Some Great Thing (23 page)

The New York Times
story revealed that in the socialist province of Manitoba, Canada, a welfare recipient named Jake Corbett, who had several long-standing disputes with the social assistance authorities, had won an administrative battle: he had persuaded the authorities to give him a $2000 “medical vacation fund” so that he could leave town on a holiday.

Don Betts went crazy when he saw the story. So did Edward Slade. Betts and Slade happened to read the story on
the wire services in their computer terminals at exactly the same time of day. Both screamed the same thing: “Why don’t we have this?”

Mahatma, sensing that he was going to be scooped by
The New York Times
, had been watching the wires more closely than Betts. He saw the story fifteen minutes before Betts, and mumbled to the man, who wasn’t doing much of anything, “I think I’ll go dig up a story.”

“Yeah? Like what?”

“I don’t know. Nothing much stirring here. Maybe I’ll go see what Jake Corbett is up to these days.”

“I don’t want to see one more printed word about that twerp unless the story is rock solid,” Betts said. “Corbett’s been getting too much ink. He doesn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground but you know something? He’s manipulating us! Not one more word, you got that?”

“Yup.”

Mahatma hailed a taxi. He implored the driver to get to the Accidental Dog and Grill as fast as possible. “Wait here,” Mahatma said. He raced in, ran upstairs and banged on Corbett’s door.

“Jake! We’ve gotta talk. Got your documents about the medical vacation fund handy?”

“Yeah,” he said proudly, “right here in my briefcase.”

“Good. Let’s go. We have to talk.”

“I was resting my leg. It’s killing me.”

“I’ll take you to my place. You can rest there.”

Corbett asked suspiciously, “You got any flapjacks?”

“Sure. I’ll make you some.”

“Do you make ’em as good as Harry?”

Working from the phone at his home, and supplying Corbett with food, Mahatma first matched Christine Bennie’s story. That was easy—Jake’s briefcase contained documentation for the entire “medical vacation fund” story. Corbett had three doctors’ letters saying he had a medical need for rest. He had a supporting letter from a University of Manitoba social work professor saying that welfare people needed holidays too. He had a letter from the welfare office confirming that he would receive $2000 in holiday money. Mahatma called the welfare office and got someone to say that the authorities would pay for a vacation if it were medically necessary.

Mahatma also got comments from Corbett’s lawyer. But then the lawyer dropped the bomb. “That isn’t the biggest story,” she said.

“No? What
is
?”

“The Federal Court of Canada has agreed to hear our argument that the federal government should stop subsidizing Manitoba’s welfare costs until the province stops its overpayment deductions.”

“You’re talking about cutting off millions of dollars of federal aid to Manitoba!” Mahatma said.

“That’s right. The decision came down today.”

“Could you send me the decision by courier?”

The Winnipeg Star
, three local radio stations and two TV networks ran Corbett’s medical vacation story. They lifted the information from
The New York Times
.
The Herald
not only
improved upon that story, but turned out a new scoop on Corbett’s court case. Both stories hit page one. Christine Bennie was impressed. This Mahatma Grafton didn’t fool around.

Jake Corbett didn’t feel well at all. The busier he got, running around to all the radio stations that suddenly wanted to interview him, the more his legs hurt. Jake had hoped that
The Herald
’s two front-page stories on him would help him out. The story about the court case business was fine. But the other one brought him trouble. People started complaining about Jake’s vacation. It came up in Question Period in the Manitoba Legislature. “How come this guy on welfare gets a holiday paid by taxpayers?” The minister of social services stepped in and chucked Jake’s $2000 vacation out the window. Only Harry was sympathetic: “These folks jumping up and down about their taxes, how much they contributin’ to your holiday? About one cent, I bet. I ain’t adverse to donating one cent to the cause. A man needs a holiday. You got a doctor’s letter, don’t you?”

But something else came along. The New Zealand Anti-Poverty Organization wanted him to go over there. NZAPO would pay for him to come and speak.

“Guess what, Harry. I’m going to New Zealand.”

Harry Carson was stirring oil in a pan. A drop of water rolled off the spatula and splattered in the oil, spraying up onto his forearm. “Say again, Jake?”

“New Zealand. They’re gonna put me in an airplane, buy my ticket, everything. They want me to tell ’em about welfare in Canada.”

Harry said nothing. His back was turned. He made a sniffling noise, drawing sadness into his nostrils. Man was a tragic case. His lid had come unscrewed. Black people, he expected them to be in a bad way. When he saw a black person having a rough time, he thought, so what, you think I been laying on moss all my life? But it was
unnatural
for white people to be broken down. Jake didn’t deserve to suffer like that! Bad legs, no money, no job, no family. Only friends he had were newspaper reporters. Hunh! Harry could live as long as Methuselah, he could live to the day you could take a bath on the moon, and he still wouldn’t trust a reporter. A reporter had to write about things every day. Even on days when nothing happened. Any man who wrote about things whether they happened or not was a man Harry didn’t trust.

“Look!” Corbett was opening a newspaper. “They wrote me up on page twenty-three.
Winnipeg welfare recipient to speak in New Zealand
.”

Harry dropped his spatula. “Lemme see that.”

Harry missed the man. He missed giving him flapjacks for half price. Harry bought the paper every day. He saw articles out of Christchurch, Dunedin, Auckland…all these places he looked up in an atlas. Places in New Zealand. Articles from Reuter and Associated Press, saying Jake Corbett this and Jake Corbett that. Harry didn’t read the details. He just wanted to know how Jake was doing.

The League Against the French Takeover of Manitoba held sixteen public meetings in three months. It held meetings in churches, curling halls, gymnasia and finally in the Winnipeg Convention Centre. It lobbied municipalities. It lobbied every opposition politician in the provincial Legislature and harassed every government member. And finally, it won a major battle. Over the objections of Mayor John Novak, it persuaded Winnipeg city councillors to vote in favour of holding a referendum on French language rights.

The Question: “The Governments of Manitoba and Canada wish to amend the Constitution to extend bilingualism in Manitoba. Do you prefer that the Governments abandon their plans and ask the Supreme Court of Canada to rule on this issue?”

Everybody in the province was talking about French language rights. Mahatma couldn’t handle more than a fraction of the stories;
The Herald
had five reporters covering the constitutional crisis.

LAFTOM demonstrators spilled five times into the marble halls of the Manitoba Legislature, the Manitoba provincial police chief had three constables demanding the right to work in French, English parents predicted that their children would be jobless, editorials all across Canada called Manitobans rednecks, Manitobans screamed back “we are not bigots!!!,” Ben Grafton proudly watched his son struggling to deliver straight information throughout the crisis, FAM president
Pierre Gratton moved his family into hiding after receiving death threats, LAFTOM members shouted down the premier of Manitoba at a public meeting, and, in the end, with the referendum two days away, federal and provincial officials decided to hold an urgent and secret meeting with Franco-Manitoban leaders. The meeting was to involve some of the highest elected officials in the country. The premier of Manitoba. The attorney general of Manitoba. The federal minister of justice. The federal secretary of state. Their top advisors. It was scheduled for an April afternoon at the Fort Garry Hotel.

Two dozen reporters, including Mahatma, waited outside the hotel to scrum the politicians after the meeting. But the media’s focus soon shifted to the large demonstration assembling outside the Fort Garry. The crowd chanted and hollered. The anger reached the politicians cloistered on the second floor of the hotel, who snuck out a back entrance after their meeting. Mahatma knew then that the provincial government would soon bow to English anger.

The referendum came two days later. Seventy-seven percent of Winnipeg voters opposed the plan to amend the constitution. They wanted the government to kill the accord and let the Supreme Court of Canada decide the matter. The provincial government dropped its French language plans. Mahatma considered the move disgraceful. He was struck by the intensity of his feeling. He wished there were someone to talk to. But Ben was at home, and the phone wouldn’t do. Helen Savoie was on holidays. Mahatma would have liked to have seen Chuck, but he was gone.

Everybody would be at the Legislature, battering the premier with questions and scrumming the opposition leader. All the reporters in the city would be over there. What was the point of joining that troupe? What could he possibly contribute that was unique? Mahatma drove a company car to St. Boniface. It was a warm spring day, with nudging sunlight bathing every tree and home in the city. As if his ears had just been unplugged, he noticed the steady whelps of birds in the trees. He saw four chipmunks race in a line across someone’s front lawn. He saw an old man hobbling into Chez Luc, a barbershop with two chairs and one barber. Mahatma wandered in and asked the man, a short guy in his sixties, what he thought of the government’s decision.

“I knew they’d never give us anything,” he said. “All we want is to save our language, but everybody says we want to take over the province. We’re five percent of the population! Take over the province? Bah!”

Later, Mahatma found a few people sitting around the offices of
Le Miroir
. They surrounded Yoyo, who was splitting his listeners with laughter. “Cameroonians will never understand what happened today. If I tell them that thousands of people were demonstrating in the streets, they’ll say, ‘Why? For food? For work? For shelter?’ I’ll say, ‘No, because they didn’t want to hear French.’ ‘Canadians demonstrate because they don’t want to hear French?’ And I’ll have to tell them yes. ‘Do they have to listen to French?’ ‘No.’ ‘Is the air very cold in that part of Canada?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘Can very cold air hurt the brain?’”

Now that Jake was in New Zealand, Harry Carson looked for his name every day in the papers. Rooted it out with his brown index finger. My buddy, Harry would tell anybody who happened to be around. That’s my buddy Jake! He takes a stack of flapjacks here every day of the week. He’s travelling at this moment. Look—Christchurch! What do you make of that?

The day after the headlines about the government killing that French plan, Harry turned to page eleven and found a two-paragraph bullet:

Winnipeg Man Collapses in Auckland

AUCKLAND (AP)—A Winnipeg welfare recipient collapsed yesterday while making a speech to the Auckland Anti-Poverty Organization.

Jake Corbett, 46, touring New Zealand on the invitation of a coalition of anti-poverty groups, was summarizing a section of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms when he collapsed.

He is under observation at the Auckland Memorial Hospital.

There wasn’t much to write about. The provincial government had dropped the French language issue, deciding to let the Supreme Court of Canada rule on Franco-Manitoban constitutional rights. There weren’t any sensational crime stories to report, and had there been any, Mahatma wouldn’t have been involved. He was glad a new reporter was covering the beat. He didn’t want to return to it for any salary on any newspaper. The police never did find the arsonist who bombed the Francophone Association of Manitoba. Jake
Corbett returned to Winnipeg, having recovered from his collapse in New Zealand. Melvyn Hill, Mahatma learned from Ben, had received official notice that his work contract would not be extended past his sixty-fifth birthday.

In early April, Don Betts handed Mahatma a news release. “Find out about this. Sounds fishy.”

Mahatma studied the sheet.

The Hon. John Novak will hold a reception for Cameroonian journalist Hassane Moustafa Ali on May 2. Mr. Hassane has spent the last ten months working for
Le Miroir
and reporting to his own newspaper,
La Voix de Yaoundé
. He returns to Yaoundé on May 4.

Mayor Novak will present Mr. Hassane with a friendship plaque and, via Mr. Hassane, send a card of greetings and good wishes to the Mayor of Yaoundé, His Excellency Boubacar Fotso.

Mahatma had been so involved in his work that he had neglected to stay in touch with Yoyo. It must have been a lonely year in Canada for Yoyo.

Betts interrupted Mahatma’s thoughts. “What I want to know is, what kind of note is Novak sending this African mayor? Is he a communist? And another thing. What do our External Affairs officials think of our mayor contacting a mayor in Africa? Aren’t they pissed off that Novak is bypassing diplomatic channels?”

Mahatma wasn’t able to reach the mayor that day. He complained about the assignment that night to his father. But Ben perked up. “John Novak is writing to the mayor of Yaoundé?” he said. “Good! How many Canadian mayors show an interest in Africa? Stick with that story, son. Could be interesting.”

Mahatma reached Sandra Paquette the next day. She said the note was just a letter of greetings. An External Affairs official said Ottawa didn’t object to the mayor’s greeting Fotso. Mahatma presented this information to Betts.

Betts frowned. “Find out more about this African mayor.”

Sifting through
The Herald
library files, Mahatma learned that Boubacar Fotso had been appointed mayor of Yaoundé in 1982. That same year, various Reuter clippings quoted him as saying that if he had to choose between Ronald Reagan and Moammar Gadhafi for a world leader, he would pick Gadhafi, who opposed South African apartheid.