standing on the sidewalk beckoning to men in uniform. Although raised in a residential school, Stella knew they were whores. A teacher at the school had once tried to humiliate her by calling her that when she asked for money after he had sex with her, but it hadn’t bothered her. One of the women saw her and came over.
“New in town?”
“Just arrived on a freight. Don’t know anyone down here.”
“What’s this about a freight? Did you really just arrive in town?” A pimp had been listening to the conversation, and over a coke and a hamburger he told Stella that he could help her make a lot of money.
“I’ll provide you with a room to do your work and spend your free time, and I’ll be around to protect you if the johns cause trouble. You’re young and the customers like that. But you’re an Indian and a lot of guys around here don’t like Indians. Just the same, the city’s been full of lonely soldiers since the start of the war and they’ll pay one dollar for every trick you turn. My cut is fifty cents. Interested?”
One September evening, fifteen months later, Stella was standing on the sidewalk on Jarvis Street outside the King’s Arms Hotel, which rented rooms by the hour to prostitutes to carry out their business. One of her friends, a big, raw-boned Ojibwa teenager from a reserve in northern Ontario, who had likewise drifted onto the streets after running away from her residential school, was with her. The two women were doing what they did every day at that time: trying to catch the eyes of potential customers cruising down the street in their cars. But it was hot and muggy and business was slow. A car stopped, and the driver leaned out the window and motioned to Stella to come over to him. But as Stella began to discuss prices, the other woman pushed her aside and took her place.
“Goddamn Indian bitch,” Stella hissed, grabbing her by the hair, dragging her away from the car and pushing her down on the pavement.
“Goddamn Indian whore,” the other girl replied, scratching Stella’s face and pulling her down on top of her and kneeing her in the groin.
“The cops!” someone yelled.
The john drove quickly away, the crowd dispersed, and the women ran up the steps into the hotel. Shortly afterward, Stella’s father, Jacob Musquedo, entered the hotel and spoke to the clerk behind the desk.
“I’ve been told Stella Musquedo lives here,” he said. “I need to talk to her.”
“You a cop?” the clerk asked. “I guess not,” he said, glancing at Jacob’s dark brown face and not waiting for an answer. “Wait right here and I’ll go get her. She just came in in a bit of a hurry.”
A few minutes later, a smiling Stella, her face swollen and scratched, came down the stairs.
“Looking for a good time, handsome?” she said, not recognizing her father. “I give special rates for Indians and extra special ones for old men like you.”
“Stella? Are you Stella Musquedo? Can we go up to your room? I’ve got something to say to you.”
2
Shortly after the start of the Great War in 1914, well before Jacob found his daughter working the streets of Toronto, a recruitment officer addressed a public meeting at the Chippewas of Rama Indian Reserve. “Our country is in peril,” he told the assembled people. “Tens of thousands of young Canadians have already fallen in battle in Europe fighting alongside their British cousins under the leadership of His Majesty King George V whose grandmother, Queen Victoria, was the beloved mother and protector of all the Indians of Canada. Men are needed to replace them as soon as possible, for the hour is late and the Hun is winning.”
With his unlined face and raven-black hair, Jacob looked decades younger than his actual age of fifty-one, and had no difficulty in persuading the recruitment officer to let him join up. In May of the following year, he received Stella’s letter pleading for him to let her go home for the summer, but set it aside after reading it, just as he had with the others she had sent him over the years. Ignoring his daughter’s correspondence, in his way of thinking, however, did not in any way mean that he was unmoved by her pleas for help. His overriding desire was to do what was in her best interest, and in his opinion she was better off staying at the residential school in the safe hands of its staff than spending the summer at the Indian Camp where she would probably start running around with the boys. And as for her complaints of mistreatment by her caregivers, he simply did not believe her. It would have been a waste of time to write to tell her what she already knew anyway.
Nevertheless, he began to worry about what might happen to his daughter if he were to be killed in action, finally deciding to marry her off as soon as she turned sixteen to a suitable Chippewa man who could take care of her if that should happen. All the eligible bachelors from the reserve, however, had joined up and were as much at risk of being killed as he was. After much reflection, he came to the conclusion that if his daughter were to marry someone who was killed in action, she would at least receive a pension. And so in the coming year, Jacob studied the young recruits from his reserve doing their basic training with him to find the best possible husband for his daughter. Eventually he settled on Amos Wolf, a hard-working young man of twenty whose elderly parents had passed away when he was still a teenager.
“I need someone to write to when I’m overseas,” Amos told Jacob, who cultivated him as a friend and mentor. “What if I get killed? Just look at the casualty figures. Who’ll remember me when I’m gone? I’ve no one left at home and I’d really like to have a family before I die, maybe a son to carry on my name.”
At first Jacob listened with fatherly indulgence as Amos spoke of his fears and hopes. He nodded his head sympathetically when Amos told him in the strictest confidence that although everyone thought he was outgoing and happy-go-lucky, he had always been shy around girls.
“I don’t know how to talk to them” he said. “They make me feel inadequate. I never get up the nerve to ask anybody out.”
Then one day in early June 1916, Jacob let slip that he had a daughter just a bit younger than Amos.
“Her name is Stella. After her mother died, I couldn’t take care of her and she’s been away for years at a good residential school learning to read and write and cook and sew and be a good wife for the right man. I’m going to get her at the end of the month and she’ll be home to stay after that. If you want, I could put in a word for you.”
Amos asked people on the reserve who had known Stella before she went away to residential school for their opinion.
“Haven’t heard of her for years,” was the general view. “Her mother was a strange, lost soul who died when her daughter was just a child. No idea what she’s like now, but if she takes after her father, she’s sure to be hard-working and reliable.”
Later that same month, about to be shipped out to Europe to join his regiment on the front lines, Jacob managed to get family leave. He arrived at the residential school dressed in his military uniform to bring his daughter home to meet Amos.
“She left last summer and didn’t come back,” the principal said when Jacob asked for her.
“What do you mean, ‘left and didn’t come back’?” asked Jacob. “Was she in some sort of trouble?”
“Well, you may not like what I’ve got to say,” the principal said. “She was a model student the first years she was here, but she never received mail from home and she spent her summers at the school rather than with her family. I am afraid she thought you had rejected her and she started to take her frustrations out on the other students and the staff. Matters came to a head last year when she was under the impression you were coming to bring her home for the summer. When you didn’t appear, she left the property without permission and we had to send the police to bring her back. She left again and we thought she had gone home. The police came later to say she had somehow entered someone’s home, trashed it, and attacked the owner. We never followed up, thinking it was for the best