We sit at the kitchen table, Formica and stainless steel, eating lunch on a school day. I sit close to the table, so that the edge of it is pressed against my chest. Tomato soup, made with milk, and an egg salad sandwich. I am seven.
My brother, in grade six already, says, "Imagine the Queen taking a poo."
"Ricky!" says my mother. It is enough to say his name, in that tone of voice. I think what he has done wrong is to mention poo while people are eating.
"Imagine her, sitting on the toilet," says my brother, who knows he will not be punished for this. What he is saying is wrong, he knows, but not very wrong. "Imagine her, straining."
My mother is amused, but does not want to show it. "That's enough, Ricky!" she says.
"Imagine the Pope on the toilet," says my brother, "He's grunting. He's been eating too much cabbage."
Now my mother is really mad. She grabs his arm and shakes it. "Not another word!" she hisses. He looks surprised, then sullen, but says no more.
What my brother is trying to say is that the Queen and the Pope are really ordinary people, like us. But nobody spells this out for me. I learn that it is okay to poke fun at the Queen, perhaps because she is rich and surrounded by finery, at the expense of masses of regular people. But poking fun at the Pope is different. Don't do that .
I don't know yet that I live in Canada. My ideas of countries are vague. England is where the Queen lives. France is where French people live. Does that mean we live in France? There are lots of French kids on my street. Some of them call me "bloke," but I don't mind. I don't know what it means.
We plead with our father to get cable TV, so we can watch the American channels. I wonder what American means. My brother says it means the United States, as if that's somewhere else. I'm even more confused. I didn't know it was somewhere else. Well, I think, if I don't live where I thought I lived, where do I live?
I don't know yet that I live in Quebec. I just know that from the school yard at recess, we can see the army moving down adjacent Gouin Boulevard. Lots and lots of green trucks. It's cold. I zip up my jacket. It's October. I'm looking forward to Halloween. A kid runs up to me and says, "How many letters are there in the alphabet?"
"Wrong," he says, "Twenty-three. Because the FLQ are still missing." He laughs and runs away. I laugh too. I think, "Twenty-three. That's silly." As if something as fundamental as the alphabet could change .
I look at the line of green trucks. Why are they driving so slow? I think of war, which I associate with a chessboard. The trucks must be pawns, I think. That's why they're so slow. One square at a time, sometimes two. The army must drive special trucks, ones that cannot go in reverse. If the Queen were here, she'd be zooming fast, compared to those trucks. She'd be flying, forward, back, diagonally. And she'd be really tall.
Eventually, I get my geography straight. I live in Montreal, which is a city; in Quebec, which is a province; in Canada, which is a country.
In grade ten Canadian History class, the teacher asks what role the Queen plays in Canada. A student, more politically aware than me, raises his hand and says, "The Queen is a figurehead." The teacher is pleased. This is the right answer.
Figurehead is a new word for me. I stop listening to the lecture, to think about it. Of course, the Queen has a head. Every woman has a head. And every woman has a figure, too. I think of the Queen's figure, but can't imagine any details. She's too old to think of that way. But years ago, when she was a teenager, boys in grade ten Canadian History classes probably imagined the details of her figure with ease. They probably said things to each other like, "That Queen, man. What a fox!" But then I remember that expressions like "man" and "fox" did not exist yet, in those days.
I experiment with old-fashioned teenage expressions. "Jeepers! That Queen tickles my fancy. Gee willikers!"
I move to Ottawa for a year, and go to grade thirteen. I make friends with a classmate who sells buttons. I begin to sell buttons for him, at rock concerts.
The Queen comes to Canada, to sign the new Canadian Constitution. Watching the news, I learn that the Constitution is meaningless, because Quebec refuses to sign it. So, then, why all the hubbub, I wonder. But the Queen is here, and many Canadians will line the streets to see her. They will want buttons, I learn.
For two days, we pile into a car with huge bags full of buttons and drive back and forth across the city, to wherever the Queen is going to be. There are crowds of people in these places, lining the streets. We sell buttons to these people. We have a special button that was made to commemorate this event; the Constitution button. But we have other buttons with a Royalty motif, as well. The biggest sellers are Royal Wedding buttons, left over from the previous year. Little Canadian flag buttons are popular, too. Anything both political and optimistic.
The Queen drives past me in a car a few times, then one last time, slowly, in a horse-drawn carriage, right in front of the Parliament buildings. I look at her closely, then. I can afford to look, because while the Queen is in sight, nobody wants to buy buttons. They want to jump up and down, waving little Maple Leafs and Union Jacks, clapping and cheering as she moves slowly by. I snort. You would think she just won the Stanley Cup, or something.
I begin to see the people around me in a new light. They are not like me. They are not like Montrealers. These are Ontarians. These are Canadians. I realize for the first time that they are different.
After the Queen has disappeared into the Parliament buildings to wield a big feathery pen, the crowds surround me, seemingly in a mad frenzy to throw away their money by buying Queen buttons, Princess buttons, Wedding buttons, Royal buttons. One man, towing five small children behind him, buys five of each. I smile at him as he hands me over forty dollars. I think, "What is the matter with these people?"
I ask the same question, later, when talking to my button seller friend. I say, "You would think, from the way these people behave, that she was our Queen!"
He looks at me, suspiciously, then slowly says, "But...she is our Queen."
I am taken aback. I grope for something to say, that will not reveal my ignorance. I say, "I thought she was just a figurehead."
This is the right thing to say. "Yeah, that's true," he says, "but she's still our Queen."
I decide to do some research on the Queen. I go to the library and search through the biography section. I bring home some books and begin to read them. But they are too slow-moving, like army trucks, so I begin to leaf through them, reading a page here and a page there.
I see an old picture of the Queen and her husband in India. The Queen looks like a teenager and the husband looks like he does now. They are standing among a group of people, behind a dead tiger, which is said to have been shot between the eyes by the Queen's husband. I learn that this picture was on the front pages of many newspapers and caused an uproar among people who thought it was wrong to kill the tiger. I read that the Queen's husband later donated lots of money to help save the tiger from extinction.
In a different book, I read that the Queen's husband gives money to charities that help starving children. "I wonder if he shot one first," I think.