Adult Non-Fiction - Second Place

The entrance gates of the stone fortress clanged shut. I was alone in a dark vestibule.
Without warning, the next set of doors swung open. Another dark room. This one was
massive. The ceiling was at least thirty feet high. Reddish-brown mahogany wood covered
the walls. Long, pitch-black tables were lined up in perfect rows. I counted ten of them. I
touched the surface of the first one. It felt cold and unfamiliar.

Obediently I followed a nameless nun up the double staircase. We walked along a
gloomy corridor. Old pinewood lockers minus their doors, lined one side. Musty-smelling
school uniforms and matching sensible shoes were squeezed inside. On the other side of the
hallway, were towering windows with thick black bars. The thunderstorm pounded against
the glass, matching the rhythm of my heartbeat.

The nun ushered me into a surprisingly bright room. Overhead fluorescent lights
illuminated twenty small cubicles. Ten on each side of a linoleum walkway. I peered inside
the one that would become mine. Four walls rose only six feet high. No window. A single
bed with a grey, wool blanket and a thin, stained pillow. I counted the furniture. One wooden
chair, one small braided rug for kneeling on the cold hardwood floor, one dresser with three
drawers. On top sat a pocket-sized crucifix, watching me.

Another nun led me to the washroom. I counted ten toilets, ten sinks, ten clawfoot
bathtubs. All stood behind eight-foot walls with keyholes large enough to see through. The
sharp smell of chlorine bleach burned my nose. Near the back of the room, was an unusual
sink with ten silver faucets. It reminded me of a cattle trough. Cold water only. This was
where I would wash my hair once a week. The fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed. They
never turned off.

During sleeping hours, a green nightlight glowed beside a burgundy chair near the
door to the room with our cubicles. An old nun called "The Watcher" sat there to ensure no
one left. This was my new home. I cried myself to sleep that first night and dreamed of my
real home.

Our big house sat at the end of a long driveway in the middle of a five-acre forest in
the small town of Haney. Fifty-five miles east of Vancouver. Green wooden sliding gates
protected our driveway. They squeaked and scraped the pavement when opened. It was a
sound that meant I was at home.

At the beginning of the driveway, on the right side, a tall oak tree stood guard. In
Spring, bright yellow daffodils bloomed beneath it. Further down the driveway was a lumpy,
weed-filled tennis court where I attempted badminton. On the left side of the driveway was
the South Alouette River. Parts of it were shallow. I could sit peacefully on the rocks to play
in the white foamy rapids. Other parts of the river were deep enough to swim in.

Until my parents sent me away, I lived a childhood without television, city sidewalks
or structured schoolyards. My four siblings and I played outside during all the seasons. We
explored the shores of the river. Built secret castles in the woods. Sang with red-breasted
robins. Picked blue Forget-Me-Nots. We befriended enormous banana slugs and small striped
chipmunks.

In the Summers, we dined on tiny grab-and-go red and orange fruit from hidden
huckleberry and salmonberry bushes. We followed well-worn paths around the trees where
grey-striped garter snakes lived under large green ferns. I tried to convince anyone who
would listen that miniature leprechauns lived beneath those ferns too. No one believed me except the chatty woodpeckers in the trees. Autumn and Winter were one season of rain and
fog. Only once in my childhood do I recall it snowing. It was rain, rain, rain in the
evergreens. It was the Lower Fraser Valley in the shadow of the Mount Garibaldi mountains.

Near the front door of our house, a pink rhododendron protected a stone wall that
glistened with bits of rose quartz and dark purple topaz. My father told me he hand-picked
these stones from the river. I secretly questioned this. I knew he hadn't built that wall or even
selected the stones.

When my father's mother visited, she told us stories with the same compelling
expressions and convincing tone my father used. Grandma explained that our great-greatgrandfather was the first Member of the Manitoba Parliament to speak English, French and
Cree. I sat wide-eyed as she described how authorities threw our Great Aunt Dollee in prison
for being too modern after she joined the Suffragettes in California. My eyes almost popped
out when Grandma told us that after her release, Aunt Dollee marched with over 2,000 other
women to picket the White House in Washington DC. Aunt Dollee did this every day from
1917 to 1919 to promote equality and the right for women to vote. Grandma said she was
very brave and fearless. I cringed when Grandma described how in 1800, attackers scalped
our Métis Princess ancestor and viciously ripped off her fingernails. Yet she survived by
playing dead. Grandma said she was very brave, unafraid and courageous. "Une femme
courageuse".

I knew my father spoke a different language than my siblings and mother. On the
phone he would say Papa and Mama. When he was mad, he would shout "Sacre Bleu" or "Tabanak". Why didn't he speak French to us? Why did he feel uncomfortable with it? He
seemed relaxed and joyful when he listened to his French records. Edith Piaf, Jacques Brel,
Maurice Chevalier. I could sing along with every song without understanding a single word.
The mystery haunted me. My father's library increased the secret.

French books I could not read filled the shelves in his den. Beside them were classics
by D.H. Lawrence and Gertrude Stein that I could, and did, read. His love of literature
revealed his enjoyment of eccentrics and misfits. Yet making friends with anyone who was
not Catholic was forbidden. My parents expected me to marry a rich Catholic man and to
have lots of babies. However, this future held no interest to me. I tried to provide hints by
singing the Carter Family's folksong "I Never Will Marry" and "The Big Rock Candy
Mountain" when I considered becoming a hobo. No one noticed.

Only one plan seemed promising. Running toward the Catholic Church to become a
nun. In the Convent, singing, reading, writing, and planting new roots far from mysteries and
secrets seemed very possible.

At the age of thirteen, one week before starting grade eight, my parents announced
they had enrolled me in a Boarding School. The Convent of the Sacred Heart, an all-girls
school in Vancouver. At first, this seemed like a practical escape from the dilemma of one
day marrying a man. The realization that this decision carried a steep price tag came later.
The quiet country world of cedar trees and songbirds was traded for a disciplined life of rules
and religion.

The rules demanded continuation of my music studies. I started harp lessons at age
eleven. My music teacher lived in Vancouver in the same neighbourhood as the Convent.
Every Tuesday afternoon, the nuns granted me a release for the music class. A bus ride led to
my teacher's home. One Tuesday, her husband drove me back. He stared up at the building.

Are those bars on the windows?
Yes.
It's like a prison! Let's get you out of this place.

That simple conversation changed everything. My parents and music teacher crafted a
new scheme. Instead of living at the Convent, the next year I would move in with my music
teacher and her husband as a live-in nanny for their five-year-old daughter. They were
classical musicians from New Orleans who had been recruited by the Vancouver Symphony
Orchestra. They spent most evenings at work. I would attend the Convent as a day student
and live with this musical family. No money was ever exchanged. Almost every evening I
looked after their daughter. All for the privilege of harp classes and living in the city with
minimal boundaries. The musicians allowed me to drink alcohol, smoke cigarettes and
marijuana joints and invite friends over. It was easy to sneak out late at night as long as I
returned the next morning for school.

At first, it felt like freedom. Then one evening, the musicians showed me where they
kept their guns. I had never seen a gun before. They revealed the hiding spot behind a locked
gated cupboard in the basement wall. I counted six revolvers. They showed me where they
stored the bullets. I counted six ammunition boxes. They smiled as they explained their
weapons.

We are Americans so we carry guns. Do you want to learn how to use them?
No.
OK. Just keep them a secret.

I knew then that I needed to plan another escape. It took me two more years to
negotiate a way out. By age sixteen, I could finally speak up and organize my exits.

My next few homes brought overflowing ashtrays, bottles of Crown Royal Whiskey
in purple velvet bags and a severely neglected education and career plan. There was no more
music in my life. Luckily, similar to my Métis Princess ancestor, I discovered a bravery to
survive that surprised my family and friends, and myself. For many years, at night, I still
cried. I still dreamed of cedar trees, leprechauns under green ferns and imaginary forest
castles.

Eventually, childhood became my private superpower.

It guided my journey through unfamiliar beds, accidental hitchhiking adventures and
away from dangerous strangers. The path never led to becoming a nun. Instead, it turned
toward my coming out as a lesbian who marched for gay liberation. I was in the crowd that
gathered outside of Casey House in Toronto when Princess Diana visited in 1991. I laid in the
street in front of the White House in Washington DC in 1993, demanding support for AIDS
research. In 1996, I was part of the celebration when sexual orientation was finally added to
the Canadian Human Rights Act. All important milestones for my chosen family.

In time, I understood that home was not a place with gates and driveways. Home is
what I carry inside me. It is the music of the South Alouette River. The whispering songs of
cedar trees in heavy rain. The courage of women who demanded equality and who played
dead to survive. I spent years searching for home. However, the real home, the one that
mattered, I carried with me all along. Those five acres of forest were not just my past. They
were my compass, pointing me toward who I would become.

It is more than fifty years later and I don't cry myself to sleep anymore. I am the
daughter of a French-speaking man with many mysteries and an English-speaking woman
with countless secrets, the great-niece of a daring suffragette and the descendant of a heroic
Metis survivor. I am the keeper of my own gates. I decide when they open and close.