Oliver's Twist (40 page)

Pierre Trudeau's style was to deny any fear, even if he felt it, and to accept any physical challenge. On one expedition our party included an Olympic-level paddler who decided to run a hazardous stretch of rapids solo. The rest of us opted to play safe and portage around it. The man accomplished the passage superbly but in the process unwittingly threw down a red flag to Trudeau, who was determined to make it a competition. Trudeau ran the rapid well, doing it backwards for a short stretch and sideways for another, yet emerging unscathed and confirmed in his ability to read the water well. But the risk was an unnecessary
one for him, which it was not for the much better canoeist who preceded him.

For someone with so much pride in his physical courage, growing weaker with age was a bitter pill. Trudeau's declining strength almost cost him his life during our final trip together in 1997 on the Petawawa River in Ontario. He was then seventy-seven and thinner than I had ever seen him. Though we did not know that he had been diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, the ravages were starting to show.

Halfway down the portage trail beside the Rollaway Rapids, a brass cross is embedded in a boulder. It is a memorial erected by the friends of political journalist Blair Fraser, who drowned there in 1968. Trudeau was one of those friends and whenever he passed the spot, he never failed to pause and gaze at it in silent reflection. This time Trudeau lingered a few moments longer than usual before shouldering his pack and continuing down the trail. We camped that night high on one of the bluffs immortalized on canvas by the Group of Seven. Through a break in the clouded sky, a beacon of moonlight poured down directly on our tent spot and made a shining ribbon of the river. “Nature's spotlight,” Trudeau called it.

The next day was a tiring one, running rapids and hiking across portages in the late summer heat. We were spent by the time we reached the last rapid of the day. Trudeau and his companion, the experienced canoe guide Wally Schaber, were in the lead. They were backpaddling, stern into shore, sneaking down the edge of a fast stream swollen by recent rains. Trudeau was in the bow, reaching far over the gunnel to draw the canoe out into the current to avoid a rock outcropping. As Trudeau pulled out, the boat was caught for a moment in suspension
between powerful cross-currents that he did not have the strength to counteract. The canoe flipped, sending Trudeau headfirst into the rapids.

Behind Trudeau, the rest of us jumped out onto the rocky shoreline, hoping to get a hand on his stern rope, which was afloat on the water. Fortunately Schaber was physically strong, as well as one of the most skillful men in the country in a canoe or kayak. He tossed the canoe aside with one hand and grabbed the back of Trudeau's life jacket with the other. I held on to Schaber to prevent him from being swept downstream with his bowman, who had by now slipped under the waves. With Schaber pulling Trudeau toward him, all made it on to dry land.

Trudeau was quieter than usual around the supper fire, his dignity badly wounded. He had to face the inescapable fact of his own waning stamina, though he referred to it only obliquely. He mentioned that his closest friend, Gérard Pelletier, was dying. “Gérard is very frail,” he observed, “but then we are all getting there, I guess.”

In 1998, Trudeau suffered the death of his youngest son, Michel, a blow from which he never recovered. He told one friend simply, “I am destroyed,” and it did seem to some that he had lost the will to live. When he was urged to treat the prostate cancer he had been diagnosed with more aggressively, Trudeau dismissed the suggestion saying, “I don't care. I have to die of something.”

The next year Trudeau was hospitalized in Montreal. The family issued a statement saying he was suffering from pneumonia, leaving the impression that his condition was not too serious. In fact, Trudeau was deathly ill and spent several days drifting in and out of consciousness. In the same wing of
the hospital, one of his long-time friends woke up following cancer surgery to find Trudeau grasping his hand in support.

In August 2000, I was in Saskatoon covering Stockwell Day when I received a call from the Trudeau residence. I was informed that Trudeau was in grave condition. His sons and close friends had gathered, and the family intended to call in a priest. I put the phone down and burst into tears. Since I was told that the family would issue a news release, I went on CTV News Channel and made just one broadcast, which is all I had the composure to do. With as much dignity as I could muster, I reported that Pierre Trudeau was dying.

National Post
columnist Paul Wells wrote that Ottawa journalists took one look at my ashen countenance and headed for Montreal. There, a ring of television trucks and milling reporters surrounded the Trudeau home, giving the family no rest day or night. When some family members were disturbed by what seemed an insensitive death watch, I reminded them that the reporters were there because the country cared and they were its eyes and ears. Though the family knew the end was near, they issued a carefully worded statement that made it appear Pierre might have some time left yet to live. The reporters decamped and left Trudeau to die in peace. The end came at 2:40 in the afternoon of September 28.

In a telephone conversation some time before, Trudeau had urged me to come down to Montreal and have dinner. Although two people could hardly have been more dissimilar, we invariably enjoyed each other's company. But I was busy and postponed the dinner, believing there would always be time, since Trudeau seemed somehow immortal to me. When the seriousness of
his illness became apparent, I booked a meeting but, to my everlasting regret, I was too late.

Those of us who were Trudeau's canoe companions were deeply moved by the closing words of a tribute that appeared in
La Presse
: “He has gone to paddle the river Styx in search of his beloved son Michel.” I was honoured to receive an invitation to Trudeau's funeral service, but I had one last duty to perform on his behalf. Of a lifetime of television reports, the one of which I am proudest is the Trudeau funeral service in Montreal, which I covered with Lloyd Robertson and Trudeau's old friend Senator Michael Kirby. We wore red roses in our lapels, and only with great difficulty did we fight off tears to finish the broadcast.

In June 2001, Ted Johnson and I met at Peter Stollery's Senate office to nail down the final details of that summer's planned trip to the Horton River in the western Arctic. Most of the old gang had committed themselves to come, but more than a whiff of hesitation permeated our conversations. John Macfarlane caught the general mood. He was coming, he insisted, but only because everyone else was and he couldn't bear to be left behind. No one wanted to be the first to admit, or try to deny, that we were growing too old for these annual expeditions.

Almost all of us were now in our sixties, and spouses and friends were beginning to object. We had never had to think seriously about heart attacks or the consequences of a long swim down a frigid northern river. My eyesight was worrisome and Tim Kotcheff's hearing was no better, plus he was feeling the pangs of arthritis. Goldenberg had undergone three surgeries
on his leg following a serious break. Denis Harvey's knees were simply gone, and Allan Rock had fought prostate cancer the previous winter. Then too there was the issue of money for all of us who were no longer the free and easy bachelors we had been at the start. Fuel prices were sky-high. The flight to Inuvik and then private charter into the headwaters would make our children's private schools seem cheap.

The three of us looked at one another glumly. Our planning meeting turned into a disassembly session as we set about pulling down the arrangements we had made during the previous months. “Maybe next year,” we agreed, though it was not to be. The club's next trip to the Far North remains a dream.

In the meantime, I will hang on to memories of that bittersweet moment when passengers and gear have been unloaded and the Twin Otter barrels across the tundra and disappears over the horizon, the drone of its engines echoing back and around until it is gone and silence falls into the space left behind. Its departure always left me with feelings of keen loneliness and wonderful peace. There follow the sounds of a wilderness campsite, metal zippers announcing every coming and going, tent flies flapping in wind and rain, and mosquitoes assaulting the netting, crazed by the smell of blood. Nowhere else can I hear the hollow thud of muskox butting heads in the distance or the champagne-like pop of glacial ice in my rum daiquiri. I will remember falling asleep to the unremitting roar of rapids and waterfalls. Above all, I will try to retain the sound of the cut-loose laughter of my companions who, for this brief time, had not a care in the world beyond what faced them downriver.

Those who go to the wilderness to discover themselves or
God would do better to visit a therapist or a priest. I found no answers to the great perplexities of life in my years of wilderness adventuring, but rather the joy of personal achievement. I was reminded countless times of the power of the mind and will to overcome obstacles and that the darkest, most miserable times give way to bright days for those who persevere. Certainly too, there were life lessons.

In the voyage down the rivers and meandering tributaries of our lives, we cannot hope to change the end, yet we can control the journey.

Never speak of opposing or conquering or defeating a river. Think instead of seducing a river. You do not run a rapid; you negotiate it, just as life itself is a series of negotiations. Chart your own course and trust the compass, but heed the counsel of those who have done this trip before you.

Foolish bravado or rash decisions can end a trip too soon. If circumstances land you in a bad spot, you must try to think rationally and stay cool. Whenever possible, avoid confrontation with powerful natural forces that can undo you. Join the mainstream and shape its power to your own ends. Point the prow gently into the strong current. Edge it out by degrees, delicately absorbing the impact of the surge against the gunwale. Then, as far as you can, go cheerfully with the flow.

But don't commit yourself unequivocally to the direction of the current, for it may lead into a fool's bay or to disaster over a ledge. And, if your river courses down to the ocean, take the flood tide or else be left in the unhappy shallows of a backwater. Coming troubles always announce themselves noisily. Be prepared to slow your forward progress momentarily, to backpaddle, to ferry back and forth, dodging the silent
sweepers or deadly logjams that await the careless. Practise flexibility at all times, not rigidity.

Become part of the river; harness its force to control your speed and direction. In the worst of rapids, look sharp for openings to thread your fragile craft between granite and undertow and the large curling waves that can swamp you. Then, seeing the safe line, throw caution to the winds and dig hard for your objective. The calm, still pool on the other side will be your well-earned lasting reward.

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EYE
OF THE
BEHOLDER