A Fly on the Wall Delivers Again
The moment a country was lost before it started
The fly arrives the way it always does — opportunistically, through an open window, sideways, unannounced, and, let's be frank, knowingly unwelcome.
Its wings hum past the ears with the papery confidence of a creature that has outlived every editor ever to try and swat it (or any one of its innumerable directly related ancestors). The newsroom barely perks up. They know this fly. They know its pronouns are it, and it. They know it doesn’t waste wingbeats on trivialities. It's always here (and there) with a purpose to deliver an unvarnished truth of some objectionable sort.
It settles on the rim of the office codger’s chipped mug, preferring the familiar scent of old wool, newsroom coffee, and whatever the man has been marinating in since the Chrétien years. The office codger doesn’t acknowledge this fly, or any of the years of acquaintance prior to this moment. He talks about the Mandela Effect, but everybody knows it's THC.
This fly talks to the office codger because he's too lazy to swat it, so the relationship is simple, practical, and entirely unromantic. The circle of life nearing completion, newsroom edition.
(This fly clears its throat — or whatever you think the fly equivalent is — and speaks -- it's a monologue):
The Canada you’re looking at… it’s confusing to you. You want to know why it looks the way it does. All these divisions, I can tell you, have historic beginnings. (Editors freeze. The office codger exhales something ancient. This fly continues.) Because there was an urgent meeting in Montreal in 1875, where these men realized they were losing a country before it belongs to them, and they . . . were forced to act.
(This fly shifts position and twitches its wings, recalling how to tell this story passed down through family like a hereditary wind beneath its wings.)
Grandfly always said it's this particular smell that hits first. Not manure in the street. Not carloads of rotting buffalo hides in railyards. Not the dusty odor of horse hair on the leader’s coattails. "This fly, like all flies, knows the smell of fear is by far the most attractive smell," Grandfly says, "for some, sharp, metallic, distinct, like ink left too long on a hot stove. For us, nectar of the gods."
And Grandfly said that room on St. James Street was thick with fear. Terror in fact. They were afraid of losing the place before it exists. They were paralyzed watching the project disappear and to mitigate their fear they they needed to act. They needed a law, a particularly egregious law that required magic to pull it off. The most draconian rule in the history of earth would be delivered as a act of benevolence.
The buffalo were no more. Hides rotting in railcars across Upper and Lower Canada raised a pungent odor and the cries of a Rupert's Land clearance sale. Treaties were unsigned. Stubborn refusals were stalling the project. An election clock was ticking. And the glue that binds them to meeting this way, though they thoroughly and completely hate each other, was far from complete, or set.
Grandfly (actually great grandfly number -- AI doesn't count that high) told how watching these proto-lawyers was like licking wet paint because you thought it was dry but instead it would stick you and kill you. They were sighing, and pouting and arguing, and expressing multiple levels of annoyance, especially about "prairie savages," the, "damned ungovernable," then they would wind pocket watches, "Humming and hawing, occasionally referring to one or the other of their own particular crowd as, 'Savages,' and damnably ungovernable. Some lit pipes. Some smoked cigars. Everyone got absolutely smashed, Snockered is what they called it. Stonked, a few of them said. All sporting good fun. A couple of duels with pistols proposed. Nobody could hit the broad side of a barn, and more than a few tried.
Grandfly knew these lawyers, and there was a reason Grandfly was hanging around. Grandfly was a tippler. So naturally he gathered with the top legal minds on this occasion in Montreal, for it was surely a week of bacchanalia as their world was imploding, just as in the modern liberals swagger and booze it up while spending Other Peoples Money ("O.P.M. to a Liberal." Like it sounds.)
He called them, "Adam Smith'ers,” Grandfly said, “Marketing modern government packaged by laws. Enlightenment buried by what they sniggeringly referred ti as PRAGMATISM (a trigger word to this day). It was this the Builders of a Rational Order would base upon the law, pragmatism, as interpreted by one the the men they appointed, as a 'judge,' which is what they did, pragmatically loving the idea so much they took the name Liberal to themselves. Bold. New. Defined by living the term, a dogwhistling call to Adam Smithism. First order of business," said Grandfly, "of course, dealing with savages." So, a new branch of colonialism, this one bearing the whip of the law.
"The savages were not going partake of pragmatism. They were going to be," at which moment, said Grandfly, they did the Liberal thing and spoke over each other and blustered like no humans he ever saw, but Grandfly knew the swagger was fake. An odorous fake. “subject to pragmatism."
Grandfly said they began strutting the ballroom because they had renewed confidence, “They were strutting in complete agreement with Benjamin Franklin, “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
At this moment in this momentous hall with ancestor-fly on the wall, one of the junior men said something about arresting the savage resisters.
Laughter erupted and it was too loud, too sharp, too guilty, then died a gruesome death. And the leader, smelling of horse shit and certainty, leaned forward, and it was Alexander Mackenzie:
“We shall make this law a permanent law, and call it the Indian Act. More permanent than any people."
Not a suggestion. Not a debate. Strictly the most pragmatic solution for dealing with people who absolutely refuse to go along with anything you say. "We buy the whole country one Chief at a time."
The permanent kind of solution. "It will work. One chief, one and only one chief. That's the rule. One chief at a time."
Grandfly said, the hurrah that followed wasn’t exactly joyous. It sounded more like ravenous, like a murder of crows, said Grandfly. "Just like it sounds today when they gather and squawk like birds waving their elbows."
The newsroom sat dumfounded by the thick, post‑truth maxim only a fly on the wall witness can deliver. “Blueprints don’t lie,” it suggested, “People do.” This fly was finished, and lifted off — sideways, opportunistic, uninvited — slipped out the open window.
One editor exhaled. “We’re not touching that story with a 10‑foot pole.” Another nods. The office codger nods. Even the mug seems to go along with the decision by appearing dirtier for the experience. The office codger stands, brushing crumbs off his coat.
“Right, Grandpa? NOBODY.”
He grabs his computer bag and, cigar in hand, “Going for a smoke at the statue of Louis Riel,” and disappears. A younger editor blinks, “There is no statue of Louis Riel. Not around here.” Another checks his iphone. “It’s in Regina. We might not see him for a while.” "Good new is, the fly goes with him."
