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A LITTLE STRAGGLING HAMLET

… to behold on one side a city, with its towers and spires and animated population, with villas and handsome houses stretching along the shore, and a hundred vessels or more, gigantic steamers, brigs, schooners, crowding the port, loading and unloading; all the bustle, in short, of prosperity and commerce; — and, on the other side, a little straggling hamlet, one schooner, one little wretched steam-boat, some windmills, a catholic chapel or two, a supine ignorant peasantry, all the symptoms of apathy, indolence, mistrust, hopelessness! — can I, can any one, help wondering at the difference, and asking whence it arises? There must be a cause for it surely — but what is it? Does it lie in past or present — in natural or accidental circumstances? — in the institutions of the government, or the character of the people? Is it remediable? is it a necessity? is it a mystery? what and whence is it? — Can you tell? or can you send some of our colonial officials across the Atlantic to behold and solve the difficulty?

Anna Brownell Jameson wrote these words the summer prior to the Rebellion in ’37, and in Vera Maude’s opinion things hadn’t changed all that much. Sure, the little straggling hamlet grew up to become the City of Windsor, but there was still a huge difference in size and scope between it and Detroit, its American cousin on the other side of the river.

What really struck Vera Maude, though, was the last sentence in this particular passage. In it Mrs. Jameson exposes an attitude that Vera Maude felt might be at the heart of the matter: let us commission a gaggle of bureaucrats, a handful of Mother England’s privileged sons, to force an artificial solution on the problem, whatever it is, rather than try to tackle it ourselves.

Winter Studies and Summer Rambles in Canada. She snapped the book shut and stuffed it into her canvas bag. The next book she pulled down off the shelf was a volume of Shakespeare’s sonnets given to her by an admirer in her senior year of high school.

Tom would steal glances at Vera Maude when it was his turn to stand up in front of the class and read from it. He was an original and Vera Maude liked him. But something wasn’t right with Tom; a dark cloud hung over him at times. There was talk of an illness, and not of the physical variety. He found joy in Shakespeare, however, and filled the book’s margins with his own verses.

He had approached her once on Shakespeare’s birthday. Vera Maude said she wasn’t interested in going with anyone at the moment, which was true. She had just recently concluded her first romance and was feeling emotionally exhausted. Tom was very sweet and didn’t push himself on her. At the end of the school year he presented her with the book, asking if she would accept it as a token. Flipping through it, she realized the verses Tom had written were about her. For the first time in her life Vera Maude was speechless.

Part of her refused to believe she could have inspired such heartfelt tributes. She didn’t want the responsibility. She told herself it all came from somewhere in Tom’s imagination. His last few sonnets trailed off unfinished.

To say that you are always in my thoughts

Suggests I also think of other things.

Truth is if you entirely I forgot,

My mind would be cleared of all its musings.

And the final entry was a single line: My love for you is nature’s cruelest gift.

Vera Maude had struggled with that one for a long time. Eventually she had moved on. Had Tom? There were rumours he had been shipped off to a sanitarium, where his mind was presumably cleared forever of all its musings. She couldn’t believe that was five years ago already.

Poor Tom.

She remembered reasoning with herself that unrequited love was not actually love at all. For it to be true love, it had to be shared by two people. Otherwise it was just madness. She placed the volume in her bag then pulled the last book off the shelf: a copy of Bulfinch’s Age of Fable her father had given her for Christmas last year. She would try to remember to read up on Aphrodite tonight before bed. The gods still had a lot of explaining to do.

Every Sunday Vera Maude would come home for dinner and take something else away with her. This was the last of it. The room was bare now except for her mother’s needlework hanging on the wall. Her father had been trying to get Vera Maude to take a few of her mother’s things, but Vera Maude always refused. She never knew her mother, who had died shortly after she was born. Vera Maude believed these things should go to her older siblings. Her father said they wouldn’t appreciate them.

The old man was preparing to sell the house and move in with his brother, Uncle Fred. Some of the Maguire children had hoped Vera Maude would remain to watch over their father and help keep the house in the family. She wondered which one of them thought they were going to get it in the end. The rest resented her for what they saw as a betrayal. Vera Maude was clearly the favourite, so how could she abandon him like this? None of them should have been surprised, though. Vera Maude was the black sheep of the family. She had different ideas, different ways of doing things. She even looked different than the other children.

To answer the folks who liked to joke about her being the milkman’s daughter, her father pointed out the fact that she resembled his Irish mother, a woman of Spanish heritage. Vera Maude had chestnut hair, green-brown eyes, and in the summertime she was the first to have any colour. The rest of the family was tall and fair with red hair, like their mother. Vera Maude called herself a throwback, a remembrance of things past.

This would be the last Sunday dinner in the old house. She knew it saddened her father, but she also knew he didn’t want to make a big deal about it. He’ll sit at the head of the table, she thought, quiz them about their week and then make sure they are caught up on current events. Her father loved debate and enjoyed playing the devil’s advocate.

She could hear the plates clattering on the table downstairs. Over the years more chairs were added to accommodate girlfriends, boyfriends, and spouses. Soon there would be grandchildren. The very idea of being an auntie made her want to jump out the window.

“Maudie! Dinner!”

“Coming!”

It had become increasingly difficult for her to behave herself at these gatherings, to hold her tongue and not rock the boat too much. But her father enjoyed seeing her in action. She held her ground and countered her brothers’ volleys.

She could pretty much predict what the dinner conversation would be like: her father would back the idea of using martial law in Michigan to get the coal moving again. Joe won’t like that. He’d be applauding the Red influence among the rail unions.

Bob would cut in with a comment about hydroelectricity being the wave of the future. He spent his days at McNaughton’s store selling electric toasters, vacuum cleaners, curling tongs, and gawd knows what else.

Dorothy and her husband would try to steer the conversation towards temperance, pointing out the Mounties’ successful raid on the Meyers house in Ford City last week. They’d picked up his still, a quantity of mash, and a few jars of third rail whisky.

Jennie’s tastes bordered on the sensational. She’d likely bring up the brutal murder of a watchman at a factory in Hamilton and ask what the world was coming to.

Gavin was the aspiring real estate tycoon. He’d have noticed that the Labadie farm sold and that would lead to talk of planning and the Border Cities and then the amalgamation hot potato would get tossed around until the eldest, Austin, cooled things off with the latest news on the Old Boys festivities kicking off in a couple weeks.

Vera Maude grabbed her book bag and headed down the narrow stairs. When she got to the bottom she had to wiggle around the table, which was so long it stretched from the dining room into the parlour. Vera Maude dropped her book bag in the foyer and looked for a seat.

“Maudie, I want you sitting here next to me,” said her father as he pulled out the chair to his left.

The older boys looked at each other but didn’t say a word. The wives and girlfriends started bringing food out of the kitchen. It was typical Essex County fare: a pork roast, sweet corn on the cob, fresh tomatoes, radishes and cucumbers, warm biscuits, and a potato salad tossed with green beans and mayonnaise. Austin said Grace.

Bless us, O Lord, and these thy gifts,

Which we are about to receive from thy bounty

Through Christ Our Lord.

Vera Maude mumbled her own made-up words and her father nudged her under the table.

“Ah, men,” she concluded.

Everyone grabbed one of the dishes and her father cut into the roast. Plates were passed around. Vera Maude’s came back with a radish on it.

“Gee, thanks a bunch.”