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Authors: Michael E. Rose
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since he had been in that position. It was like the infrequent times when he and his first wife had taken a vacation together and he quite deliberately failed to bring along a camera or a notebook so that for a short time he could just look at things and not record or interpret them for anyone. Today he was also enjoying the feeling, less intense and slightly more difficult to identify, of simply having a woman beside him in his elegant old car. He drove slowly: motoring, basking in the proximity of this pensive, attractive being.
He took the long route out to Lachine. On the highway, the trip from the inner city to the old industrial suburb would have been no more than fifteen minutes. His route, through Westmount, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, and Montreal West would take almost twice that long. It took him past the corner where Stanislaw had gotten off the bus the day he died.
âMy uncle lived just up there,â Natalia said without apparent emotion, pointing up Claremont Street north of Sherbrooke. âJust off that street there.â
Delaney said nothing. He continued along Sherbrooke, making good progress with the clear roads and the light traffic. The route took him past Loyola College, but he didnât bother to point out to Natalia that this was where he had studied, where he had worked on the university newspaper, where he had been infected with the not-yet-fatal journalism virus two decades earlier.
When they pulled onto St. Joseph Boulevard in what was coming to be known as Old Lachine by the young professional couples now moving in to renovate the old Quebecois houses, they had still exchanged few words. Lachine was a place as full of memories for him as he ever wanted Montreal neighbourhoods to be. He had always considered it the no manâs land between the cityâs two solitudes of English and French, and of working class and bourgeoisie. In the west of Lachine, the streets were predominantly for the English-speaking and the middle class. Eastward toward the Montreal city centre they became much more heavily Frenchspeaking and blue collar. About midway through Lachine the two worlds met uneasily, as they always did in Montreal.
The place was as old as Montreal itself. French explorers had mistakenly thought when they sailed up the St. Lawrence River to the rapids that began here that they had reached China through the longsought Northwest Passage. They were wrong but made a settlement nonetheless â an outpost for the fur trade, and, later, when the English had con quered the French and taken the colony away from them, the beginnings of an industrial centre.
For Delaney, there was also family history. The Catholic Irish workers who had flocked to Quebec in the 1800s settled in large numbers around the Lachine Canal. His own Irish ancestors had not ever actually lived in Lachine; they had ended up in another workingmanâs suburb nearby called Point Saint-Charles. But he had heard the stories and knew the lore.
He knew, for example, as he and Natalia drove past the rough-hewn stonework of the canal, that English soldiers had fired on some of the Irish workmen who had built it so many years ago, when they rioted for better pay and rations. It had always annoyed him that most French Canadians insisted that English-speaking Montrealers were all descended from the wealthy English or Scot merchants who had dominated the cityâs finances until only a couple of decades ago. Delaney, when he bothered to express it, had taken pride in his Irish workingman ancestors, if only because he thought they absolved him of any blame in the bitter standoff between the French and the English that still existed in the city.
Lachine had also been where his ex-wife grew up. She, of course, was from the eastern side, the French side, and he had ventured into that zone to visit her parents first with a young manâs trepidation and then with a growing confidence. His French had been good, as was the case
He took the long route out to Lachine. On the highway, the trip from the inner city to the old industrial suburb would have been no more than fifteen minutes. His route, through Westmount, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce, and Montreal West would take almost twice that long. It took him past the corner where Stanislaw had gotten off the bus the day he died.
âMy uncle lived just up there,â Natalia said without apparent emotion, pointing up Claremont Street north of Sherbrooke. âJust off that street there.â
Delaney said nothing. He continued along Sherbrooke, making good progress with the clear roads and the light traffic. The route took him past Loyola College, but he didnât bother to point out to Natalia that this was where he had studied, where he had worked on the university newspaper, where he had been infected with the not-yet-fatal journalism virus two decades earlier.
When they pulled onto St. Joseph Boulevard in what was coming to be known as Old Lachine by the young professional couples now moving in to renovate the old Quebecois houses, they had still exchanged few words. Lachine was a place as full of memories for him as he ever wanted Montreal neighbourhoods to be. He had always considered it the no manâs land between the cityâs two solitudes of English and French, and of working class and bourgeoisie. In the west of Lachine, the streets were predominantly for the English-speaking and the middle class. Eastward toward the Montreal city centre they became much more heavily Frenchspeaking and blue collar. About midway through Lachine the two worlds met uneasily, as they always did in Montreal.
The place was as old as Montreal itself. French explorers had mistakenly thought when they sailed up the St. Lawrence River to the rapids that began here that they had reached China through the longsought Northwest Passage. They were wrong but made a settlement nonetheless â an outpost for the fur trade, and, later, when the English had con quered the French and taken the colony away from them, the beginnings of an industrial centre.
For Delaney, there was also family history. The Catholic Irish workers who had flocked to Quebec in the 1800s settled in large numbers around the Lachine Canal. His own Irish ancestors had not ever actually lived in Lachine; they had ended up in another workingmanâs suburb nearby called Point Saint-Charles. But he had heard the stories and knew the lore.
He knew, for example, as he and Natalia drove past the rough-hewn stonework of the canal, that English soldiers had fired on some of the Irish workmen who had built it so many years ago, when they rioted for better pay and rations. It had always annoyed him that most French Canadians insisted that English-speaking Montrealers were all descended from the wealthy English or Scot merchants who had dominated the cityâs finances until only a couple of decades ago. Delaney, when he bothered to express it, had taken pride in his Irish workingman ancestors, if only because he thought they absolved him of any blame in the bitter standoff between the French and the English that still existed in the city.
Lachine had also been where his ex-wife grew up. She, of course, was from the eastern side, the French side, and he had ventured into that zone to visit her parents first with a young manâs trepidation and then with a growing confidence. His French had been good, as was the case
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