The Canadian Civil War
Volume 3
West to the Wall
By William Wresch
Copyright 2014 William Wresch
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Chapter 1 –
It started with two arguments
I thought I was prepared for yet another Green Bay winter. I knew it would not be easy, despite Elise. There was the question of what people would do after the first of the year when anyone who had 2 sous to click together headed south like any sensible person and found some sun. South now meant traveling into Louisiana and an unknown -- but probably hostile -- reception. Would Green Bay residents actually reside in Green Bay in January? Would I? Ouch.
What I wasn't prepared for was my first fight with Elise. Before I describe that, let me reassure you I will describe the latest incidents in the civil conflict underway in Canada, and I also want to describe the early efforts at westward explorations. You will recall that Marquette had told the world that just up the Missouri was a short path to the Pacific. That led to all kinds of problems worth describing, especially since they had ramifications in the current conflict. But, trust me here, the fight with Elise matters. Of course it matters to me, but I think it may also help my fellow Americans better understand Canadian culture.
It started with a hammer. You will recall that I bought a house for us in October. It was just behind her parent's home, and actually a pretty attractive place. But of course it had been build by the French, so it had a furnace that ran when the mood struck it, lights that dimmed whenever the refrigerator compressor came on, plumbing that rattled whenever the toilet was flushed, and, my favorite, wind that blew through the place at about 5 mph -- on a good day. In short, it was a paragon of French workmanship.
I started working on the place as soon as I could. Where could I start? It didn't matter. There wasn't anything in the house that didn't need to be redone. One weekend I insulated the attic. I discovered that old newspaper had once been the insulation of choice. Much as I might have liked reading up there, I decided maybe it was time for some fiberglass. Another weekend I caulked. I started with 5 tubes of caulk, went back to the store for 5 more, and then just gave up and bought a case. I am sure the place had been caulked once in the last century, but I am sure no one could pinpoint the correct decade.
All these things I could do largely out of sight of Elise. She knew I was having some work done on the house, and we had even worked through floor plans and alternative layouts for bedrooms, closets, and the like. She knew I was doing something. But maybe the key here is she knew I was having something done. Then one Saturday afternoon she came home and found me with a hammer. I was in the midst of knocking out a wall so we could have a larger master bedroom. I was covered with dust, the room was covered with dust, the air was filled with dust, you get the idea. I was also hot and sweaty, but pretty excited about how the room might turn out. So I was not ready for her question.
"What are you doing?" Even though it was a Saturday, she was still putting in long hours at the ministry, so she was dressed well and my first thought was that the house was no place for someone dressed as nicely as she was
"I'm taking out the wall we talked about. Don't come in here, but can you see how the master bedroom will now extend along the south wall? We can put our new closets in here, while the bed goes here..." I went into tour guide mode, pointing out where the new walls would go. It all seemed pretty good to me, but she still seemed confused.
"But what are you doing?" Now I was confused.
"I am taking out the wall we talked about. Remember the plans we drew up a couple weeks ago?"
"I remember the plans, but why are you knocking down the wall? Where are the workmen?"
"I thought it would be simpler if I did it myself." Being culturally sensitive I didn't say that I would no more want a Canadian contractor in my house than carpenter ants.
"But you will need help for this."
"Not really. It will make a bit of a mess, but I can haul the old plaster out, and then rebuild the walls where we had planned. It's not that complicated."
"Are we poor?"
"No. The university pays me well, and I also get money from my father's business..." Was I supposed to show her my checking account? We hadn't compared finances yet. Maybe I should have somewhere along the line. But now didn't seem the right moment.
"In Canada, successful people have work like this done by contractors." How could I respond? That successful Canadians have really low standards? Probably not.
"I am an American. In America, it is a point of pride for men to do their own projects."
"You're in Canada now."
"But I am still an American." In retrospect, I could see the conversation could have gone is so many directions -- her being angry and maybe shouting, or maybe her nodding her head in acceptance. Either of those would have been preferable. Instead, she just stood looking at me, the expression on her face saying she was hurt - really hurt.
"You are American. I am Canadian. What will the children be?" All this from knocking down some plaster? This might have been a good time for a hug, but I was far too messy to even come near her. What could I say?
"They will be ours." She nodded. I hoped that was some sign of acceptance, but how could I tell? She slowly backed down the hallway and out of sight. I put down the offending hammer and headed for a shower. I had repair work to do this evening, and it involved more than pipes and plaster.
That was the first argument of the fall. I would like to say it was resolved beautifully, with me whisking her off to a beautiful weekend of champagne and flowers and a deeper understanding of our cultural foundations, but it did reach a kind of stasis. Elise is a brilliant woman and she has traveled extensively for a Canadian (meaning she had seen at least two countries other than France), so in the end, she just seemed to accept that I had a strange cultural need to get dirty. She accepted this peculiarity with about the same grace with which she would have accepted the fact that I had a tattoo on my arm or an allergy to froi gras. In short, she determined she could live with a man who had an unfortunate habit, a habit she would probably not mention at cocktail parties, but she could accept in the privacy of her home.
As for me, I had no real expectations of her joining me in these projects, and I really did like the idea of remaking our home into something move livable, more functional, and frankly more mine. So I spent lots of weekends hanging sheetrock, installing crown molding, and building pretty cool closets if I do say so myself. And I have to admit that I still enjoy lying in bed and looking around at the walls, knowing that the only ones without cracks are the ones I built.
It was the second argument that had bigger consequences. This one was not with Elise, but with a student. The whole thing started as a shock, and developed in an odd way, in part because I was determined to be an enlightened professor. Back when I was a teaching assistant at the University of Virginia, I would sometimes get dumb questions from students. I was teaching an American history class required of all future teachers, and when you put “required” together with “history” you often get really bad attitudes and really poor effort. The result is I could have told the class King George III annexed Florida to the other colonies, and the students would have put that in t
heir notes and memorized it for the exam and then forgot it within 48 hours just like they forgot everything else I said. But once in a while they did ask questions and I would stop my lecture and straighten them out and try not to grit my teeth.
But now that I was a visiting professor at the National University of Canada, I decided I would do a better job with questions, that I would not just provide quick answers, but I would explore the topic a bit since the question indicated at least modest interest. Put another way, I was trying to up my game a bit. At least that’s how things started. In the end, my response almost got me fired, but more importantly it got me digging far deeper into a part of Canadian history that I had ignored.
Here’s the question: “Why didn’t the Americans let the French finish the Panama Canal?” Wow. I have to admit I was initially stumped by the multiple layers of dumbness the question revealed. A bit of background. At this point I was about seven weeks into a course on U.S. history that had been designed by a Canadian whose knowledge of the U.S. consisted of having once flown over the country on his way to France. He had selected a textbook for the course that had the same level of insight. Having taught the course for many years before taking a two year leave to study something somewhere (it might have been knitting. He knew too little about the U.S. to possibly be studying that), he left a position vacant, and I was invited to teach the course. With a Ph.D. in U.S. history from the primary university in the U.S, I had the qualifications for the course, but I also knew my real qualifications were my connections to Elise and to President Jolliet. That had gotten me a two-year visiting professor contract and suggestions that further contracts might be possible.
So, there I was, standing at the bottom of a lecture pit teaching two hundred of the nation’s elite students, all of whom had even less interest in U.S. history than U.S. students. Why were they in the course? It was a popular elective for Canadian history majors, or at least it was popular when it was taught by the guy who knew nothing about U.S. history other than the fact that Canada was vastly superior to its poor neighbor to the east. Into this cultural certainty steps a young visiting American professor – me.
The young man who asked the question sat in the third row. The front row was for the over-eager and the back rows were for the sleepers. The third row was for the twenty year old skeptics – close enough to be engaged, far enough to be disdainful when the mood struck. What did he look like? I’m not sure it mattered. They pretty much all looked alike. All two hundred had gone to leading high schools and came from leading families. They dressed expensively, but wore their clothes casually, as if spending hundreds of francs on a shirt didn’t mean they should button the sleeves. And their faces? Here there was sometimes sincerity and occasionally interest, but usually there was an expression that seemed to me to show they expected me to recognize and be impressed by their family names. Being a foreigner I only knew a few of the leading families, so mostly I was less impressed than they expected, but then, they seemed willing to accept that I would be ignorant on that and many other things. After all, I was an American.
This particular morning the student asking the question seemed more engaged than usual, and even a bit hostile. Maybe that is what got me started – not the stupidity of the question, but the intensity of it. Why would he care that we had built the Panama Canal? What difference would it have made to a country that seemed to have it all? They had the largest, most fertile valley on the planet, plus the largest sources of fresh water. What more did he want?
So I stopped my lecture, put down my chalk, and came around in front of my lectern. And I said nothing for minutes while I considered how to respond to such a dumb question. In truth, I did not know where to start, so I asked –
“What makes you think the U.S. prevented the French from finishing the Canal?”
“We know the French are great canal builders. After all, they had just completed the Suez Canal. So they had the technology and the experience. They had a good start on the Panama Canal, but then stopped. There was talk about malaria and swamps, but they had dealt with diseases in Egypt too, and frankly, the nation that gave us Pasteur, is a nation that could deal with malaria. So you start looking for political complications. The textbook says many of the supplies and workers came from the U.S. You put two and two together…”
At this point even the back row was awake. There were quite a few heads nodding agreement. It appeared he was presenting a case that had been made before, maybe in their high school, maybe in this very room by the moron who preceded me. As laughable as the premise was to me, it clearly was not laughable to these students, and these were the best students in their nation.
“Why would the Americans want to stop the French? Would not the canal benefit all?” Notice my restraint, if you will. I can’t say I had spent much time studying the canal, but I knew enough about French engineering to know they were about as likely to complete a complex canal as they were to build a car that didn’t rattle.
“With the Americans in charge of the Canal, they could stop ships in time of war.”
“And they could keep us from going around The Wall.” That second comment came from a man about two rows farther back, and was said with such emphasis it was practically a shout. It was quickly echoed by half a dozen others saying things like, “yes” and “agreed, the wall”.
“What wall are you talking about?” At this point I was completely lost.
“The wall. The mountains. Don’t you even know that?” The exasperation in his voice somewhat masked the insult, but not enough to keep me from getting a bit heated.
“Hey, it’s not our fault you can’t…” I caught myself before saying the obvious. But of course, being obvious, they didn’t need to hear me say it to imagine for themselves what I was thinking.
“Can’t what? What do you mean?” More “yes’s” and ‘what’s” from the other rows. The room was pretty angry and getting angrier. Time for me to calm things down. I took a breath or two, exhaled slowly, and waited.
“You have a paper due in two weeks. While it is supposed to be on U.S. history, this seems like a good topic to include as well. I suggest you focus on the French company that was building the canal. Histories have been written, and the university librarian should be able to help you find original documents – diaries of major players, stock performance as the company worked, loan documents, and such. If there is evidence of American interference, find it. Fair enough?” I looked around the room to see if anyone was finding this an attractive option. Many seemed to shut down the minute they heard the words “you have a paper due,” but there were a few emphatic heads nodding. They saw this as a challenge and they were going to run with it.
“And if we can prove there was American interference?” Row three again. He wanted to finish what he had started.”
“Then I will wear a Canadian hockey jersey to class for a week.” Exactly right answer. Score one for the visiting prof. The tension left the room – at least most of it – and we could go back to being a class.
Did that end the matter? No. I talked to Mr. Thirdrow after class and asked him if he would do a paper on the canal and he said he would. I did the professor thing and offered to help with his research if he liked, and he pretended to accept my offer, but I had the sense he saw me as a competitor and he was going to show me up on his own terms. Fair enough. I have seen good scholars start with a passion like that. Of course I have seen other people bend evidence to fit their passion, but time would tell about this guy.
And later I just “happened” to see the dean in the hallway who just happened to ask “How are classes going?” I have no idea how many students had gone running to him to complain about the French-hating American, but it was clear he had been roused from his office. I recounted the canal discussion as objectively as I could, watching to see his reaction. What I saw in the face was measured sympathy – everyone has an occ
asional rough day in the classroom – but there was also enough restraint in his expression to warn me there should not be a repeat any time soon. I was fine with that. A foreign professor on a short-term contract, I knew I was on thin ice from day one.
Back in my office I made a cup of coffee, stared out the window at a sea of orange, red, and brown oak trees, and asked a question that would occupy the rest of that year – what the hell was The Wall?