The Future, by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou

On a rainy and snowy March night I took part in CBC Reads, And So Does Lennoxville, a fundraiser for that town’s library. While my arguments in defence of this fine novel didn’t carry the night, The Future did go on to win the CBC’s top prize. Here’s why:

The Future is Catherine Leroux’s alternate history of Detroit, in which the city was never surrendered to the Americans, and my choice for the Canada Reads theme of the one novel that carries us forward.

I have to say right away that The Future is a beautiful, poetic translation. As both a writer and a translator, I am impressed by both Leroux’s skill at creating a dystopian future, and the deft hand of translator Susan Ouriou. Translation has its own particular challenges at the best of times, but Ouriou handles her task with grace.

In The Future, Fort Détroit is a French-speaking Canadian city, but still has many of the problems that we have seen plague real-life Detroit recent years: Pollution, poverty, the legacies of racism and colonialism. However, in this alternate future, Fort Detroit society has broken down even further: There’s little to be had in terms of police or fire protection, and city services like water and sewage regularly break down. People must rely on themselves and those close to them.

Yet destroyed buildings, such as the city’s leaning Tour de Lys, or even neighbourhood houses, slowly, mysteriously, regenerate themselves. There are magical elements, never clearly explained, that tap into the reader’s imagination. To me this is where the most profound aspects of storytelling take place, in a sense prying our minds open to the possibilities of the universe.

         Gloria comes to Fort Detroit following the murder of her estranged daughter Judith, and the disappearance of her granddaughters. She wants to find her grandchildren, and the truth of what happened to her daughter. Nearly destroyed by grief, she slowly builds bonds with neighbours, and begins to learn of the resilience that keeps them going, despite the harsh realities of their existence. They grow food in abandoned lots, gather necessities from the devastated environment around them. Comfort each other in times of loss.

         Gloria also discovers a group of the city’s children who live in the nearby Parc Rouge ravine. Runaways, or perhaps abandoned or orphaned by their parents, these kids have established their own society, complete with its own rules and hierarchies, all based on the greater common good. In short when these children are abandoned by society, they create a society of their own. Kind of like Lord of the Flies, but far more humane, compassionate. They may grumble about their leaders, but when push comes to shove, the common good wins out.

And this to me is what makes The Future such a compelling book to move us forward. At its core it is a book about community. Society may have collapsed, but community endures. Community can mean many things, from neighbours helping neighbours to children supporting each other when adults can’t, or won’t. Much like the buildings regenerating themselves, if a community breaks down, another form of bonding between people moves in to take its place. And in these varied forms of community, we see reflections of ourselves.

In this age of anxiety and insecurity, The Future is a reminder than in grim times we don’t have to go it alone. Indeed, those darkest of times are when we need to reach out. To build bonds, to serve others, and to receive support in return. Plain and simple, we are social creatures.

We don’t control much in this life. The one thing we all have a measure of control over is HOPE. Hope for a kinder future in which people help each other, despite the challenges. Hope for better times, even when the world around us seems hopeless. Indeed, the absence of hope, like the absence of community, invariably leads to the end of humanity.

Despite its dystopian backdrop, The Future is ultimately a hopeful work, providing readers with plenty to think about, and a vision for a way forward. It may seem like the end of society, but in that ending are numerous small beginnings. We are all more resilient than we can imagine and more resilient collectively than alone. The Future is a reminder of those simple facts.

Seneca Paige: Justice of the Peace, MLA, counterfeiting king

Dunham’s first cottage industry was a real money maker

People often speak dismissively of our history, no doubt fuelled by that teacher who recited names and dates, making sure to never stray too far from the established curriculum. History is something that happened elsewhere, written by and for kings, leaders and generals who dictated the terms of victory, or rarely, accepted defeat.

            But history is so much more than that. It is the lived experiences of people just like you and me, who worked hard, often died young and struggled, not merely to be successful, but just to survive. While I love history, I hold no illusions about “the good old days.” Like many of you, I’m alive because of medical science and modern prosperity. I’ve never had scurvy, tuberculosis, or faced the threat of starvation. It might not seem like it, but we live in the best time to be alive.

            As a storyteller though, I love history. I love imagining myself not in the shoes of Napoleon or Churchill, but in the well-worn leather boots of more regular folks. And if there’s one man I’d love to do an interview with, and who refutes the Townships myth of “nothing interesting ever happened here,” it would be Dunham’s counterfeiting king, Seneca Paige.

            Before we dive into Paige’s life, a quick bit of background: In the early days of the United States there wasn’t a single US currency. Instead, banks issued notes that served as legal tender. These notes varied greatly in style and substance, and early settlers with an artistic flair often set out to recreate them, trading them for legitimate cash, gold, or using them to buy supplies. Counterfeiting was illegal in the US, but north of the border, making fake US bank notes wasn’t against the law. Having come from the States, some of the new settlers seized upon an opportunity, and a border that was, for the most part, still an imaginary construct.

            Born in Hardwick, Massachusetts in 1788, Paige was a slippery critter from the get-go. He got busted in Jersey City in 1809 for passing a fake dollar bank note, but got out of that one. Then after being arrested for counterfeiting in Baltimore in 1812 he escaped custody. He got caught again in 1816 and managed an escape yet again. That’s when he moved to Cogniac Street in Dunham.

            Not much of a street, barely even a road, stretching from near Selby Lake to North Sutton, Cogniac Street, now known as Hudon Road, became the counterfeiting capital of North America in the early 1800’s. And it’s here that our intrepid Mr. Paige really came into his own.

            Paige built up a counterfeiting network of printers, engravers, couriers, and various folks all looking to cash in on counterfeit craze. Known officially as a wood merchant and building contractor, his main focus was making money. Lots of money.

The counterfeiter’s tool kit.

            But there were others on Cogniac Street that he had to deal with. Ebenezer Gleason was an illiterate but clever man with a gang of funny money makers of his own. In a region and time where survival was a daily concern for most, Gleason prospered. Seemingly he saw the benefit of working for Paige and his people, contenting himself to playing second fiddle.

            Not so for Turner Wing and his gang. In 1824 Wing led his gang of thugs, armed with pistols and swords, down the road to Paige’s lair. They hauled away about $4 000 in bank notes, copper plates, printing equipment and even a few of Paige’s crew, including his dear old dad, who ran the presses. Nobody messes with dad and gets away with it, so Paige and Gleason locked and loaded and paid the Wing crew a visit. By the time the dust settled all was returned, including dad, and Wing was allowed to continue his business, on a reduced scale.

            Where were the cops, you might ask. This being early days, there wasn’t much for law enforcement. There was pretty much just Ephraim Knight, Bailiff for the District of Bedford. Knight tried his best, getting little more than the occasional beating and regular torment from the counterfeiters, known far and wide by now as Cogniackers.

            By 1833 however, the tide began to turn, and the laws began to catch up. That summer an assortment of law enforcement types from both sides of the border surrounded and raided the Wing and Gleason compounds, hauling away large sums of legal and illegal tender, printing equipment and chemicals, and arresting thirteen people, including Ebenezer Gleason and four of his sons. Hauled to Montreal, they were all convicted, but only spent two years behind bars.

            Walking between the raindrops once again was Paige, who was never convicted of a crime north of the border. But what does a criminal do when the counterfeiting business goes into decline? For Seneca Paige, politics, of course. He was given a large tract of land by the Crown, served a stint as a Justice of the Peace, and then in 1851 he became the Member of the Legislative Assembly for Missisquoi in the Province of Canada. He even has his own National Assembly web page, which makes no mention of his checkered past.

            Today the Cogniac Street counterfeiters are all buried in one of the several cemeteries along Hudon Road. Ebenezer Gleason is in the Harvey Cemetery, Turner Wing in the tiny cemetery that bears the family name. Various others, little known or entirely forgotten, sprinkled amongst the more faithful in the Dunham East or Farnam’s Corner cemeteries.

            But not Seneca Paige. He died in 1856 at the age of 68. Finally safe to return to the US, he was buried in Bakersfield, in Franklin County, Vermont. His tombstone states: “His Loss will be felt by many; particularly by the poor. He was truly the poor man’s friend.”

My writing life

I’ve written quite a lot over the years. During my time at the Sherbrooke Record as a general assignment reporter I penned as many as 300 stories a year on everything from municipal council meetings to drug busts to cults waiting for the aliens to arrive to save us all. So I was a little taken aback recently when an old friend asked me what my writing practice was.

Really? What is my writing practice? Do I HAVE a writing practice?

Fact is, I don’t really have a set writing practice. Instead I’d say that the rest of my life, with a smattering of procrastination (okay, maybe more than a smattering) shapes the writing I do.

That procrastination thing is a killer. I love writing, but am also quick to do other things to avoid it. Why? Years of therapy have so far failed to yield any change on that front. But give me a deadline, and things start to happen. College and university? Deadlines. Newspapers, translation contracts and magazines? They all provide me with deadlines.

The existence of these deadlines has served me well. I’ve done some of my best writing when there are only minutes to go before my editor has my copy, or keels over from their latest heart attack. That’s when my energy finally comes into focus. That’s when the flow state happens.

So when it came to writing The Granby Liar, I had no deadline. None. Nada. No publisher and no idea how I would get it into print. As a result it took me a decade to get it done. When I gave my mom the manuscript my nephew said “Un-oh. A Crossfield actually finished something.” I guess I’m not the only one in my family who’s good at starting things, but not finishing them.

So when asked about my method for novel writing, I had to admit I didn’t really have one. I don’t have a specific period in the day exclusively for writing. I don’t set a daily word count for myself. My story planning is basically a few pages of notes: Turns of phrase, questions to be answered, maybe an idea for a plot twist or a new character. I don’t plot out the story line, plan chapters or try to bend the characters to my will.

Indeed, I enjoy letting the characters drive my general idea of the plot. Sometimes a minor character has enough lifeblood to become more important, sometimes more important characters whither on the vine.

Welcome to the pandemonium in my head. And out of it comes (hopefully), something I can be proud of. Always keeping in mind that just because one is creative doesn’t mean everything they create is art. Sometimes the art is in going back and tweaking things. Sometimes there is no art to be found, and my efforts end up in the waste bin.

Every writer has their way of doing things. Some plot out every section, every chapter, ahead of time. Others are more like me. Like life, it’s a matter of figuring out what works best, and what works best for me may be the exact wrong thing for you.

Writing, like life, is a DIY project. With practice I’ve gotten better at a few times, and everything takes longer than I’d expect. And while there are moments when I miss the adrenaline of a midnight deadline where the guys on the press are waiting for my copy, I’m happier to learn better time management and appreciate the writing I do.

I hope you’ll appreciate it too.

It’s the Townships. With all the grit you remember from the good old days

I have always been a storyteller. Came from a family of storytellers. Stories are what make us who we are.

And yet, when I looked to the world of stories and books, I rarely saw myself reflected in the stories of others. And when I looked back at what a lot of people think of as “the good old days,” I came to the realization that if I was going to tell stories from an era, I had to be true to that era.

The Eastern Townships of my youth, in the 1970’s and 1980’s, contained all of the bucolic beauty you might expect. But it was also a hardscrabble place, filled with political turmoil, racism, dirt and grit.

Welcome to Townships Noir

On this site you’ll see much more than just me trying to sell books. News, author stuff, local history and folklore, maybe even some fresh short fiction. I plan to be experimenting, so please come back often.

You never know what you’ll find.