The world was fast moving on, and from these autumn skies Mathew and Cynthia saw the new information age staggering
Mercy Among the Children by David Adams Richards (2000)
the previous ages into submission. Once or twice in their lives people from Mathew’s background would have a moment where
they would prick the national consciousness; they would be interviewed and condescended to, with such gaiety of dismissal it wasn’t even registered by our more educated countrymen. Overall, men like Mathew were laughed at, ridiculed or feared most of their lives. If there was bigotry against First Nations* they were accused of it (even though he had worked with First Nations men and women far more than those professors or writers who would accuse him). If there was intolerance they were accused, even though he had worked on roads and shared his bread with black men from Africville. Chauvinism they were accused of, even though he thought of Cynthia as his superior. The world had gone on, and had been parcelled into manageable concerns; and this world left him and his sister out. Well, in some way it still allowed for his sister, for her gender demanded it. But he knew that now, at thirty-three
years of age, time was falling away from him.
People still could write like this in Canada 20 years ago and get all sorts of literary awards. Not surprisingly, there were no defecating drug fiends in the streets either and people weren’t ratting out their neighbors for imaginary transgressions. It wasn’t perfect but it wasn’t whatever there is now either.
* Canadians hilariously and ahistorically call their pre-Columbian tribes “First Nations”, even though the concept of “a nation” was as alien to the aborigines as a computer.
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