My day had started as it always did at that time of the year. I loaded up the furnace with coal to last the day, shovelled out the driveway and path to the road, drove to Corinne’s to pick her up, navigated my way to school through a tunnel of ten-foot-high snow banks, parked my car as usual behind the school, and went in to attend classes. Everything went well until our three o’clock class on the history of New France. The teacher, Angus Fairbanks, came in and sat on the edge of his desk, smiling and swinging his leg as he always did when he thought he had something interesting to tell us.
“As you know,” he said, “I’ve always believed it important in the teaching of history, even at the high-school level, to use original sources to supplement textbooks. I have here in my hand,” he said, holding up a book of documents, “English translations of the Jesuit Relations, sent to the Paris headquarters of the Jesuits by their missionaries in the field. The one I’ll read from describes the martyrdom of St. Jean de Brébeuf and Gabriel Lalemant, tortured to death by the Iroquois during their attack on the Huron town of St. Ignace, a few miles from here, on March 16, 1649.”
After introductory remarks on the Jesuit attempts to convert the Indians, Fairbanks started to read. It was a subject we all knew. We’d studied it in elementary school and had been listening for years to our parents and grandparents talk about the seventeenth-century battles between the Hurons and the Iroquois in old Huronia, the homeland of the Hurons. We knew that the Iroquois, provided with weapons by Dutch traders, had fought a vicious war for the control of the fur trade against the Hurons, who were backed by the French. Without Fairbanks having to tell us, we knew that the Hurons had lost and fled to make new homes elsewhere. We knew several of the French priests had been killed and canonized as saints. We knew they’d been buried not far away, in Midland at a church called Martyr’s Shrine which brought a lot of tourist dollars into the region.
But the people around Penetang, at least the ones I knew, had always been uncomfortable with the subject. Terrible things had happened in those far-off days that weren’t fit to mention, certainly not around the dinner table. And nobody, especially the veterans, including my own dad and grandpapa, who had seen and maybe done awful things overseas, wanted to be reminded of the things people sometimes did to each other. And with so many Indians living in the reserves around Penetang, nobody wanted to embarrass them by bringing up past massacres by Indian warriors, even if those warriors were from different tribes and came from somewhere else. We had enough problems getting along with each other as it was. All of us wanted Fairbanks to stop reading and put away his book, but nobody dared interrupt him — he was, after all, the teacher, and teachers were more respected in those days.
And so we all sat there, not daring to look at anyone else as Fairbanks, a newcomer to the community, unaware of our local taboos and oblivious to the damage he could cause, carried on reading. And by the time he finished, my so-called extraordinary memory was a gift I regretted having. For the text I stored away against my will, and which would return periodically throughout my life to trouble me, began with a flourish and ended in horror. The following is an excerpt from what he read with the gruesome parts cut out to spare the feelings of the reader:
Father Jean de Brébeuf and Father Gabriel Lalemant had set to go to a small village, called St. Ignace, distant from our cabin by about a short quarter of a League, to instruct the savages and the new Christians of the village. It was on the 16th day of March in the morning, that we perceived a great fire at the place these two good Fathers had gone. This fire made us very uneasy; we did not know whether it was enemies or if the fire had caught in some of the huts of the village.
The Reverend Father Paul Ragueneau, our superior, immediately resolved to send someone to learn what might be the cause. But no sooner had we formed the design of going there to see, than we perceived several savages on the road, coming straight toward us. We all thought it was the Iroquois who were coming to attack us; but having considered them more closely, we perceived that they were Hurons who were fleeing from the fight, and who had escaped from the combat.
The savages told us the Iroquois came to the number of twelve hundred men, took their village and seized Father Brébeuf and his companion and set fire to all the huts. They proceeded to vent their rage on those two fathers, for they took them both and stripped them entirely naked and fastened each to a post. They tied both their hands together. They tore the nails from their fingers. They beat them with a shower of blows from cudgels, on the shoulders, the loins, the belly, and the face — there being no part of the body that did not endure this torment. Although Father Brébeuf was overwhelmed by the weight of these blows, he did not cease to encourage all the new Christians who were captives like himself to suffer as well, that they might die well, in order to go with him to Paradise.
Those butchers, seeing that the good Father began to grow weak, made him sit down on the ground, and one of them, taking a knife, cut off…. Another tore out…. Others came to drink his blood … saying that Father Brébeuf had been very courageous to endure so much pain as they had given him and that by drinking his blood, they would become courageous like him….
When Fairbanks described the torture and deaths of the priests, we all bowed our heads, not in prayer but in embarrassment, not wanting to look around and catch the eyes of our fellow students. About half the class were Métis and the others were mainly the sons and daughters of white British and French settler families, with three Indian girls, including Corinne, in the mix. I felt sorry for Corinne and the other girls from the reserve. Their ancestors had played no part in the events the teacher was describing but I was certain they were feeling humiliated and ashamed just for being Indian. I felt that way as well, even though I was only part Indian. Grandpapa had told me there were many Indians in my family tree, in addition to his grandmother, and it just made sense that one or more of those distant relations were alive in those days. For all I knew, they might well have participated in the massacre.
I stole a look at Fairbanks who remained perched on the edge of his desk, still swinging his leg nervously, his face flushed with excitement, a small smile on his face, and his eyes glued to the text he was reading. He’s enjoying doing this to the Indian and Métis kids, I thought. I glanced at one of my classmates who came from an old settler family — Hilda Greene it was. We’d been in the same class since Grade 1 and I’d never liked her. Her face was twisted into a humourless grin and the freckles on her face were glowing like Christmas tree lights. I imagined her worst stereotypical views of Indians and Métis were being confirmed. I wanted to stand up and tell Fairbanks to stop reading. “The material’s grotesque,” I wanted to shout. “You’re embarrassing everyone,” I wanted to scream … but I didn’t.
Fairbanks finally completed reading the worst parts and moved on to the peaceful finish — like a pianist playing a piece of classical music who ends a thunderous passage with calm reconciliation. But there was no feeling of understanding in the classroom, just a deep, uneasy silence. Nobody spoke, nobody looked up from their desks. I heard Fairbanks say, “Well, what do you think? That brought history alive didn’t it? If that doesn’t raise your awareness of the inhumanity of man to man, nothing will.” It was a truism that grated on my ears; he’d probably picked it up at university.
Still, nobody said anything. Finally I heard him call out my name. I don’t want to boast — that’s not my style — but I was the top student in history and could always be counted on to offer my opinion on any subject under discussion. “Luc,” he said, almost imploring me to break the sullen silence in the room, “what do you think? Help me get a discussion going.”
I said nothing, and then looked up to see the others looking at me, expecting me to take the lead. “What do you think?” Fairbanks asked. “A little hard to digest, but you must admit that really