Young Hunting

Martin Hunter

Description

Taking inspiration from John Glassco s Memoirs of Montparnasse, Young Hunting is both a story of discovery and transformation. While Toronto changes around him, from a puritanical British colonial outpost to a mixing bowl filled with colourful cultural components, a young boy emerges from his middle class childhood to become a flamboyant adolescent a questioning adult who refuses to accept conventional wisdom. The Toronto of the 40s and 50s is often painted as the epitome of dull convention but this was clearly not Martin Hunter s experience. The child

Sujets

• Philosophie et théologie
• Memoir

Informations

• Publié par: Ecw Press
• Date de parution: 31 octobre 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781554905379
• Langue: English

Extrait

Young Hunting
A Memoir
Martin Hunter
ECW Press

Copyright © Martin Hunter, 2008
Published by ECW Press, 2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E 1E2
416.694.3348 / [e-mail]
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission of the copyright owners and ECW Press.
LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION
Hunter, Martin, 1933– Young hunting : a memoir / Martin Hunter. isbn 978-1-55022-852-6 1. Hunter, Martin, 1933–. 2. Dramatists, Canadian (English)—20th century—Biography. 3. Toronto (Ont.)—Biography. I. Title. PS8565.U58Z478 2008 C812'.54 C2008-902421-4
Editor for the press: Michael Holmes
Type: Stan Bevington
Cover design: Tania Craan
Printing: Coach House Press on bpNichol Lane, Toronto
This book is set in CartierBook
The publication of Young Hunting has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada, by the Ontario Arts Council, by the Government of Ontario through Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit, by the OMDC Book Fund, an initiative of the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and by the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).
PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA




PRINTED AND BOUND IN CANADA
Acknowledgements
This memoir, like so many others, is based on memories filtered through the imagination of a storyteller. If I have distorted facts, my defence is, in the words of Blanche Dubois, “I tell what ought to be true.”
This book is dedicated to the friends of my youth, some of them gone, but most of them alive and still kicking somewhat less vigorously against the pricks.
I am extremely grateful for the advice and encouragement I have received from early readers: Stan Bevington, Martin Boyne, Ramsay Derry, Dorothy Jane Needles, Susan Walker, and Jan Walter, and especially from my editor, Michael Holmes.


Must I ride to the East, must I ride to the West
Or anywhere under the sun
To get some good and clever doctor
For to cure this wounded man?
— “Young Hunting,” Appalachian Folk Ballad
The Boys in the Tower
It was a bright, sunny day in early September when, with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation, I made my way to Parliament Hill to begin my career as a boy diplomat. I had a vague idea that I might be able to make some small contribution toward a better world. At the same time I was very uncertain about my ability to measure up to the high standards of the elite world I was about to enter.
I was assigned a desk in the large, rather bleak room at the top of the tower of the East Block. It already had another occupant. Jim, a grinning blond guy with a California tan and an easygoing manner, greeted me with a sleepy smile and suggested we go for a coffee. It became clear as we talked that neither Jim nor I had much idea of what we were supposed to do, but we returned to our desks to find our in-baskets laden with files, dispatches, and clippings that had been delivered by Shirley, the fille d’office , a seventeen-year-old with straggly brown hair and no front teeth. She was the only one of the four women in the division’s typing pool who was prepared to climb the two flights of stairs to our attic office. Jim kidded her about her boyfriends. She blushed and beat a retreat but a few days later she admitted she had gone out once or twice with a guy she liked, but didn’t know if he’d ask her out again.
After a day or two I was summoned to the office of Arthur Menzies, the head of Far Eastern Division. He was a small slightly roly-poly figure with a rather stern demeanour. He informed me that I was in charge of the Southeast Asian desk and asked me to draft a report on the six countries that were apparently my territory: Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Myanmar, and the Philippines. I returned to my office and told Jim about my assignment.
“Hell, that’s not fair. I’ve only got two lousy countries, Laos and Cambodia.” At the time Canada was part of the International Joint Commission that had been set up to bring some political stability to the three countries of Indochina after the departure of the French. The other members of the commission were Poland and India.
“Okay, but Canada has missions in your two countries and no missions in my six.”
“So why should we care what’s going on in any of them?”
“That attitude isn’t going to advance your career in this department, my friend.”
“Yeah, well I’m not sure how much I care about that. Hey, I hear there are two women officers coming in next week. I can’t wait.”
“I don’t imagine they’ve been picked for their looks.”
“Hope springs eternal.”
I knew nothing about Southeast Asia. I got out all the files on my six countries, read them and made notes. All of them seemed to be rife with insurrections and revolts; most of them had many parties whose leaders had unpronounceable names and unfathomable political goals. Except for Thailand and Singapore, which seemed relatively peaceful and prosperous. I set out to make an orderly analysis of the situation in each country in prose that was clear and simple but at the same time as elegant as I could make it.
Jim meanwhile skimmed the masses of telegrams from his two missions, wrote a brief précis of the ones he considered of any importance, and spent the rest of his time reading Kerouac and Camus. Jim had done a graduate degree in California and had mentally aligned himself with the beatniks. Born too early to be a hippie, he was blazing the trail they would follow.
The women arrived and were a pleasant surprise. Lois was attractive in a gangly sort of way. Louise was a real beauty with a splendid swanlike neck, deep blue eyes fringed with dark lashes, her abundant dark hair swept up in a French roll. Though born in the Gaspé she spoke impeccable English as well as French. She wore suits that suggested the hand of a good English tailor, but her style evoked the ambiance of the rue du Faubourg St. Honoré rather than Regent Street. Jim immediately made a play for her; her eyes spoke of her amusement, but her manner was evasive.
As the girls in the steno pool would not come up to the tower office Jim and I had to go downstairs to dictate to them. Jim started to produce more memos so that he could pop into Louise’s office to make a few smart cracks. Occasionally she would agree to go the cafeteria for coffee with him but she usually sat with the francophones. Jim didn’t give up on her but his invitations to dinner were always politely refused. “It’s gonna take time, but she’s worth it. Hell, there’s no one else worth gunning for.”
I completed my six-part essay and took it down to the typing pool. Mrs. Boyd, the chief stenographer, eyed me gloomily.
“I wondered what you were doing up there. I might have known you were going to pull a stunt like this. You realize I’ve only got two girls working for me and one of them is having a nervous breakdown. She’s lucky to get in two days a week. She’d be fired if she wasn’t the under-secretary’s niece. I can’t do it all myself. He keeps me busy eight hours a day.”
She gestured with her head in the direction of Arthur Menzies’ office. “I’ll tell you what. I can do one of the six chapters. Which one is important? That is, assuming any of it’s important.”
“They’re all important.”
“Well, if you say so, Mr. Hunter. Okay. I’ll guarantee you one chapter a week. How’s that?”
“If that’s the best you can do.”
A week or so later Arthur Menzies met me in the hall. “How’s that essay coming along?”
“Mrs. Boyd has it. She’s working her way through it.”
“Ah, well, no hurry. If you’ve finished that, why not write a dispatch to our embassy in Bangkok.”
“We don’t have an embassy in Bangkok.”
“Of course not, but pretend we do.” His blue eyes twinkled and he was gone. I went to the cafeteria and joined Jim. “I’m beginning to wonder what I’m doing here.”
“You and me both. But the pay’s good and the work isn’t that hard. You want to come to Montreal this weekend?”
“I should stay here and read up some more on Indonesia.”
“Brown-nose.”
“Okay, what the hell, why not?”
I had learned that many of the senior officers came to work on Saturday morning. They dressed more informally and were more apt to be open to conversation with the juniors. And of course they noted which juniors showed up. I turned up perhaps two weekends a month and was soon on friendly terms with a number of my more seasoned colleagues.
As the weeks went by our group of new young officers began to have lectures from senior civil servants: Rasminsky from the Bank of Canada, Sharp from Trade and Commerce, and our own undersecretary Jules Leger. They were an impressive group. Their clothes bespoke an understated elegance but at the same time a slight shabbiness. Their diction was clear and distinct, often with a suggestion of an Oxford accent. They pronounced grandly on their various areas of expertise, choosing their words carefully and answering questions politely but with a slight air of amused condescension. They had, after all, seen so much more than we young sprats, keen and even promising though we might be. I could understand why they were referred to as mandarins.
One day Shirley came with the mail and lingered a little longer than usual. She moved her hand about and I saw that on her finger was a ring with a tiny diamond.
“Shirley, you’re engaged. Congratulations.”
“Naah. With my face nobody’s never goin’ to give me no ring. So I saved up my money and bought myself one.” She started down the stairs.
“Poor kid,” said Jim. “She should have spent her money on some front teeth.”
But Shirley proved smarter than we. A few days later she came by and told us “Guess what? I really am engaged. Last night Dave said to