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Page 82 text:
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K55« »« Clarice Carstens. The Fishna Moffet. Gwen Humpty Dumpty sat on a couch — Barbara Masson ?—Richard Whitehouse. Do you feel fenced in?—Doug Halstead Dennis the Menace? — Bob Lymburner. , ! • i , ? 1 • 1 s 1 w £ 4-1 Jj| II 1 , I 7 1 1 ■ 1 if 1 i 11 i ; ■ 1 Vi J 4 ■ 15 1 1 f LI. Y m , y.j pSi I , I ■ ' •? ' ■».. ■ fU | H- ■ ■ . 1 JV-ftr-T « V
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Page 81 text:
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THE REBELLION LOSES BILL Children, I don ' t know a story, protested an aged man as his youngest grandchildren and a few great¬ grandchildren flocked around his chair. Way back when? . . . Whatever made you think of that? Well, I ' ll do the best I can. . . . Right from the beginning, our own daughter, Laura, (yes, that ' s your Aunt Laurie, Timothy), our daughter Laura was friendly with a boy named Charles Carter. When he joined the rebels in 1837, she was sure he knew what was right. He talked to her for hours about the poor way Britain governed us, and she tried to tell us some of the same nonsense. The idea that a man appointed by His Majesty the King of England couldn ' t do what was right for us! Laura was heartbroken over what happened in December. ' Of all the men around there fighting, it had to be Charles. Oh, why was it Charles? ' she kept saying. Even by Christmas she hadn’t properly re¬ covered from the shock of his death in the little rebellion. During the years until 1849, when that foolish bill came up, she never was the same. Every so often she ' d come up with a remark about how cruel the Family Compact was. Everything inside her exploded on April 25 in 1849. That was the day the Rebellion Losses Bill was signed by the lieutenant-governor. Lord Elgin. I remember that day so well. . . . I’m sure all the people in Montreal were gathered around the Assembly Building that morning. I could just barely see the governor ' s carriage over the heads of the people, as it threaded its way through the mob. I suddenly thought that here was the man who ' d bring about what Laura was still trying to convince us of. That bill, Jacques, the Rebellion Losses Bill, said the rebels should be pardoned and anyone who had suffered losses as a resut of the rebellion twelve years before should be repaid. I elbowed my way through the crowd, with Laura following after, and reached the place where the carriage would go. The man in the carriage—Lord Elgin, Thomas Douglas, the lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, the man who would change the lives of all of us — sat boldly beside his brother, staring out over the crowd. His eyes lit on people with clubs, rocks, and rotten eggs, and his mouth became more grimly set. Suddenly his carriage was pelted with flying objects. I seized a small tree branch and made ready to use it in the same way, but Laura wouldn ' t let me, and a fellow beside me tore it from my hands. When she caught a glimpse of the carriage, clearing a path through the masses of humanity, Laura screamed, ' How do you ever hope to pay back MY losses? Can you send Charles back to me? ' Then she seemed to realize what she ' d done, and buried her pretty face in her hands, sobbing fitfully. As Lord Elgin passed, the thought must have crossed her mind that perhaps he was the cause of her grief, for he muttered something in a sad and worried tone to his brother beside him, who shrugged and stared vacantly into space. The carriage moved slowly towards the Assembly buildings, and I followed as close behind as I could. Somehow in the crowd Laura was separated from me, and by the time I reached the destination of the carriage and the entire crowd, she was lost to my gaze, somewhere amongst twenty-five thousand people. I pushed my way through the surging multi¬ tude, and found a window. To my disappointment, it showed only an empty corridor. I heard a sudden shout from the crowd, and I was jostled so much that my pipe dropped from my mouth. Somehow it had remained lighted even though I had completely forgotten about it, and the glowing contents of its bowl started a small fire in the dried grass. I was so startled I didn ' t think of doing any¬ thing about it, but it didn ' t spread anyway, or rather at first it didn ' t. It seemed about to go out when the breeze whipped it into a blaze that began to lick the corner of the wooden building, and then devoured the corner and attacked the entire wall. By the time the alarm was given out, the damage was beyond repair. The only thing I ' m sorry about is that the bill signed by Lord Elgin was saved. Even in all the confusion they had the confounded presence of mind to protect it from the fire. It was late at night when I reached home. Laura still wasn ' t back then, but when I finally awoke in the morning, she was there. She didn ' t say anything, and I left her to her thoughts. Her mother didn ' t say anything either, until the afternoon, after Laura had wandered out to the country about a mile and a half away. She seemed very worried about what was happening to Laura. ' Don ' t you see, William, if she doesn ' t feel her ideas are respected, she ' ll be unhappy and unsure of herself maybe all her life. She can never get married if she keeps up like this. Please, William, let me talk to her, and you show her you can understand her too, even if you don ' t believe in all she says. ' Well, I agreed, and it truly was the best thing I ever did in my life. Carol and Raymond, your mother is a fine woman, and she ' s as happy as anyone. All this looked black when it happened, but looking back I can safely say that on the whole it could hardly have turned out better. Nobody cares what I think any more, and now we have a great country. You can be proud of your country, children — very proud. If everyone was like me, you ' d have nothing to be proud of. The man closed his eyes as his thoughts lingered over the memories his mind kept playing back over and over, like a broken record nobody listens to. The children were silent for a while, but soon the spell wore off, and the strange old man was left alone with his dreams. FRASER COLLISON Grade 8, Room 15 PAGE 79
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