#4 Marie

The chapters on the catholic nun, Marie Brunelle, were easy to write. I know the Eastern Townships of Quebec very well – in particular Lake Memphremagog, where I spent many summer holidays as a boy at a lodge – and growing up as a Catholic in Montreal where the Catholic nuns did charity work. More importantly, I was able to draw upon the wisdom of my deceased wife who grew up in a town much like Grayson, taught in a remote fly-in Ojibwa village, and was with me during the very difficult year and a half that I worked for Indian Affairs in the Nakina district. More than anyone, my then girlfriend, later wife, helped me to stand up to the agency and make the right decisions. As for Rager’s sexual abuse, I have two men who told me of being sexually abused as a youth and keeping their abuse secret for much of their lives – a reality which is often more common than people wish to acknowledge.

What follows are excerpt from Part 2, Chapter 4, where we introduce Marie and Part 3, Chapter 6 where the reader discovers Rager’s deep hidden secret.

(1)

Marie Brunelle was a small, sturdy woman with short blond hair and deep blue eyes who walked with her shoulders straight up and pushed back. She had grown up in Sherbrooke, Quebec; a young French-Canadian girl who often wore a blue kerchief over her blond hair as she ran out to greet people, “Bienvenue! Bienvenue!” People would yell back after her, “Marie! Marie!” Her name was full of joy and happiness, like the pure spring air or the bubbling brook near the shore of Lake Memphremagog, not far from Owl’s Head Mountain.

The presence of Marie Brunelle was no longer felt in Windsor House. How she gave of herself, listening to what people had to say and answering their deepest questions as best she could. No, it was never easy to hear the pain in someone’s voice as they begged for an answer, asking her what it all meant, and why me? After writing her letter to David Stewart, copied to Mr. Reed, Marie had had enough and left the village. It was harder to leave the Sisters of Charity; and hardest of all to tell Mother Superior that she no longer believed in the Catholic church, a church that had destroyed so many lives, she said. “The young priest in the residential school raped the children, Mother Superior, and he was not alone. How many lives were destroyed? How many others are being destroyed as we speak?”

“If what you say is true, Sister Marie, then they will answer to God.”

“What about here on Earth?”

“We are not the police.”

“Who are we?”

“We give comfort to the poor and those who are lost. We save souls. We give hope,” she answered.

“I need more than platitudes, Mother Superior.” And so, Marie left….

When Marie showed up at the women’s shelter in Toronto, she told them she wanted to help, and they hired her as a counsellor. For her, the church was gone. She would carve out a new path, and a new life, and she let her hair grow longer and longer until she felt free.

Much later, Rager decides to track down the nun who wrote the letter that set everything in motion. This leads Rager to the women’s shelter where he meets Marie, where they connect and discuss Windsor House and the role of Indian Affairs in destroying the village– and for the reader a new discovery that reveals Rager’s deep hidden secret.

They connected like two people who have waited forever to meet, as though the connection were meant to be. This strange man visiting a Toronto woman’s shelter in the cold, bleak days of February found himself wondering, “Why did I track her down? What reason have I to look up the woman who started all this? But I must. I must.” She listened and attempted to answer his questions because she had to, because she too felt that she must, and because she would. At one point, she said, “You play the eye game well, John.”

“What do you mean?

“You hide your thoughts behind your eyes, yet you’re always searching. ‘Should I trust her or him?’ You don’t trust people, do you, John?”

“Not really. I know I have a problem.”

“Why?”

He answered truthfully. “My childhood was difficult. My mother had boyfriends. They were not always nice…to either her or me.” He paused, not certain of what she would say.

“I see. So, you hide your thoughts, yet you pretend to care. Even when you do care – which I believe you do – you still fail to act. It is only our actions that define us, John, not our thoughts or words. You hide, John, you hide so well. It is no wonder that your wife and son left you. It’s a hard lesson to learn, but you must do better, much better. Stay strong, shoulders back, and don’t wince,” she said.

And he did.