power booths of the outer circle.
The reaction in the dining room was so fascinating, Grant discussed it the following Monday on his show, and issued what was probably English Canada’s first warning of what lay smouldering on the horizon. Most of the diners were Anglophone, the majority old Montreal money from upper Westmount, with a sparkling of the nouveau riche here and there, also English speaking. The waiters and bus boys were all working class French Canadians.
“What you have to remember,” Grant told his listeners, “is that for every English speaking Quebecker, there are about eight whose mother tongue is French.” And judging from what he had seen, there was absolutely no question of where French Canada stood concerning René Levesque and the Parti Quebecois!
The P.Q. victory at the polls less than a year later, which shocked most Canadians, and scared the hell out of English speaking residents of the province, came as no surprise to Grant. Unlike thousands of other Quebec Anglos who fled Quebec, frightened or frustrated, or both, the Henry’s decided to stay. At no time did they feel anything but total acceptance by their neighbours, the majority of whom were Francophone.
Grant was surprised to learn how much common experience he shared with the hard-working farmers who scraped a bare existence from the thin, mean soil of the Gatineau Hills. Growing up poor in Ontario in English he decided was pretty much like growing up poor in Quebec in French. One day, not long before his thirty-first birthday, he found himself rolling around in the dirt, flailing away at an Irish tough who’d been heckling a couple of the younger members of his Poisson Blanc softball team.
“Hey,” whined the tough, through bloodied lips, “you’re English, what in hell ya doin’ cuddlin’ wit da frogs?”
Grant belted him again, having learned very early in life that when something important had to be done he’d best get on with it himself.
But as the years progressed, Grant became more and more disenchanted with what he was seeing and hearing. The election of the Bloc Quebecois to official opposition status in the House of Commons several years ago disturbed him deeply but he had no intention of leaving. Quebec was his home.
The decision to stay became extremely difficult for him during the divorce two years ago. It was Lee, actually, who made up Grant’s mind for him. He was helping her feed her chickens one evening not long after the final split with Carol, when his daughter very solemnly announced that since they wouldn’t be able to live together as a family anymore, she had decided she wanted to live with him here in the “chateau”, where she could keep her friends and her chickens.
Afraid she might try legal action to remove Lee, Grant had not told Carol about the telephone threats which had begun about three months ago. Not until he found one of Lee’s chickens nailed to the garage door with a note scrawled in English saying, “fuck off Anglais,” had he even bothered to tell Jake.
“I have no idea who’s doing this,” he told a very concerned Jake, “but it’s really starting to worry me. These days you really don’t know what’s happening. From what I understand, half the Quebec police force has turned separatist and I don’t imagine they’re exactly too crazy about me, with what I’ve had to say about their speed traps for Anglos.”
Jake had made no bones about what he thought of it.
“Lay off the Quebec stuff for awhile,” he warned Grant. “Some of the kooks out there today will shoot you for a dollar, let alone an insult. And you’re right about the Quebec coppers. They hate your guts.”
But, with only the slightest twinge of worry, Grant continued with a series of broadcasts exposing discriminatory practices against the English-speaking minority in Quebec by government officials and the Quebec bureaucracy. Most of the recent information came from an anonymous source who obviously had access to government files. The material, which had begun arriving about six weeks before, was well researched and documented, always arriving by mail postmarked Quebec City. Thus far the information had been accurate.
Two days ago he had received a tape recording apparently from the same source. It was accompanied by a scrawled note that claimed it had been recorded during a meeting of the Quebec cabinet the previous day. If it was authentic, and Grant would soon know, the recording provided him with his best ammunition yet. It was a piece of dynamite, which, if made public, would cause tremendous embarrassment to the separatist government.
The voice was badly muffled, as though recorded from a distance, but someone, presumably a cabinet minister, could be heard quite clearly making outrageously racist statements about Anglophones, and in one case, native Indians.
Jake had warned him the recording could be dangerous stuff but Grant, accustomed to warnings and even death threats over the years, from various sources for various reasons, had only laughed and said, “Come on Jake, you’ve been watching too much Robocop. This is Canada! As soon as our technicians can identify the voice I’m going to broadcast the whole thing and for sure some Quebec cabinet minister is going to have more than just his feet in the fire.”
5:12 AM • DAY ONE
Grant watched in horror as Quebec’s most famous detective, rumpled from his two-hour drive from Montreal, carefully placed some of Lee’s beautiful golden hair in a plastic pouch, sealed it with a large piece of masking tape and handed it to his assistant.
Inspector Paul Boisvert, Chief of Detectives, Sûreté du Quebec, Montreal District, brushed the palms of both hands down the sides of his raincoat, as if to rid them of something distasteful, and said in impeccable English, “Monsieur Henri, there are some things here I am having extreme difficulty understanding.” He was staring thoughtfully at the plastic pouch holding Lee’s hair. “For example, how did that hair get into your car? Very strange wouldn’t you say?”
Grant jerked his head back in surprise at the tone and content of the inspector’s question.
“How the hell should I know how it got into my car?” he bristled. “What do you mean, strange? Presumably someone was hiding in the dark near the entrance to the laneway, probably the same person Jake fired at. When I ran to the house...” He stopped, and peered intently at the odd looking detective. “Wait just a minute here. What do you mean something strange? What are you suggesting? That I somehow know how her hair got into my car?” His voice rising: “Or that I put it there? Is that it? Are you seriously suggesting that I’m involved?” Almost shouting, “Are you crazy?”
Boisvert stared at him for a moment through narrowed eyes, then snorted in derision, “Well we shall soon see won’t we? You and I, sir,” he said, jabbing a finger almost in Grant’s face, “have a great deal to talk about when I’m finished examining your house. Stay out of our way now but don’t leave the premises.” He made no attempt to conceal his hostility.
Under normal circumstances Grant would have silently seethed. You either learned to handle public insults when you were in the talk show business or ended up on assault charges every other week. But this morning, disoriented from shock and lack of sleep, already enraged at what he believed to be inaction and incompetence, he exploded from his chair.
“You Goddamn son of a bitch,” he screamed, “Get off my property. It’s bastards like you who cause all the trouble!” The little detective whirled about and clenching his fists, took a step towards Grant. Then, with a glare of pure malevolence, he jammed his hands into his coat pockets and with a curt nod to his assistant, turned and walked towards the house.
Grant was about to charge after him when Jake grabbed him roughly by the shoulders. “Don’t even think about tangling with that mother,” said Jake. “Get it under control man, under control.”
* * *
Paul Boisvert had learned his hatred of English-speaking Canadians early and well. Growing up in north end Montreal’s St. Leonard district was, for most, a desperate struggle. The streets, playgrounds and schoolyards were battlegrounds, with English and Italian speaking children, boys and girls, pitted against their French Canadian counterparts. No one was ever