LITMIR.BIZ

      © Michael J. Goodspeed

      All rights reserved. Written permission of the publisher or a valid licence from Access Copyright is required to copy, store, transmit, or reproduce any part of this book.

      Blue Butterfly Book Publishing Inc.

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      Toronto, Ontario, Canada M8V 1G3

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      www.bluebutterflybooks.ca

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      PUBLISHING HISTORY

      Print edition, soft cover, 2010

      ISBN 978-1-926577-05-0

      Electronic edition, epub format, 2010

      ISBN 978-1-926577-37-1

      A CIP record for this title is available from Library and Archives Canada.

      Cover and title page design by Fox Meadow Creations

      Cover photo © Bigstock Photo / Erik de Graaf

      Title page photo © Bigstock Photo / Denise Ellison

      Blue Butterfly Books thanks book buyers for their support in the marketplace.

      To Simon, Samantha, Andrew, and Pamela:

      four people whose enthusiasm and daring

      have always been an inspiration

      1

      Pemmican Lake, Manitoba, October 1939

      THE FAIRCHILD FLOATPLANE skipped and bounced twice as it touched down on the northern lake. The engine roar intensified as the plane slowed, and the cloud of mist thrown up around the exposed cylinder heads bloomed into a circular rainbow. To Chief Superintendent Rory Ferrall, sitting in the passenger seat, the instant rainbow looked as if some clever engineer had designed the aircraft to have its own good-luck charm with each landing. With his one good eye, he stared out at the shoreline of granite, jack pine, and birch, wondering if he would ever be lucky enough to see these north woods again. He shifted restlessly in his seat after the long flight. His life had changed dramatically in the last few days. Just a week ago he had been in charge of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in northern Manitoba. Now he was flying out to say his farewells before being posted overseas. This was his last stop on that parting journey.

      Exactly a week ago he had received a brief and cryptic telegram from Ottawa advising him politely that “if he should choose to volunteer,” the RCMP would second him to the War Office in London for “unspecified duties.” Rory had a good idea what those duties would entail. He spoke fluent German and had served on clandestine operations within Germany during the Great War. With another war now declared, some desperate soul in an office had dug up his file and they wanted him back.

      As the Fairchild neared the dock, a small crowd of handsome, cheering, copper-faced Indian children ran down the hill. In the isolated northern Manitoba village of Pemmican Lake, the unannounced arrival of a floatplane was still such an infrequent occurrence that it created a stir in the community. The children waved and shouted greetings in Woodland Cree; and while the happy mob applauded their village’s latest arrival, a small boy in a red-chequered flannel shirt triumphantly seized the mooring line.

      Rory smiled at the children’s enthusiasm. There was something infectious about the way kids up here laughed and roared when a plane came in. There was a sense of genuine zest in their hilarity, and he loved it. But these days, laughter was something he had to work at. Ever since his wife had died four months ago, he found some days a struggle. On the good days, he thought he was getting over his loss. He had told himself that he was a fatalist, that he understood that life was inherently unfair. That kind of thinking got him through the Great War, and he supposed it helped make him a reasonably efficient policeman; but on the dark days, it wasn’t enough. He looked from the children on the dock down to the aircraft’s floor. He still wasn’t certain how he got himself through those dark times.

      As boisterous as this meeting with the native children was, it also left him with an uncomfortable twinge. The kids out there were like all the children who remained back in these isolated settlements: happy and energetic. The others, the majority of Indian children, those who had been sent to the residential schools, seemed perpetually dejected and tired, like transplanted flowers wilting in a neglected garden. Rory wrestled with the handle on the plane’s door. It seemed that all the new ideas after the Great War had proven to be catastrophic failures. Communism and fascism were the two colossal disasters. But even up here in the North, the great social engineering project to integrate native children wasn’t working the way it had been planned. He couldn’t put a finger on it. How else would you run schools for a population so sparsely distributed across tens of thousands of square miles of bush? Maybe it was the schools themselves, or maybe the way they ran the system. He wasn’t close enough to the project to know, but it was a problem begging for a solution. What was strikingly obvious to him was that the kids in this remote village were happy.

      Happiness is a strange thing. Rory had always believed you had to cultivate it yourself. He had come back from the war highly decorated, but missing an eye and three fingers on his left hand – and with more ugly memories than he cared to think about. Happily, life had gotten steadily better for him. He joined the Mounted Police, and years later married a wonderful Chinese woman from a small prairie town; and despite the protestations of his father at both of his choices, Rory had found married life and his career in the police force deeply satisfying. It was true,

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