the Pik Uk Correctional Facility for an extortion charge. Before the brief sentence could be completed, he was taken by police from the facility for interrogation.

Hwong Chi-Kiang was arrested on the 29th of October. Little Ma’s turn came at the beginning of November.

Hwong went to trial first in the Western District Court. He declared that he was nineteen years old, a tai pan of the dance floor. He was charged with murder, burglary, car theft and driving without insurance.

In the middle of May, 1981, the case was moved to the High Court. The charges were amended as follows: One, murder, two, burglary, three, car theft. Hwong denied the murder charge but plead guilty to unintentional manslaughter and the other two charges.

The presiding judge, Justice Robbins, in deciding the case stated that the accused had come from an impoverished family. His level of schooling was dreadfully low. Two years prior, he had been sentenced to hard labour at a youth correctional facility and claimed to have reformed himself and found a new direction in life. In light of the present case, this was clearly not true.

The judge further stated that the accused had joined in beating the victim and that the charge of manslaughter was made out. Accordingly, he sentenced Hwong to three years’ imprisonment. For the burglary he imposed a sentence of nine months and for the car theft, three months, but this latter was to be served concurrently. Therefore, Hwong would be sentenced to a total of three years and nine months in jail.

As for the other accused in the case, Little Ma, because he denied the murder charge and also refused to plead guilty to manslaughter, he would be tried separately. In July of 1981, the High Court, with Judge Hope presiding, set down its judgment. The accused, Ma (given name unstated), sixteen and a half years of age, was charged with the same three crimes as Hwong Chi-Kiang. During the trial, Ma changed his plea to guilt on all counts. Based on the precedent set by Judge Robbins, Judge Hope sentenced Ma to the same three years and nine months in prison.

終

《Сито》

На степовому зійшли перші сніги, білий килим на полі бою

На самоті я блукаю містом, для почуття — ще шукаю

Людська ріка, кругом тихо; Ще в серці, не спокіно.

Війна, правда, чудове решето;

їх і нас; порожній і правдивий — розділяє чисто.

Геополітика, міркування — негайно відкинь їх від мене,

Тільки бажаю, щоб на світі була одна “знає себе.”

Серце усвідомило, i хочу тримати

Нaжаль, скарб — вже експортували…

《Minivans》

Born it was, in the Reagan years, a transport innovation;

The sluggish box most popular

‘Mid the housewives of the nation.

*

Waiting in ranks for our regiments –

Like parrots or swarming monkeys –

As we fled scholastic prisonment.

*

Laden with bags and boxes, canoe on rooftop tossed,

Upon some holiday voyage –

Delights, in later ages lost.

*

A taxi for the hockey team

And sticks and skates and grub to nosh;

What, to the driver, did all those errands seem?

*

A steed safe and sturdy, but without pretense;

Choice carriage of suburban moms

Zealous, fretful, yet full of sense.

*

How silly now seem the petty fears

That wracked our minds in yonder years;

An era’s symbols: quite mundane,

And yet we’d wish them all come back again.

“關閉我們的天空”

二月爆發侵略戰，
歐聯富豪出冷汗
揮著藍黃自由旗，
國際論壇多爭議。
烏軍士兵太勇武，
打到俄國難進入；
但是俄人多狡猾，
火箭日夜來轟炸。
我國總統要外援，
跪求西方導彈盾。
嘆息今天德、法、意
不如祖先滿志氣；
一群現代大懦夫，
男兒樣子全空虛；
只要咱們守前線，
柏林巴黎睡安穩：
烏克蘭女最美麗，
俄國煤氣最便宜。

Undine

by MG. Warenycia

If it weren’t for the row of houses – old, small, yet fiercely guarded against development – she could have been watching the Lake as she ate, but the little donut shop, decorated in a rainbow of browns back when the first Trudeau was Prime Minister, was not meant for pleasurable dining. Gemma Bledsoe, who never wrote her surname except on government forms, liked the place for its authenticity. For a graduate of the Ontario College of Art and Design, authenticity was of prime importance; something one sought and claimed sole authority to determine. Dingy independent establishments over which the atmosphere of vintage malaise hung like cigarette smoke were perfect, although, ironically, there was always a suspicious shortage of actual working class folk (to say nothing of the exotically sketchy lumpenproletariat) in the spots where her middle-class hipster peers gathered to claim street cred. Gemma was different, at least when she needed a breather from the endless run of projects, dates, dinner parties, gallery shows, drinks, more drinks, and, above all, the shifts without a workplace of which only the fruits appeared on social media. Facebook and Instagram she checked frequently but updated less and less. She came to the donut shop because none of her friends would bother to venture so far from their own haunts to slurp coffee that was mere “coffee,” and the closest thing to a latte was adding extra creamer to the Stygian liquid that the swarthy, mustachioed owner brewed up in an ancient urn.

The shop had never been reviewed by BlogTO or NarCity, but its customers were unlikely to read either publication, if they were aware of their existence. This customer base was utterly unchanging through the decades and completely different depending on the hour, beginning with construction and municipal workers arriving before the late autumn sun, then office workers, students, cops, retirees from lowly professions, students again, drunk partygoers, cops again, homeless schizos and workers in the oldest profession, before it all started again. One wondered what Stavros, or Radovan, or whatever his name was mixed into his own coffee, or whether he derived certain mysterious powers from the stern-faced figures whose gilt and cross-emblazoned images adorned the wall beside the counter along with stock photos of whatever southeastern European country he hailed from. Gemma used to be able to relieve her mind by just sitting and observing people while she worked halfheartedly on an assignment or doodled in her sketchbook. At some point – she wasn’t sure when – she’d imperceptibly lost the intriguing sensation of being an observer and had started to see herself as being part of the same painting, so to speak, as all the other characters for whom the shop served as a connecting node. She ceased to feel strange and out of place. This disturbed her, because the world she was presently munching a crueler in was not the same world as existed, physically, in the space around her. Not as far as she would admit. Instead of visiting this world like a tourist, the gallery shows and gastro pubs were becoming excursions into a territory which she knew but which was slipping away from her, like a cake glimpsed through the oven door that is failing to rise even as its crust is well-browned. Even her apartment, or, rather, the room she occupied in a Victorian Bay & Gable on D’Arcy Street was detaching itself from her universe, as if it had a mind of its own.

“Ugh!” She banished the thought with a growl that noone noticed and smothered it with a Boston crème, the crisp dark chocolate and sickly sweet custard doing an excellent job of restoring her mood to confident ignorance. It was rare for Gemma to touch any of the crude pastries sitting in ranks in their plexiglass case. It was rare that she ate what most people would consider a ‘meal.’ Today was different, however. With relish, she mashed the remaining portion of the crueler into her pale, thin hand and gulped it down. A hum in her handbag told of a phone call. Gemma waited. Several short throbs: text messages. In enough time for someone to get slightly bored and put their phone in their pocket, she drew out hers and read, ignoring the backlog of emails, ‘likes’ and other alters cluttering the top of the screen.

It was Brittany, as expected. She said she was at the beach where they were supposed to meet. The next message said that it was cold. She hadn’t brought her parka. Gemma gazed out the window. The Core’s glassy spires stabbed into a faience void, pure as a colour swatch in a booklet of paint samples. However, her artist’s eye noted a subtle variation of tint towards the south, over the Lake. More than one among the pedestrians walking by unconsciously tucked their hands into their pockets or pulled their zippers closer to their chins. The trees still wore their green finery, but the scent of fall, which, in Toronto, is basically winter, had crept into the air. Without haste, Gemma wiped her lips, balled up her napkin and left. On the way out the door, she knocked shoulders with a face familiar yet forgotten: a former high school classmate, now a TA up the street from OCAD at Ryerson. He, for his part, did a double take, which caught the eye of his companion. Interrupting their discussion of the job market and their respective girlfriends, the one explained to the other why he stared, who Gemma was, along with two or three anecdotes from school which seemed to reveal why she was only ever glimpsed by him and the other alumni of those days in fleeting and wordless encounters. It was all well that the other fellow also saw something worth contemplating in the almost spectrally lean figure that strode past them with unflinching purpose, shawl flapping in the northward-blowing breeze, eyes burning yet without a trace of warmth…for this momentary distraction prevented them from noticing the inordinate amount of time the proprietor took to respond to their order, giving his attention instead to the gold-embellished pictures on the wall, mumbling stilted words…not “how can I help you?”…not even English. If they had noticed, they might have had a lot more questions with their meal.

Brittany revealed herself before she saw her friend. Of course, it was difficult for her to hide anywhere, the more so on a temperate beach on a weekday afternoon with nobody but the odd dog-walk, jogger, or melancholy poet passing along the strand. It is possible for a woman to capture the attention of men by the possession of certain large and dramatic elements of her anatomy, often coupled with expensive and scanty clothing. It is also possible (though less common) for her to capture the attention of both sexes by a whole-package type of beauty; the sort which provokes an impression based on stimulating a vague but profound plethora of thoughts, concepts and passions, very few of which are comprehended by the one who experiences them; a beauty that perfectly embodies an ideal and is desired as such, completely irrespective of anything like personality or history. Those entranced or envious of such beauty probably cannot describe it or why they are drawn to it, and it is from this uncertainty that the majority of its power derives. A smaller but significant component originates in the aspects more amenable to description by words, such as the toss of butter-blonde tresses, the pout of glossy rosette lips, a glimmer in a naive and adventurous eye, and a quirk in the step and the smile.

“Sorry I’m late, Gemma flashed an uncharacteristically apologetic smile. Half stumbling as her chunky heels dug into the soft sand, “Sometimes you just get into a mood with something, you know, and it takes forever to work yourself up to do anything. Didn’t expect it to be so chilly…”

“It’s okay,” Brittany grinned, bouncing as she spoke, as if to reassure her friend that she wasn’t being sarcastic. “Really. I don’t get down to the beach, like, at all anymore, I mean, since the summer, but, you know. Yeah…” She cast her eyes outward, to where the impenetrable grey-green waters curled and frothed over the jetties and breakwaters of concrete blocks and wire-caged stones. A painter – which both women were – would have seized upon the contrast between the sublime gloom of the landscape and the golden smile of the subject whose already-eventful life had somehow not yet fully changed her from ‘girl’ to ‘woman.’ Gemma saw, and remembered sketchbooks she’d filled years ago, when the two lived in a sharehouse on Baldwin Street with five or six other students; how they had sat up into the wee hours on rainy nights, rendering each other in charcoal and aquarelle. Gemma had been the first to present her work. Brittany, delighted, immediately posted it to social media and was deluged with likes and comments about the talent of the artist who so perfectly captured her contradiction of angelic warmth and wild vivacity. The comments boosted Gemma’s ego. It took all her rigorously cultivated reserves of self-control to preserve her mask of gratitude when Brittany, who worked more slowly, handed Gemma her own sketchbook forty minutes later. There was some skill in the pen and brushwork, to be fair, and this made it all the worse to see the precisely depicted lines of fatigue and the sallow hues on cheek and brow, as well as the purplish tints under the eyes and where the network of tattoos merged on her throat. A trip to the bathroom and the mirror confirmed Brittany’s cruel gift for observation. Shortly thereafter, Gemma moved into her condo, paid for by a professor who was also a gallery owner. Many things happened, but she kept the sketches…

“Ah, ‘scuse me, is this your friend?” A stooped, turban-clad youth, eyes wide as dinner plates called out, approaching them from the direction of a clapboard cabin that sat atop the beach, not far from where the girls stood.

“Oh, hey, yeah, listen – “ Brittany waved as he came up to them. “I don’t mind if there’s a mix up and you can’t find the reservation. I don’t mind paying the different.” She nodded towards the Lake. “It doesn’t look like we’ll get many more weekends before winter, and I’m dying to get out on the water.”

“Huh,” Gemma stammered; “Who is this guy?” But a glance at the sign on the shack told her the gist of what must be the case.

“I, uh, I work here. Your friend – “ the sheepish man was crowded out by Brittany’s energy.

“I told him we had a reservation from last week. I figured, if I could fill out the paperwork for the canoe rental, I could save us a bunch of time and we could just head right out once you got here.”

“Oh,” Gemma quickly composed herself, trying to communicate her reluctance.

“It’s alright. Anyways, I saw on your website it’s a 20% discount for reservations. ‘She works hard for her money,’” she chuckled, hands firmly on her hips. “So…if you could check again maybe?!?”

“Oh, no, yeah, you’re right, that’s company policy,” the boat rental employee was easily overwhelmed. Too, he was cognizant of the slowing of business during the recent spate of bad weather and that he was still in his three-month probationary period. He sized up the racks of brightly coloured kayaks, canoes and paddle boards that surrounded his crude ‘office’ and hurried back, shouting over his shoulder: “I…I’ll check the accounts from last week; maybe your reservation will show in in there…sometimes we forget to update the schedule; change of shifts ‘n stuff like that, eh?”

As the attendant disappeared beneath the signboard bearing a pastiche of the Jolly Roger with two crossed paddles in place of the bones, Brittany turned to Gemma. “I forgot. He said I should be wearing a drysuit? Like the scuba diver outfit or something. They rent them for twenty bucks. I mean, it’s not mandatory, but, he said, if this got wet – “ she tugged at her layered outfit, comprising denim vest, cotton sweatshirt hoodie, and an array of necklaces and bracelets. Her expression suggested Gemma, too, might consider renting a drysuit, given her present wardrobe.

“Nevermind.” Gemma took her friend by the arm and led her to a grove of shaggy willows, so that they were out of sight of the boat rental shack. “Why did you talk to him already? We don’t have a reservation.”

“Huh? But I could swear…”

“I said, I’d reserved a boat, yes, but when did I ever tell you it was at these people, Paddle Pirates or whatever?”

“I dunno. Come on, it’s the only canoe rental place on the beach.”

“Ugh…” Gemma continued leading her friend northeastwards up the shore. The houses moved further back as the sense of old money permeated the atmosphere. “You remember Sophie?”

“Sophie Belzer? From high school? Def.”

“Yes! Okay, so, I knew her grandpa from community events…” Gemma relayed an anecdote of an NDP rally during the previous federal election, when the favoured part of downtown activists and academics valiantly captured 37 of the 308 seats in Parliament, much to the cheers of those in the riding of Beaches-East York who didn’t sell out and jump on the Liberal bandwagon. The late Professor Belzer’s granddaughter Sophie was friendly with Gemma as with almost everyone from their tight-knit school circle and had offered the use of a canoe – a charming 16-foot Peterborough that the Belzers normally used as a collective resource whenever any of the clan was going on one of their excursions to a cottage or Provincial Park up north. Brittany had kept in touch with Sophie, albeit not closely: after high school, they’d sometimes met at dinner parties hosted by a mutual friend in Scarborough and, though they went to different universities, the worlds of Film Studies majors and Fine Arts have a great deal of overlap in Toronto.

The canoe was stored in a shed overlooked by a lot on which stood a slightly whimsical old house bulging with bay windows and decorated with painted wood and knickknacks. “He left Sophie the house, but she’s working this weekend,” Gemma explained.

“Oh…” Brittany cocked her head this way and that, like a bemused cat, as Gemma wrestled open the lock guarding the canoe they’d be ‘sailing,’ for lack of a better synonym on her mind. Sixteen feet sounded like a lot, although, in real life, it seemed so small and delicate. Regardless, the canoe was a thing of great beauty; a condensed fragment of the authentic Canadiana that City-dwellers often cherish and identify with but seldom ever manage to get more than a fleeting taste of. Its gracefully upswept prow, basketwork thwarts and gleaming hunter-green paint evoked memories – some one’s own, some imagined – of moose, maple syrup, beavers, catching sunfish from the dock, wood smoke, and the mournful cry of the nocturnal loon. Adventure, with just enough distance and risk of danger to excite the heart and facilitate self-discovery. Brittany knew she had made the right decision to skip yoga class for this.

It was a feat of acrobatics to climb inside the canoe without tipping it, but, once they were inside, two young women of slim build and good coordination had little difficulty in keeping the vessel upright and steering straight. Gemma, under protest against her mom (who needed her kept busy while she toiled at the office) had been forced to do her time in the Girl Guides in childhood. Now, she was grateful for the bushcraft skills she’d been taught which, though very basic, were infinitely beyond the ‘nothing’ that most of her peers and neighbours knew. Once they got away from the shore, the slender vessel cut the waves admirably and it didn’t take much effort to make swift progress on their westward course towards Toronto Island. There were plenty if inlets to land at there, if they got tired, and Gemma’s boyfriend would pick them up – he had an SUV they could strap the canoe on top of to bring it back.

Meanwhile, the two girlfriends, aided by the supremely meditative experience of paddling a canoe, fell naturally into the purpose of the voyage, which was not to travel (the subway would do for that) but the meditation itself; to savour the beauty of the City from an angle, literally and metaphorically, that their busy, stressful lives blinded them to, and to rekindle bonds grown cold amid the rat race.

After much small talk, Gemma set her compassionate eyes upon her friend’s deceptively buoyant visage as if to place her hand upon her shoulder: “Is everything okay?”

Stunned by the change in topic, Brittany did not answer at once, though one might have perceived a relaxing of the corners of her lips and a faint blush upon her cheeks.

“I understand…”

“You’re right…not everything…” Brittany asked herself, how could Gemma know, given they hadn’t met up or had a serious talk in almost a year?!?

As though in sympathy with their desires, the wind died down as the two girls shuffled as close as the needs of managing their craft would permit towards the middle of the hull, the better to talk about private and serious things, though there was nobody to hear them besides two or three cabin cruisers visible in the distance.

Those who knew Brittany best would have known how alien it was for her to pour out her heart to someone. Emotional though she was, she didn’t brood. She began by thanking Gemma for all she had taught her when they lived in the sharehouse together. As they struggled through the first year of OCAD, Gemma had warned that the classical oil painting of an Ingres of Delacroix (as much as a new student could imitate those old masters) would not go over well with the professors. And, of course, it is impossible for any creator to remain aloof from the theory and ideals of the movement they identify with aesthetically. Romanticism is the sworn enemy of the cynically secular, obscenely materialist souls that preside over the modern-day Academy in all the metropolises of Western Europe and the Americas. Gemma lamented the situation, but, it was what it was. Nonetheless, she encouraged Brittany to follow her passion, based on the thought that it would be easier for Brittany, since she was perfectly willing to earn her income from working at Starbucks or answering phones in an office, leaving her artwork as a hobby, whereas Gemma, by contrast, was not the sort who could live a life of compromises. “Probably since grade 10, 11,” Gemma reminisced in one of those midnight girl-to-girl sessions,” I knew that nine-to-five, whatever the job, it just wasn’t happening for me. And a husband? Hell no. Even then. I knew I just couldn’t. I live for me.”

Brittany listened with rapt attention. Despite the closeness of their ages – Gemma had been one of the wise and worldly grade 12s when Brittany entered grade 9 – there was an enormous gap in maturity between the two young women which must have been rooted in their fundamental natures. For, while Brittany had come from a rough and impoverished childhood and thus would (wrongly) have been assumed to possess abundant street smarts, Gemma grew up in bourgeois comfort (notwithstanding the lack of love between father and mother), and, while her family was not rich, she never had to impede her journey of self-actualization by flipping burgers in order to pay rent. Yet, the former was as a bright-eyed child before the austere sagacity of the latter, the Big Sister. Further credence to Gemma’s advice was lent by the fact that, as Brittany was well aware, there was no shortage of men eager to step in and ensure that Gemma would never have to earn her own avocado toast. Their promises (for, at that age, in such an expensive City, they could be only promises) however, did not interest Gemma, who scoffed at the perfume-seller’s son and even more at a fellow artist who spoke about becoming a lawyer, as though the daydreams of an inferior would taint her and prevent her from entering the Paradise which could only come from monkish devotion to an ideal.

Brittany may have been weak in religion but she was strong in faith: she took her ‘big sister’s’ advice, converting her room into a studio and hammering away at her craft even as she toiled for minimum wage. The failures piled up. Gemma nodded gravely as she listened…Yes, she had gathered things were not going well when she didn’t see a “graduated from – “ on Brittany’s Facebook, and when Brittany did not appear at events – the galas and shows where Gemma would be, dressed in one of her cocktail dresses, glass of rosé in hand, heels like daggers and eyes like a wolf; events which often carried on past when the AGO or R.O.M. closed and those who weren’t chained to mundane responsibilities would move the party to a townhouse on a leafy boulevard in the Annex or a luxury condo by the waterfront. Gemma felt for her poor eager friend and told her she could not blame herself. She knew that if you wanted to swim with that crowd, there would be many occasions when the next morning or, for that matter, the following evening, you could not stray far from bed (yours or someone else’s). As pleasant as Brittany was, no one was bidding for the chance to pay the rent on a condo for her…

“You lack…vision; you are but a technician, not an artist. I care about your happiness, which is why you should find some other outlet for your energies.” The words were said by the gallery director at the last occasion when Brittany was able to get her fine arts professor to vouch for one of her works to be included. The professor did not want to help her, but she had paid her tuition and, if she was not given the same assistance as other students, there might be grounds for a discrimination lawsuit. The gallery director meant his words with every appearance of sober reflection carved upon his face. Brittany’s chest felt hollow. Two or three big names – who she didn’t know except that they worse suits and tuxedos and received deference from every cluster of attendees whom they deigned to bless with their presence: they all agreed, each with the appearance of the utmost reluctance to condemn…alas! Condemn they must, if they were to do their duty!

Brittany frowned and sighed retelling it in the canoe. She had poured out hot tears on her walk home that fateful day. Her words softened till only her lips moved. Gemma suddenly heaved into her paddle and corrected their course with vigorous strokes that one would not expect her frail body to be capable of. “Go on, it’s okay,” Gemma reassured her companion. “Some of us, hey, it’s luck, Fate; call it whatever you want, nobody should judge you for what you have to do to make things work. Fall down, get back up. All we can do.” After making sure they were in no danger of being washed into the shoreline and that there were no other boats nearby that might ram them, she let the canoe drift and gave her full attention to her troubled friend. “And, you know, nobody will blame you for changing course. “Gemma recalled how she had not seen Brittany on any of the last few occasions where she had dropped in at the studio on campus, nor at the coworking space where she sometimes brought mostly finished works, that she might be seen to be labouring on something impressive. She thought, too, of Mr. Stein, of the bar in King Street – and a firm on Bay Street. Not that she knew the firm or cared whether it was accounting, law or real estate, and she was quite sure his real name was not “Bo” as she had heard his friends and the other girls at the Silver Flamingo call him. She grew uneasy, thinking of the swelling threat in her belly and how “Bo” did not respond to her texts, sometimes for a whole night. She asked herself, “But what if I told Lawrence that it was…?”

In apparent synchronicity with her mind, Brittany revived from her tearful stupor and spoke of the very man of whom Gemma was thinking. “ understands, at least…” This was known to them both for years. More recently, to Gemma, he was known as someone who ‘liked’ her posts religiously and was convinced that every work she did was a masterpiece, and that every photo she posted was speaking some profoundness of creativity and pensive beauty. She would not even consciously remember him without prompting, except that Mr. Stein from the King Street bar had not returned her last message for two days, did not follow her on social media, and the familiar discomfort in her stomach was becoming more insistent. She thought of her wardrobe and the photo shoots, which Nguyen was no longer given her the extra discount on. He said it was because the cost of developing film had gone up, but she had a mirror in her apartment. She knew the real reason. Once, two weeks ago, she had become so enraged that she scoured the Estée Lauder palette with the tip of her fingernail, gobbing it on the way one applies oil paint to canvas with a palette knife. Yet no quantity of cosmetics could enliven muscles slack from late nights and vile habits and no makeup has yet been produced with can return the impish sinfulness of a 17-year-old freshly entered upon the Big City’s scene – and market – to eyes which have seen much experience and been forever stained by practical concerns and frugal planning. Lawrence was dumb and desperate, though…he liked to feel like he was helping someone…how much more, if he could build a life with them, at least, for as long as they needed him…

“You’re right,” sighed Brittany. “You wouldn’t have seen my at the studio or the coworking space. It’s way too distracting. Like, people just go there to show off. You can’t actually get any work done. All the noise; people coming and going.” A look of disgust crossed her face.

Gemma smiled to herself: “Sour grapes,” she thought.

“Yeah, and OCAD, okay, so, full disclosure, I never graduated.”

Gemma squeezed the gunwale so hard that her tendons were numbed. If it weren’t for the letter from her landlord, she might have become worried by the umbrous cauliflower clouds rolling north. She grunted softly as she fought to hold herself from breaking out in laughter. “It’s alright. Oh my God! If you can’t let it out here, where else?”

“Thanks,” Brittany sneezed, pulling up the hood of her sweatshirt. Gemma hadn’t noticed before, but now she saw it was emblazoned with an illustration of a ram’s head and lettering in the blue and gold of Ryerson University. Odd, as Brittany had only ever attended OCAD, whose students consider themselves a breed apart. “Actually, I didn’t fail, I dropped out.”

“Yep,” Gemma confirmed in her mind. “Well, if that’s your way of trying to find a ‘win’ in life…” She would let Brittany have it. It was too late to break her own resolve now. The mood-lit rooms in hotels she couldn’t remember the names of; the parties in penthouse condos from which she’d returned the next afternoon. The boyfriends she’d driven away because, arrogant as they were, they thought that she would (for them!) sabotage her climb to…herself.

“Yeah,” Brittany paused, seemingly reliving events. For a split second, she furrowed her brow and tightened her grip on her paddle. “Are we going the right way?” She shrunk down to shelter a little from the wind that was gusting strong and chill, bearing scattered drops of rain.

“Yes,” Gemma stared meaningfully to her right. “That’s Ward’s Island there.” She chuckled. “If you want, we can pass by Hanlan’s Point, but I don’t think anyone’ll be on the beach this time of year.” Gemma didn’t mention it, but she was recalling the day – this exact day, several years ago – when she had first seen herself on a poster when she emerged from the subway at St. Andrew Station. How she’d wished she’d been with a group of her friends – or any other human, for that matter – for that triumphal moment. Originally, she was only supposed to be one name among many listed only in text. Peter…was his name Peter? Had overruled the committee on which crotchety Saul Gwartzman and Muriel Wong had conspired to sideline her. But Peter…it was Peter? Or Brian?…had calmly threatened to pull his company’s donations at the last minute. It would have been a breach of contract, true, but the committee knew that no lawsuit could recoup the loss of having to cancel the annual event that year. Grudgingly, the committee obliged and Gemma headlined the event, although none of her works sold at the auction following the show, except one bought by Peter – an experiment in post-structuralist feminist cubism which probably now adorned a dentist’s waiting room, if it wasn’t in the landfill….A copy of the poster hung in her own room, until it became laden with too many memories and was rolled up and sealed in a closet. How powerful the photographer – hired by Peter – had made her look! The interrogatory gaze, lips the wine-crimson of ripe cherries, accentuated against the Gothic pallor of her smooth, round face; the impudence of her pouty chin and upturned nostrils against the blackness of the backdrop and the blood red of her dress and heels…It was not yet a decade ago, but it was an eternity.

Reassured, Brittany resumed her tale: Yeah, so, okay, I didn’t fail, technically. But I stopped going to classes.”

“Dropped out.”

“I know, okay? I dunno, there was a ton of shit going on in my life. I didn’t know what I was doing any of it for. All I could see, I mean, realistically, was me in some office like 80 hours a week or not even that, like, just at McDonald’s or something worse…”

“You need to think outside the box.” Gemma observed her friend withdraw something on a necklace from within the collar of her hoodie, rub it between her fingers and kiss it. It was a crucifix, in rosewood and grey metal, with the tortured mini statue of Jesus on it. Gemma sighed benevolently. Ah, religion! Refuge for those who cannot make it in life and need to be told that this is somehow a virtuous thing. It would be like Brittany, too: she was always doing silly things to show off how empathetic she was. Rescuing abandoned kittens at the animal shelter; serving food at the soup kitchen in winter. The foolish girl hadn’t realized that no man actually cared and, honestly, she would have been noticed a hundred times more if she had simply spent those precious hours slinging drinks in a bar – any of them would hire her. Even one of the gay bars on Church Street might, just for her sheer joyful charisma. It was a sign of Brittany’s weak will that she did not seek to better herself, yet she destroyed the hopes of so many of her peers merely by existing as her beautiful, envy-inspiring self. Gemma knew, though, that not everyone could make the sacrifices needed for the climb. They were not to be pitied. They would be forgotten.

“Yeah, so, Lawrence and me were pregnant.” Brittany blurted out the news as though she were still embarrassed. And she was, for the public school system in Canada teaches women that their highest calling is drudgery in service of some corporation, while motherhood is a curse.

Gemma could already see the story before Brittany told it. ’ parents were devout Catholics; the Shame would be cast aside and blotted out. No wonder Brittany was dressed so shabbily: the hoodie, a no-name denim jacket, a knock-off Chinatown handbag. She suddenly remembered how, ten months or so previously, Brittany had messaged her, seeking advice in a serious, “help me, Big Sister” way that was highly irregular. She hadn’t even recognized the voice as Brittany’s at the time, and the profile pic next to the Facebook messages was not an actual photo but rather an anime cat. Gemma was admittedly a bit drunk – she was at a New Year’s party, held at an AirBnB she’d rented for the occasion. She had also decorated it with personal effects and brought over clothing: clean to fill the closets, dirty to fill the laundry hamper, along with half-eaten food in Tupperware containers for the fridge. It had a Lake view. Everyone was fooled. She was lolling about the balcony, smoking kreteks – part of a stock carried back from Sumatra by a longhaired backpacker that, unfortunately, Peter found out about. She hardly recalled the conversation or anything else about that night, but she did remember the flattery of being consulted as an oracle. Move out here, she’d suggested straight up. Deal with your problems, forget Lawrence, forget your parents’ objections and move out here, for your own sake. Gemma never gave advice she would not follow herself. Cut the ties holding you back, settle into one of the new condos going up. If you want to attract flies, lay out some honey. She could meet the sort of people – male people – whom she’d need out there, in the lobby, at the local clubs. Forget all the schmucks busily plowing ahead with degrees, worrying about developing boring skills or getting houses in the gross-ass suburbs. “Girl, you are a perfect being already; the universe is within you, you only have to decide to manifest it!” The kreteks were getting to Gemma’s head – she really believed the advice she was giving. The bright lights behind her shimmered on the waves like constellations. She was on top of the City, which was better than being on top of the world.

As far as Gemma knew, the other girl had taken her advice and joined her, pursuing the same dream like so many salmon swimming up the same river. It might have flickered through her head afterwards that the caller had been Brittany. But it might also have been a dozen other pretty, dream-filled girls. It didn’t matter. The more salmon in the river, the more she could know her triumph as those beside her dropped out from exhaustion or were devoured by lurking bears.

Gemma stared at her friend across the canoe with a smile, her heart filled with mercy that was the opposite of love. “I didn’t see any photos of you with a baby…” The anguish on Brittany’s face was palpable. “You did the right thing,” she was about to say, but was saved from awkwardness when Brittany cut her off.

“I told Lawrence, but she’d already died.” Brittany shrugged, smiling painfully.

“You buy all the Church’s propaganda?” Gemma snorted, but soon regretted her cruel humour. The story Brittany told had Gemma balling fists till her knuckles almost burst through the skin. Brittany, it turned out, had not taken her advice. She had told everything. They had gotten engaged and married. Worse, she had abandoned OCAD voluntarily, canceled the lease on the condo she rented, and vanished into nothing out in the suburbs – in Richmond Hill, of all places. She worked a few hours every week in a cafe owned by ’ aunt. That was it? Gemma lashed herself for being such an idiot; for briefly thinking that forgiveness was warranted for this ungrateful creature before her. Brittany wasn’t supposed to do that. It was a betrayal, to leave her friend all alone…

Yet, how could you criticize a girl like that without seeming like a monster? “But…you still have ambitions? Don’t you?” she frantically asked – nay, pleaded. “Tiffany and Roweena miss you. The guys still ask about you at the Silver Flamingo.” The first two were lies, the second was true, except none of the drunken businessmen asked for Brittany by her name because they had never learned it.

“Oh, for sure. We’re going to try again…”

“For the downpayment? If your credit history is established, which it probably is by now, you don’t need the 20%…or, you mean ? Isn’t he working at Tim Horton’s?”

“He was but he quit. Actually, he helps out at his dad’s office part time. He’s studying. His parents are cool with things.” Brittany’s lustrous eyes darted as if searching for the perfect descriptor. “We’re happy.”

“But…why?” Gemma couldn’t contain herself.

“I…well, it’s hard for me to say…” Brittany fidgeted, wringing her cold hands. “The bottom line was…we’re close, I mean, you showed me a lot about life, but…I saw what you were doing; what, I guess, you had to do to get it all: the attention, the shows, your place where you were staying and…what you did to your boyfriends, yourself and…”

“You couldn’t hack it!” Gemma thought to herself.

“…And I didn’t want to be like you.” There was no trace of mockery in her words. Only pure, honest truth.

Gemma was floored. And yet she had been preparing for this moment for weeks. Months, even. In the silence that followed the bombshell words, she witnessed Brittany’s expression change from apologetic, to thoughtful, to concerned as she saw how far out from the shore they were and as she recognized the increasing patter of raindrops spat from the darkening clouds. Gemma saw her friend’s mouth open in pleas, then in a scream, but she did not hear anything as, with laser focus, she reached below the thwart, fumbled and yanked out the plug which she had patched in a day earlier…

It did not take long to find the body but, for half a week, the papers and TV carried the photos of the beaming blonde, glowing with the promise of a Tomorrow cruelly snatched away. A Sergeant McMurtry of the Toronto Police Service informed reporters gathered at the daily presser that there had been a tragic accident, although, privately, as a son of rural Ontario and an avid outdoorsman, the Sergeant was astonished that the girls had made it out so far, in such a small craft, the hull of which had been punctured pretty bad by rocks. Naturally, he went to talk to the Belzer family, who owned the canoe and whom he was familiar with via the late Professor. The parents claimed that no one had permission to access their boathouse besides themselves, and Sophie denied telling Gemma Bledsoe that she could borrow the green Peterborough, although she admitted to knowing both the survivor and the victim socially.

Traumatized by the incident, Gemma sought comfort and attention wherever she could find it – in particular, from a devastated Lawrence. Alas, the idiot would only open up pictures of Brittany on his phone when she tried to console him, and he was cold as granite to her attempted caresses. Then there was the notice from the Landlord & Tenant Board on the door. She went to ask the manager at the Silver Flamingo for help to pay the back rent, but he saw her in the bright light of day and he was sober, therefore she did not get to set foot past the bouncer-guarded doors. With the scribble of a ballpoint pen on the application form at a Tim Horton’s on Kennedy Road north of Eglinton, Brittany’s beyond-the-grave revenge had begun.

終

Soborna Street Bridge

On the edge of winter the hornbeams’ relict leaves

Tinkle like golden bells amid the breeze;

A happy sigh for the peaceful sky,

As on Soborna Bridge the cars flow bustling by.

The refugees already half returned;

Surprised at seeing our People spurned,

An epiphany:

Their paradise was not reality.

Along the streetside, there’s smiling face galore,

As if, true there’s war, savouring life more:

The situation makes the heart’s eye see clearly why

Not again to let greed

And selfishness lead

Us to Heaven’s Will defy.

Remarque, Jünger and the War in Ukraine

Recently, YouTube recommendations informed me that a new film adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front has been released. The algorithm promotes the film aggressively, so the powers that be must think it something the populace ought to see (at least in the western world – my YouTube account is in English). Since I am living in Ukraine, embroiled as it is in the largest conflict on European soil since the Second World War, naturally, the subject of war crosses my mind on a regular basis. Additionally, I have had occasion to visit a military base and refugee camps, as well as to have translated the accounts of Azovstal POWs for presentation to an international audience. Sooner or later, it may come to other things, but, as yet, it’s not bad enough for them to allow foreign citizens with no prior experience to go do the more serious stuff. In other words, while I have not killed or been killed by an enemy yet, I reckon I have as much or more credentials than the average New York blogger or London film critic to muse about these topics. The YouTube notifications took me back to high school, in Toronto, Canada, where, for many years, All Quiet on the Western Front was mandatory reading in English class, as well as being a staple of university Eng Lit courses.

Copies of Erich Maria Remarque’s novel dotted the shelves of our small school library and could be found, like all other course reading staples, for dirt cheap on the shelves of the BMV and other used bookstores in the university district centered around Yonge, Dundas and College Streets. The novel’s claim to fame was essentially that it presented an account of the First World War – widely regarded as the epitome of the worst aspects of war, concentrated – which was presumably based on the author’s firsthand experiences and was thus true. Since it was the only book most of us would ever read about the First World War (indeed, the only one which most of us would ever know about), it gained additional importance from being the source of most of the perspective that students would develop on that conflict and, indeed, war in general. All Quiet gains extra persuasive power because of a quirk of the characters of those who grew up in the soft, liberal West of the postwar era, whether in North America or western Europe: i.e. the tendency to assume that, the more despairing, hopeless and dehumanizing something is, the more real and honest it is. Thus the immense popularity of Netflix and HBO shows which are nothing but a string of arbitrary violence and debauchery – zombie apocalypses, gangsters, murderous and incestuous struggles for thrones — among a viewing public, most of whom would be terrified to even hold a gun, much less use it to earn a living or protect their loved ones, and who go through life expecting a benevolent State to coddle them and to tell them what to think, what to eat, and whether or not they are permitted to bare their faces in public.

Remarque’s novel certainly contains enough gore, fear and despair to convince the typical urban western reader of its genuineness. And, there is noone who would deny that the First World War had enough of these to fill the nightmares of centuries. Yet, when I see the film or physical copies of All Quiet on the Western Front being used in still-life photos and other imagery, as if by an inherently understood symbolic power, to comment on the war in Ukraine, I see an insidious plot in the guise of peace. Insidious from the perspective of Ukraine, that is. Perhaps the individuals who look at our war and think, “Oh, it’s just like All Quiet on the Western Front from school!” are quite unconscious of what they are advocating for. Yet, it is no accident that Remarque’s book is the representation of war in fiction for most of the liberal west, nor is it an accident that it has been mandatory reading in public schools to the exclusion of alternatives. When one digs a little deeper into the history behind the author, comparing him and his work to his contemporaries, it seems even less of an accident.

For there are alternative perspectives. Of course, among the tens of millions of soldiers who fought during the First World War, there would obviously be more than one who decided to sit down and write about it afterwards. What is most interesting, when one looks into these other perspectives, is how two people, experiencing the same event, at the same time, on the same side can come to diametrically opposed viewpoints on the experience. As soon as one realizes this, the belief that one particular author’s book/film represents The Truth becomes impossible to sustain. And this is the main reason why Remarque is taught, to the exclusion of his contemporaries who, arguably, might have been better authorities on the subject.

It is no secret that the public education systems in Canada, the major countries of the EU and most of the United States are heavily influenced by left-wing values. Whether one is speaking of issues of multiculturalism, gender, ideas of fairness and justice, or politics, it is Marxist-derived perspectives on the world that dominate. One need only look at the recurring conflicts between school boards and parents who come from more traditional backgrounds or, at least, aren’t radical liberals, everywhere from Birmingham to British Columbia. Whether this is a problem or not, I would think, should be up to the parents, but I am merely mentioning it as a fact. I am concerned with what this means for the teaching of literature about war, and, ultimately, the resulting public attitude towards war.

The liberal State, as a rule, prefers citizens who are docile, productive, good consumers and easy to control. Peace is a good thing, generally speaking. Peace facilitates prosperity and has countless other benefits which need no elaboration. What happens, however, when those who see themselves as the leaders of a society, who believe they know what is best for the world, wish to impose their vision on everyone else in that society, in their country or in others? Moreover, what happens when that vision, however utopian and perfect to its creators, is opposed by the relevant population or significant minorities within it?

Such a scenario is not hypothetical. It has happened here in Ukraine many times, most dramatically in the 1920s and 1930s, when the utopian vision (still cherished by academics and intellectuals the world over) of certain intellectuals from Moscow had to be imposed – “for the Greater Good” – upon an unwilling Ukrainian nation.

If it can be ingrained in childhood and early youth that peace is the ultimate good, one can achieve a population that will cease resistance as soon as those wishing to impose a particular vision on them show an intent to use force. As avoiding violent conflict is the highest goal, as soon as one party is willing to use violence, the other is compelled to back down – what’s more, it will believe itself virtuous and noble in so backing down.

Before getting into a deeper comparison of Remarque and his most notable counterpart, I will share an anecdote from my days in elementary school. It was a typical public school, part of the Toronto District School Board. For Remembrance Day, the school was putting on a theatre presentation. The play was about the idea of war and peace. In the plot of the play, there were two tribes (seeking wisdom from ‘primitive’ peoples, even imaginary ones, was in vogue). One was the Peace People, who danced and made merry around their huts, not unlike the Eloi in H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine. The other tribe was the War People, who devoted much of their society’s energy to training for and engaging in armed conflict. The play began with the Peace People enjoying life in blissful ignorance and the War People plotting a raid upon their gentle neighbours. Next, the War People snuck up at night and ambushed the Peace People as they slept. There was a fight. One member each – an equal number, I emphasize – of the two tribes was killed. This saddened both tribes, who forgave each other and made peace. Let the message the play was teaching, both explicit and implicit, stew in your mind as we go forward.

The same students, thus prepared, were given Remarque’s book in high school. What is the gist of the book? To be as brief as possible, it is that war is a hellish, pointless experience. Remarque’s protagonists are all eager volunteers, who think war will be a grand bit of fun. They enter combat and are horribly disillusioned. Some art killed. The main character, who, on leave, is tasked with inspiring another cohort of eager children to join the fray, is disgusted with the whole idea. Most crucial is the emphasis on the purposeless despair of it all; that it was all for nothing. Whether or not this was what the author specifically intended, the student-reader is imbued with the conviction that war is a senseless disaster, rather like a hurricane or tsunami, and that the best, smartest thing to do is to run away and avoid it. Not only is peace at all costs the smartest course of action, it is also the noblest and most virtuous: in All Quiet on the Western Front, the characters who are not overtly opposed to war are either stupid kids, or else pompous officials and brutes whose jingoism is a cloak for their actual cowardice. Nobody who is both smart and good could want anything but to avoid conflict and seek peace at all costs.

The book, like its author, first thrived in the Weimar Republic, a period seen as a fleeting heaven or a dismal hell depending on which side of the fence one stands. Hyperinflation, crushing poverty, the humiliation of defeat in the war: to many, this was a tragedy, but to a lot of the intellectuals who shape public opinion, at least in the universities and media, it was paradise. And, when one looks at what a decadent liberal society values, it is easy to see why. Poverty and a massive class divide meant that those in the bourgeoisie who retained wealth and status (like Remarque himself) instantly obtained a greater sense of superiority over their fellow men, all the more important as their typically atheistic, materialist worldview did not allow a sense of importance except via the contrast between one’s own wealth and power and the squalor and desperation of others. Prostitution, including child prostitution flourished – another delight to certain academics, filmmakers and the like (I think of certain teachers I have known, subsequently fired or sanctioned for related misconduct) who are titillated by the idea of a place that’s like Bangkok or Port-au-Prince, but with white people and more luxuries and conveniences. The humiliation of the Versailles Treaty knocked out the bourgeois liberal’s main rivals as leaders of the nation – military commanders, anointed monarchs and landed aristocrats. At least temporarily…In other words, Remarque’s book and the ideals it embodied crystallize a zeitgeist which much of the educational and cultural industries of the liberal west would wish to return to.

In many ways, they have returned to it already. No one loathes nationalism among European peoples more than the visionaries who head the European Union and associated organizations. One is reminded of the clips of Angela Merkel (who, as a Ukrainian, I will not forget, insisted on the economic partnership with Russia, the chickens of which have come home to roost), when offered a German flag at an official event, angrily batting away that colourful token of nationalism. The denigration of the Church within almost all EU states except Poland, the tolerance – nay, indulgence – shown to terrorism and its advocates within Macron’s France, the “shut your mouths in the name of multiculturalism” with which the German police responded to the women victimized in the mass sexual assaults in Cologne, and the grovelling self-flagellation inherent in numerous EU officials’ delighted proclamations of the looming erasure of their own native cultures: these and countless examples like them are well-known and speak for themselves. Is it any surprise that those whose spirit is so akin to that of their kin of a century ago are so eager to encourage the formation of an underclass of illegal immigrants, high cost of living, and a plethora of regulations which make it extremely difficult to become an entrepreneur or small proprietor unless one is among the social elite? To such people, we will always be nothing more than a source of cheap resources, desperate and attractive women, and meat to keep the Bear at bay, hoping it will not come for them.

A couple months ago, in the course of pursuing my language studies, I came across a translation of Ernst Junger’s Storm of Steel (translated in Ternopil, I believe, which would be no surprise). At one time, Junger’s book was a bestseller, as popular or more so than Remarque’s. Rather than a novel, Storm of Steel is more like a journal of Junger’s experiences in the war. In terms of the basic facts, they are no different than those described in All Quiet on the Western Front: tons of mud, oceans of blood, heaps of corpses, looming clouds of poison gas, the ceaseless explosions of the shells. There are, however, two very important differences. The first is that Junger’s work is an account of his own experiences. He was, by all measures, a fanatically brave soldier; one of the Sturmtruppen, a volunteer who was wounded at least seven times, kept returning to battle for almost the entire duration of the war, and somehow managed to live to the age of 102. He was also a devout Catholic, philosopher and entomologist. Despite it’s persuasive rhetoric of pointless despair, Erich Maria Remarque’s book was not a true story of his experiences. Presumably, he made his protagonists eager volunteers, the better to make anyone who thought the war worthwhile seem pathetic and naive. Remarque himself was an unwilling conscript, who spent all of about six weeks in a rear-line trench before shrapnel injuries from an artillery shell ended his war. In other words, he had about as much experience of war as countless ordinary civilians in Ukraine.

The second major difference between the two authors – who, again, fought in the same front, of the same war, on the same side – has already been alluded to, which is their attitude to the conflict. Junger was quite aware of the horrors of war and describes them in graphic detail. Clearly, the experience weighed heavily on his mind, as he wrestled with it in writing years after the fact. Yet, unlike Remarque, Junger did not seek an easy out, although he could have had one several times over. He did not feel the struggle he and his comrades were engaged in was pointless, and he saw value in the heroism which they and he personally embodied. It was a tragedy, but not a tragic farce. Perhaps this spirit is best encapsulated by Junger’s own words, describing his thoughts while lying wounded in a hospital train riding homeward from the battlefield after the first incident in which he was wounded. He admits that, when he signed up for the war, it had been out of the same sort of jingoistic enthusiasm mocked by Remarque. Nonetheless, having suffered what he suffered, gazing out at the rural scenery of his homeland, he had an epiphany, realizing:

“At the sight of the Neckar slopes wreathed with flowering cherry trees, I had a strong sense of having come home. What a beautiful country it was, and eminently worth our blood and our lives. Never before had I felt its charm so clearly. I had good and serious thoughts, and for the first time I sensed that this war was more than just a great adventure.” (Junger p. 33)

Contemplating these two completely different perspectives on war, it struck me as odd that, in most any setting in the liberal, urban west, if one were to quote or praise each author, one would get a very different reaction. Someone who quoted or expressed sympathy with the perspective of All Quiet on the Western Front would be seen as a wise, caring advocate of peace; someone who understands the gritty reality of the world, even if their harshest experience of that world is working as a Starbucks barista in downtown Toronto. Someone who quoted or expressed sympathy with the perspective of Storm of Steel would be laughed at as a hypocrite, naive; someone who had no idea what he was talking about, or else castigated as a fascist or some other meaningless term for politically incorrect. However, neither perspective is any more naive than the other. If anything, Junger knew what he was talking about more intimately than Remarque.

What is the relevance of all of this to the current war in Ukraine? Put simply, whether a nation as a whole has the mindset of All Quiet on the Western Front or Storm of Steel will determine its actions in this conflict and its fate as a result of it. We can see the influence of successive generations being indoctrinated with Remarque’s vision in the attitudes of many in the west. We see it in the headlines, like one from DW today, speculating about a Marshall Plan for Ukraine: people who cannot even provide light and heat to their own citizens, in one of the richest countries in the world, imagining victory in a war in which they have not spilled a single drop of blood. We see it in the advocates of peace who think the middle course is always the sign of the wise man. People, that is, who believe, in their heart of hearts, that it is better to submit to the occupation of one’s land, the theft of one’s property, and the erasure of one’s people from history than to fight, or even to simply endure in the face of hardship. If slavery to a foreign tyrant means more iPhones, Teslas, McDonalds and Prada bags, then slavery to a foreign tyrant is the rational choice. This, of course, was the view of the Remarques of the world, for whom no cause could be as valuable as pursuing a life of safe, degenerate pleasure; the hyper-intellectual goal of becoming a wad of meat completely enslaved to the basest of impulses.

And this is what we were taught, growing up. If things get bad; if there is evil attacking one’s country, then the smartest, noblest thing to do is to abandon everything and run to wherever one can pursue consumerist indulgence. The trouble is, everything that’s of the highest value in life – friends, family, love, land, culture, spirituality – is bound together. Only if we implicitly admit (only the most radical Marxist materialist will say so explicitly) that none of these things truly matter and it is only the hedonistic pursuit of consumption and pleasure that counts; only then can we accept Remarque’s viewpoint as true. Of course, most citizens of the modern west already accept this view, though they have never consciously reflected on the fact. It is because they accept that friends, family, love, culture etc. are not worth as much as an apartment in a Big City of the west and the chicness associated with such things, that they can sincerely tell us to submit. Or to run. In 1918, for a lone wealthy intellectual, there were many places to run to, where one could forget one’s friends, one’s love, abandon one’s identity and be alright (possibly with the help of a bottle). In this era of intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear weapons and aircraft which travel faster than the speed of sound, and where the economies and resources of all nations are tied in a knotted web, this is no longer so feasible. This is especially the case as international travel is relatively fast and cheap. When several hundred wealthy White Russian emigres would flood into Paris or Shanghai, this meant little to the economy and job markets, except at the local jewelers and fashion boutiques. When there are a several million refugees flooding into cities already burdened with the voluntarily acquired millions from Africa and the Middle East, in countries which have collapsed their own economies via years of lockdowns and the pursuit of delusional ‘green’ policies, it is a different matter. When a war far away means there is no fuel for one’s car, heat for one’s house, and food is unaffordable, then there is nowhere left to run to.

If Ukraine were to follow Remarque, we are doomed, and so is the rest of Europe, for, were all of our civilians to decide to simply run, in what for 90% will be the vain pursuit of a vision of the West which ceased to exist, even for those born in it, two or three decades ago, then what will our soldiers fight for? If anyone thinks Ukrainians are enduring, fighting and dying for “the European Perspective,” to quote Ursula von der Leyen, or for a certain percentage increase in GDP, or the stock market, they are grossly deceiving themselves. At least, from any I have spoken to (including, from an earlier iteration of this war, my grandfather who took a bullet in the arm fighting against the Red Army), it is for very much the things Junger wrote of in his journal after he was wounded that they fight. Right now, it is laughable to think of the Russian army marching to Paris or Berlin. But that is only because we have given them such a bloody brutal time of it on our soil. Were we to do the ‘sensible’ thing, and submit and flee, does any sane person think that Putin’s hordes would stop at Kyiv, or Lviv? Russian armies have marched into Paris and Berlin before. If the west has forgotten history, the Russians have not. If we follow Ernst Junger, we will save ourselves and them. Because we have something to fight and die for, Ukraine will live, whatever temporary setbacks or even disasters may occur on the battlefield. As for the Russians, one cannot enjoy one’s plundered televisions and washing machines if one is a corpse. In conclusion, the rest of Europe is lucky that, whatever some might have tried to teach us, we did not learn the same lessons in school. They must learn that peace can never be the highest goal, because the easiest way to peace is slavery.

“Allies”

Welcomed ‘warmly,’ twice in half a year,

The soul revealed as the mask is slipping clear;

Winter glistening upon the morning ground,

The swagger glimpsed in summer nowhere to be found.

Their money to Moscow, for scheming, can’t be paid,

Leaving the EUnuchs fretting the falling centigrade.

On the fields and city streets our People’s blood did flow,

While thirty times their love for us they sent unto our Foe.

Once, they were Men, who besides our Didos stood

And held the craven Bolsheviks as long as heroes could.

Soon they will bid us sign a paper, “for the Greater Good,”

As their green-mad Citizens scrounge for coal and wood;

They, who, in Eighty-Nine, cried that their land be whole,

Will order us to smiling cede what Putin’s Hordes have stole,

And they will not see the contradiction,

Demigods in their own self-written fiction.

Welfare, apartments, tons of thankless toil –

Proximity to glamour, on another master’s soil:

As an offer to one’s’ subjects, it’s really much the same

As Khrushchev and his Commissars, rebuilding, did proclaim.

Alas, there’s here a song, saying something of “Cossack Kin,”

As though the sale of dignity were a worse than mortal sin.

Yet, with will, one might forget one’s roots

And can come to love the taste of foreign boots.