The Grand Trunk Mens’ Book Club
It was a quiet night for the Grand Trunk Men’s Book Club. Only nine members gathered in the back room of the Grand Trunk bar on Queen St a location the group had selected after the nearby Walper House had renovated and closed its doors to our literary crowd. When the new improved Walper was open for business no one, in the group except maybe, Dave, liked any of the changes. It was modern. We liked old and traditional. It had chrome. We had no choice we moved into the very traditional, cramped and aged grand Trunk back room about five years ago and contently remained there ever since.
I had been a founding father, not quite like a Father of Confederation, but a distinct honour just the same. During the last ten years since I had left Saint Mary’s High School, retired and then signed various contracts in Kuwait, China and on a native reserve in Northern Canada, which oddly was the most foreign experience of them all, the club had grown and flourished then spread to several of the other Catholic schools in the District.
Of the last ten years of the club’s existence I missed most of the 100 books that had been studied, discussed voted on and analyzed. On this night we were on book #102, entitled Medicine Walk by Richard Wagamese a native Canadian author now deceased.
The discussion was on...
“I don’t know if this is a racist thing to say, but I just think if a White guy wrote that part he would probably be in a lot of shit. A native guy wrote it and its cool. You know the part where the White guy is the mentor to the native boy. With him it just seems to work some how and he gets away with it.”
“Other than you are a racist, I get your point, very touchy area.”
General laughter, but the the good natured talk goes on, members bait, prod and provoke, always in good fun.
“You know it was like this was a different guy, a different author who wrote this book compared to his last one...what was it called, Indian Horse. This one was sensitive, insightful, loved the characters. They were real, everything was believable. Indian Horse was wooden by comparison, lacked depth, don’t know what Clint Eastwood saw in it to make it into a movie.”
“Fucking good writing, is what. Stick to what you know. Great movie! Indian Horse was a 10 and you know it, anyway continue...dip-shit”
“Yeah, well the whole deal about the drinking. I’m from an Irish background and drinking has been in the family and I get the issues. The black demon. Its not just a native thing or curse or whatever you want to call it. They don’t have a monopoly on this but I can relate and that’s what makes this so real for me that whole Irish bullshit legacy.”
“I’m from a Catholic Irish background too. I get it.”
“I’m just glad he didn’t get into the whole residential school topic again as in the last book. It’s been done. I get it... like reading another holocaust novel. I’m at the saturation point with all of that stuff, not a stereo type exactly but you can only read so much on a topic and then you are at that point, of no return of been there done that and enough is enough. At least, you know, in Medicine Walk we avoid all that extra pain and there’s more of a spiritual component let’s say, a little more uplifting from his last book. If I had to read one more residential school story I think, well I wasn’t going to read the damn book.”
“Better than a graphic novel.”
“You ever read the books?”
“Can we talk about brewing beer now?”
“Marco, you know it’s just not always about you, let’s move on and vote.”
Terry our moderator for the evening has summarily and seemingly randomly changed a rule of order. We like tradition and usually go round table in a clockwise fashion in both discussion and voting protocol. Some nights if we feel wild and crazy we may go in a counter-clockwise direction.
I think in this way we make sure everyone gets a turn because as the evening progresses and members drink more not only does the animation and volume of discussion increase so does the satire, joking, fervolity, jives, verbal jousting and general kidding around. In such an environment it would be too easy to have someone fall off the bus so to speak and miss a turn.
This night Terry let us go with our comments in seemly random order. He encouraged chaos out of order. I formulated he was edging for a coup as he liked the power of moderator far too much. I first suspected Terry when he brought in his fancy technology. A speaker, in a red box, which attached to his Smart Phone and it wasn’t an Apple, another deviate behaviour. Of course there was Andy still with a flip phone and Marco carried, with pride, an old Blackberry. He said he still liked the BBM feature, or so he said.
Finally I had to ask, “Terry, what’s the fancy speaker system for?
“We have a special recording from our fearless leader, who couldn’t be here this evening because of a double booking error. He has his review of tonight’s book.”
‘Maybe we should just vote on his future membership, whether it’s in jeopardy or not. What he’s missed at least three meetings in the last ten years.”
Terry fixed the small speaker to the back of his cell and began playing the review from our absent moderator.
“This isn’t even Skype, how lame is that, no interaction.”
“Hey Andy, is that really you. Can you repeat that last part.”
The recording played on everyone insisting it was Skype and asking questions his recording couldn’t respond to.
“I liked the characterization and the unique plot line including especially the actually Medicine Walk and give this book a rating of 10.”
Several shouts from the chorus. “Andy you can’t rate it first, you blew protocol.”
Just then the young server, with the dragon tattoo, stepped into the room to take our beer orders and all discussion stopped...
