The Higher the Monkey Climbs Read online

  Clicking her tongue at these abuses of power, Inés nevertheless wanted to know more and I obliged, sensing her attraction to me growing with each story as I cashed in again and again on Gord’s legacy.

  We were married at city hall and Inés quit her job at The Belle’s Peel, disappointing some loyal regulars. My mother sent her regrets in a letter from the Turks and Caicos along with a gift certificate from The Bay. Settling into the townhouse (a good starter home, I told her, a prelude to a detached pile in the Annex or something in one of the more progressive areas of Rosedale), Inés was prepared to unpack her books, set up a library in the spare room, and get back to her writing when I announced that I had once again been passed over for partnership.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “I’m a shoo-in for next year.”

  But the elites of Latin America, euphoric with market-minded democracy, sent fewer of their sons and daughters to my office that year. Inés took the job reading to the blind, rationalizing for both our sakes that at least it was a good way to try out new material.

  We celebrated eight years of marriage last fall. Only the traditional night out had to be postponed for two weeks after ­neither of us remembered the date.

  7

  Back in Toronto, with Inés back on the job in Mississauga, Sagipa and I watched The National, passively absorbing stories of economic peril and gloomy times ahead. Sagipa asked me about Wanstead.

  “How’s the arsonist?” he asked, lighting a cigarette.

  “Possibly insane,” I said.

  “Are you still going to represent him?”

  “No. He doesn’t want me,” I said.

  “Is that what makes him insane?” he said.

  “He thinks my father was killed by his best friend.”

  “Who’s the arsonist’s best friend?” Sagipa asked.

  “Not killed by the arsonist’s best friend. By my father’s best friend. This guy named Al Forzante. Also my godfather.”

  “The union leader? He’s your godfather? Holy shit.”

  “Language, please. And please don’t repeat what I just said.”

  “I thought your father died in a car accident.”

  “He did,” I said. “End of story.”

  “So why does this arsonist think it was murder?”

  “Because he’s cracked. His name is Tony, by the way. He’s also my cousin.”

  “He’s cracked because he thinks your Allistair Forzante killed your father?”

  “The very idea is crazy,” I said.

  “So it’s a crazy idea.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Which doesn’t necessarily make your cousin crazy, does it?”

  The weather came on with predictions of rain. The whole damn country was being soaked. I announced that I had some files to read and said good night.

  With three pillows propped under my head, I stretched out on the bed, shut my eyes, and fell into a fantasy, a technique I used to help chase off stressful feelings. In my mind, I make a picture of myself floating freely in the middle of a lake. The water is dark and warm, the night air cool and my body is especially buoyant. Then I fill the lake with pretty mermaids who surface now and then to nibble gently at my balls. I find it helps me sort through complicated things.

  Here’s what I thought: I wanted no part of Tony’s quest for evidence to prove that Al Forzante had killed my father some twenty-five years ago. Maybe I was shirking my filial duties, suppressing the inner Dane or whatever but, like tearing down an old chemical factory, there were countless unknowable hazards lying in this soil, all of them just waiting to be stirred out of dormancy by Tony’s questions. Did I believe him? At that point, I did not. But neither—and this is important—did I want to.

  Because here’s the thing: I had always taken a great deal of my self-worth from being Gord McKitrick’s son. In my youth it was as though that simple, permanent fact was itself an accomplishment. I often think about the unworthy offspring of other notable figures—from the wayward Eaton boys to the blundering Edgar Bronfman, to Baby Doc Duvalier, who despite his inherited ruthlessness still couldn’t cut it as a third-world dictator—and felt a natural titch of sympathy, even as I joined the rest of the world in cheering their failures. Anyway, I was aware of the myth’s fragility and even if it wasn’t Tony’s intention to take that away from me (for he clearly shared in it, too), I didn’t want it disturbed.

  I was nearly asleep when Sagipa tapped on the door, telling me that my mother was calling. I swung my legs over the edge of the bed and assumed the erect posture of a job applicant.

  “It’s a bit unusual for you to be calling at this hour,” I said. “Things good?”

  “Well the Russians seem to have discovered the Caribbean now,” she said. “But the weather is perfect.”

  “And that’s the important thing, isn’t it?”

  “How’s work? Are you busy?”

  “Busy making money.”

  “And your wife?”

  “As lovely as the day I met her.”

  “And the boy?”

  “Smart as a whip. Popular at school. One of the cool kids.”

  “You must say hello for me.”

  For years now, since about 1984 in fact, this was the usual trajectory of our conversations. She’d ask questions and, without real answers, I’d return the least aggravating responses. She’d send along her best wishes to my family and then, after a little banter about the weather and how long the renovations to her house were taking or how, after twenty-five years living on the island, she’d yet to convince a single shop keeper to stock crunchy peanut butter, my mother would say I’d better not keep you and we would hang up, having learned nothing new about each other’s lives.

  But this time, she had another question.

  “Did I hear right that you’re acting for Tony Langlois?” Her voice was tight, almost threatening. That she knew about Tony threw me and I was too busy trying to figure out how she’d discovered the details of my professional life to muster anything more than a feeble, “Yes.”

  “Got himself in a fix, did he?” she said.

  “Did Tony call you?”

  “That Langlois boy would be lucky to know how to dial a phone.” She always referred to Tony as ‘that Langlois boy’, unwilling to concede any blood connection, especially now that one of the halves of that connection was dead and the other hadn’t been seen since before Tony was born.

  “How did you find out, Patty?”

  “Word gets around, Richard. It’s a small world.” Could she be talking to Louise? It seemed impossible.

  “Actually, he doesn’t need me to be his lawyer,” I said.

  My mother paused, suspending her voice and in that moment, her tone softened. “So you’re not going to represent him?”

  “Nope.”

  Her voice loosened. I heard an exhale. “Well, I’m glad to hear you’re not getting involved with that.”

  I felt a faint rattling in my belly. I had always resented my mother’s disapproval of Tony. Not so much in defence of Tony, but because of the offensiveness of her disapproval.

  “Why are you glad?”

  “Because, Richard, it’s for the best,” she said firmly. “Besides, it’s not really your field anyway.”

  “I was trying to do him a favour, Patty.”

  “Why? Why do you need to do him a favour? It never does any good to look to the past for solutions to today’s problems. Believe me. A few months in the islands and you learn that lesson fast. If Tony hasn’t figured that out by now, there’s nothing you can do about it. Cousins are one thing, but I never did understand why you were ever friends with him.”

  “I know you didn’t.”

  “And don’t call me ‘Patty’,” she said. “I guess you won’t be going back to Wanstead any time soon, then.”
/>   “You never know. I like it down there,” I said.

  “You never did before.”

  “You get older. Your perspective changes.”

  “I’m old. My perspective hasn’t changed. It’s always been forward looking.”

  Then followed one of our long silences that is only broken when one of us initiates the sign off. In that time, I tried to wrangle the details, to put this information into some kind of order. All of it was strange: that she knew about my trip to Wanstead, that she seemed so relieved that I wasn’t representing Tony, and equally anxious about me ever going back. I sat for a while with my hand on the telephone and thought about calling Tony to see if he might be able to undo some of my confusion.

  But instead, I shook off the rest of my clothes, pulled back the duvet, tucked in, and turned out the light.

  8

  At this point, a few words about Allistair Forzante. Whatever else is said in these pages, it must be understood that Allistair Forzante was a great leader, certain to be remembered among the country’s pioneers of organized labour. The glories showered on him over the years, the honorary doctorates, the dedications in his name—hockey rinks, chairs in industrial studies, a long-popular dish at Ristorante Baldelli known as Pappardelle Forzantini—he had earned all of that. All of it. Yet, I should also report that Forzante was known to be sloppy. His early victories gave him a sense of infallibility and when he ignored his advisors and encountered disaster after following the path laid out by his own instincts, he blamed the advisors ­anyway, launching hot tirades that usually ended in someone getting fired.

  My father, on the other hand, preferred to think things through before he acted. Like Henry’s Cromwell, he weighed the pros and cons; the long-term consequences of every decision he made or advised on and his gentle suggestions on matters of public or government relations saved Forzante and the UCF from financial loss or public embarrassment on countless occasions.

  The Forzante-McKitrick partnership began in the summer of 1945, when Gord took a job on the line in Plant B at Krull Motors, the city’s biggest employer. With the war over, Clarence Krull had his factories producing cars again instead of tank engines and fighter plane wings. Eighteen years old, Gord had graduated high school in June and was headed for McGill that fall on a scholarship and looked at his Krull’s job as a way to make his meal money for the year ahead.

  He mastered the job quickly and by the middle of each eight-hour shift fell easily into day dreams of smoked meat sandwiches and Rocket Richard and was maybe imagining kicking back at a Lili St. Cyr show when Allistair Forzante hauled him from the line and pushed him into the crowd of other men marching from work station to work station, ripping tools from hands, toppling crates of parts, recruiting militants for what would become the Thirty-Three Week Krull Motors Strike of 1945.

  Commonly viewed as a harbinger of labour’s golden age, by the time I got to high school, the ’45 strike gobbled up a week’s worth of curriculum for every Grade 10 student in the Wanstead public system. I had special insights, of course, since stories from that struggle always formed part of my father’s deep catalogue of happy memories. A lot came out of it: union shop, time and a half for overtime, comprehensive benefits. But perhaps most lastingly, it sired the UCF and established Allistair Forzante as the driving force.

  Forzante was already known among the workers at Krulls. As a lieutenant with the Royal 34TH Infantry, a regiment comprised almost entirely of Wanstead recruits, he distinguished himself on World War II battlefields with mythological frequency. According to the local apocrypha, he had been everywhere, seen everything. His sweat watered the lilies of Palermo. His blood fertilized fields in Normandy. The newspapers got some of it right, but for those who weren’t there to witness him in action, the war vets in the plant filled in the details.

  “Al Forzante tried to warn them off Dieppe,” one said.

  “Yeah but his unit was one of only two that made it to the top. One of only two!”

  “Wasn’t that Sicily?”

  “Idiot. In Sicily he destroyed the last Gerry machine gun nest in Adrano. Three grenades! Biff! Bam! Boom!”

  “Some arm!”

  “That’s what the scout from the White Sox said.”

  “So why isn’t he in the majors then instead of installing bumpers with us?”

  “He turned them down.”

  “What?!”

  “Until Kenesaw Landis lifts his ban on Negro players, Al Forzante wants no part of the Major Leagues. Ask him yourself.”

  Later, after D-day, Forzante received orders to take the western most section of a strategic ridge. Crouching near Caen through a farmer’s field, where unharvested wheat grew over his head, Forzante led his men forward. But when a powerful gust momentarily flattened the stalks, their position was revealed and the Germans opened vicious fire.

  Regimental histories record the rest:

  Though harassed by panzers, mortars, and rifle fire from the enemy, Lieutenant Forzante continued to lead his men in the defense of their position, using his Bren gun to great effect. When the platoon encountered heavy fire from an enemy machine gun post, he dashed forward and silenced it with a single grenade. Although seriously wounded in the shoulder, bleeding, and in great pain, the Lieutenant organized his defenses. By his calm courage, gallant conduct, and total disregard for his own safety, Lt. Forzante fired his men with grimmest determination. His stand enabled the allied forces to achieve their objective, thereby hastening the end of the European war.

  His actions won him a DSO and the loyalty of the men whose lives he had protected. By no coincidence (shifts were traded, time cards punched) nearly everyone who joined him in the great strike of 1945 had soldiered under Forzante in the 34TH. Even out of the army, their hair grown longer, the slouches returned to their backs, these men remained devoted. In the first six weeks after VE day, he was best man at seven weddings, many held mid-week to accommodate his schedule.

  In those early days, Forzante worked hard for their continuing loyalty. He knew their wives’ first names, made sure his godchildren got gifts on birthdays, organized monthly reunions at the legion. The Norwegians got garden gnomes at Christmas. The Greeks received bottles of contraband ouzo on name days. At Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, Forzante made sure the priest knew whose father in Umbria had been diagnosed with TB and whose mother in Abruzzo was suffering from perisplenitis, all in plenty of time for the proper prayers to be composed.

  He was barely twenty-six. And now he was leading shouts of Strike! Strike! Strike!

  Hundreds of machines stopped, their dying chugs echoing against tall factory walls and a roof of corrugated iron. The men shouted defiance, yelling obscenities at frightened foremen and managers. The bosses were given five minutes to leave the ­factory.

  The following morning, the strikers peered through windows and saw their wives and children and parents gathered with other Krulls employees who had showed up dutifully for their shift and found the factory gates locked. Over the following week, the supportive crowd grew larger with workers from other factories, the unemployed, and the curious. A barbecue was brought in and the air turned sweet with smoke from charred burgers and sausages. A few members of Chaz Duchy’s Big Time Band led rounds of popular songs. Buoyed by the support, Allistair Forzante turned to the hopeful yet uncertain faces of his men and shouted, “We’ll show them who really runs this factory!”

  And yet, despite the euphoria, his mind was deeply troubled. He was familiar with the idea of the strike. One of the few workers with more than a Grade 8 education, he had read up on all the legendary leaders of Canadian labour: the printers Daniel O’Donoghue & John Armstrong; the nine-hour pioneers; Ginger Goodwin, who they shot down in ’17; the Wobbly Slim Evans, who organized the Ottawa trek back in ’35; and even J.L. Cohen, before the nasty business with his stenographer up in Kirkland Lake. Launching a wildcat strike was one th
ing, but beyond that, Forzante wasn’t sure how to see their demands met. He sent a note to Krull.

  “We want full recognition, union shop, an extra day vacation, improved health coverage, and six cents more an hour,” the note read.

  Before the day was out, Krull sent his reply: “Go to hell.”

  “I figured he would sit down with us once we took the factory,” he confided. “Now what do we do?”

  Clarence Krull confronted the Wanstead Chief of Police, demanding the strikers be removed. Forcibly, if necessary (or even if not). Fearing a bloodbath, the local chief denied Krull’s request. Krull ignored the obstacle. He called in favours at Queen’s Park and Ottawa, seeking an injunction and an order for the provincial police to take over where the locals had proved unwilling.

  Supporters relayed the news inside the factory. “Damn. Damn. Damn,” Forzante said to Gord. “They’ve got horses. They’ve got fire hoses. They’ll evict us. We’re fucked.”

  “Maybe not,” Gord said. “Maybe we’re not fucked at all.”

  Then, something remarkable happened. Following Gord’s advice, Forzante sent messages to the crowd, who huddled and then dispersed, confusing city police. Soon they were back, but this time driving their cars and joined by others. The first several drove onto the sidewalk, parking next to the factory’s chain link fence. Another and then another wave of cars followed and soon the perimeter was encircled with coupes, sedans, and delivery vans. The operation continued, the buzz spreading from house to house and throughout the city, garages and driveways emptied and soon, a second layer of cars was parked outside the first. They cleared away picnic tables and garbage bins to make room for the third ring, each driver directed by one of Forzante’s men on the outside. Word spread across the river and cars from union men came over the bridge and through the tunnel. Soon, they were parked four deep, bumper to bumper, a continuous barricade. Automotive chain mail surrounded the factory. It was an astonishing display of support, so many people with little to gain risking cars they might not yet have paid off to support the workers’ cause.