Mary Lou Dickinson - I’le Dor

ILE DOR

ALSO BY MARY LOU DICKINSON

One Day It Happens

a novel by
Mary Lou Dickinson

INANNA Publications and Education Inc.
Toronto, Canada

Copyright 2010 Mary Lou Dickinson

Except for the use of short passages for review purposes, no part of this book may be reproduced, in part or in whole, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronically or mechanically, including photocopying, recording, or any information or storage retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of the Canada Council

for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

We are also grateful for the support received

from an Anonymous Fund at The Calgary Foundation.

Cover design: Val Fullard

Interior design: Luciana Ricciutelli

eBook Development: Wild Element www.WildElement.ca

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Dickinson, Mary Lou, 1937-

Ile dOr : a novel / by Mary Lou Dickinson.

(Inanna poetry and fiction series)

ISBN 978-1-926708-13-3

I. Title. II. Series: Inanna poetry and fiction series

PS8607.I346I54 2010 C813.6 C2010-902244-0

Printed and bound in Canada

Inanna Publications and Education Inc.

210 Founders College, York University

4700 Keele Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3

Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax: (416) 736-5765

Email:

In memory of Beryl and Geoff and a childhood on the frontier.

This is a work of fiction. My family and friends will nonetheless recognize from whence some rivers spring.

Je me souviens
Quebec automobile license plate

*

There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold

Robert W. Service

Prologue

T HE LAST GOLD rush in Canada occurred in the Abitibi region of Quebec. By the 1940s, there were rugged mining camps scattered through the area where prospectors had staked their claims. Flying overhead at night in a small bush plane, a pilot would see lights like diamonds sprinkled in the bush.

One of these villages was called Bourlamaque, after a general in Montcalms army. It was connected to a larger town, Ile dOr, which was the commercial centre. No markers told when you left one and entered the other, but the residents near the shaft in Bourlamaque were glad to live in the log cabins that were built for the miners with Anglo money.

In the 1980s, word was that the one operating mine left in town was soon to close, that the gold was too expensive to mine, that there wasnt enough of it any more. For a while, there was rumour of a buyer. The people of the town were worried. Some were anxious that dust and noise and the sight of an open pit would be too much for them. But there were even more who wanted the changes because of jobs the mine would continue to provide.

M ICHELLE DUFRESNE WAS standing near her fathers grave in the cemetery on the outskirts of Ile dOr when a man with a duffel bag slung over one shoulder walked between the tombstones toward her. She hadnt seen him in town before, so she was startled when he waved at her.

Hi, Michelle, he said.

It was then she noticed that his face was somewhat familiar, but she couldnt place it.

You dont know who I am, do you? Im Nick, he said. Nick Petranovich. Remember those dances at the Rialto when we were teenagers?

Her face went white. Nick Petranovich was older than she was and shed had a crush on him. It had surprised her when hed asked her to dance and talked to her as if she were his age. But she wouldnt have thought hed remember that. And she hadnt seen him since he went away to university in the 1950s. Shed heard hed become a doctor, had a family, divorced and shed read his obituary just over a year earlier.

But, but, she stammered.

Shed thought that he would have been in his late forties by the time of the untimely news. She didnt know if hed been in an accident of some kind or if hed had a heart attack. Or maybe it was cancer. The death notice didnt specify and among the charities named for donations, none were ones that suggested anything. She backed away slightly to look at him more closely.

The obituary in The Northern Miner , he said, brushing his hair back with his free hand. Yes, I can see you might be startled. He smiled.

I dont understand, she said.

Well, the newspaper got it wrong. Can you imagine how that felt? I had to write and tell them I wasnt dead.

Michelle kept staring at him as if unsure what to believe. He was blonde in his youth and now his hair was almost white, but still thick and unruly. There were lines around the edges of his eyes and mouth and his face was thinner than she remembered. The same dark eyes, always intense. It surprised her that after all these years he still wore the same style eyeglasses. The black frames that had made him look so studious in high school might be a slightly different shape now, but that was all.

Youre quite handsome for a dead man, she said finally, recalling a quirky rhythm to their youthful banter. How could that have happened anyway?

He laughed. Oh, you know, a lot of people left here to go to school or university or some job and never came back. Its easy enough for someone to wonder what a person they once knew is doing now and before you know it, a distorted story gets reported as factual. They hadnt checked it out.

Michelle nodded, noticing that he was studying her speculatively.

You look great, he said.

Her outfit was one she had bought in Montreal for a customer and then decided to keep for herself. A striped blue wool poncho over a vibrant purple pantsuit. She was aware the colours enhanced the dark hair that still fell to her shoulders, the green flecks in her wide, hazel eyes. Even with the poncho covering her long, slender waistline, she could see he noticed something about her appearance that perhaps surprised him. The memory of a teenager he once knew who was now a woman?

What are you doing here anyway? he asked. I thought you left just after high school. I didnt think people came back once they left.

There were reasons, she said, a frown crossing her face. I did come back and I live here now. Her hands trembled slightly as she realized she did not want to reveal too much to someone she hadnt seen in over thirty years. What about you?

Well, I didnt come for the hot springs, he grinned.

As if thered ever been a spa. You might come for the hunting and fishing, for the skiing or the curling, for the opportunity to go underground in one of the old mines that was no longer in operation. But hed managed to make her smile again.