Shooting the Bruce

By Clive Doucet

The Bosnian War was the biggest, dirtiest European War since 1945. Canadian ‘peacekeepers’ were caught in the middle of it. Captain Tom Travis comes home to Bruce County and the only thing he wants to do is shoot a camera. He settles in on Main Street to become a wildlife photographer in the heart of ‘huntin’ territory. ‘Shooting the Bruce’ is a story of redemption and reconciliation, tragedy and joy. It’s as Canadian as apple pie and ice cream. You’ll love it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Clive Doucet
• Release date: Mar 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9780991863822

Clive Doucet

Clive Doucet is a Canadian writer and politician. Doucet was born in 1946 in London, England. He was an Ottawa city councillor for 12 years. In 2010 to everyone’s surprise, Councillor Doucet won the City of Ottawa’s Consumers Choice Award for Man of the Year. To less astonishment, in 2004 he received the Canadian Eco-Councillor of the Year award. His book Urban Meltdown: Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual is used in universities across North America. ―Urban Meltdown was endorsed by former Toronto Mayor David Miller, the late Jane Jacobs, James Howard Kunstler and many others. Clive has written plays, novels, poetry and many commentary pieces for newspapers and magazines. Three of his most successful books are: “Notes from Exile” chosen by McClelland and Stewart as one of their 100 best books ever; “My Grandfather’s Cape Breton” is still in print, forty years after first publication and annoyingly remains his most popular book. “Urban Meltdown: Cities, Climate Change and Politics as Usual”, his last book was short listed for Shaughnessy-Cohen award for political writing. His first novel Disneyland Please was short listed by Books in Canada for best short novel. He’s looking forward to getting off the short list and onto the podium. In the meantime, in 2012, with four others, Clive paddled 1,800 kilometers in a voyageur canoe from Ottawa, Canada to Washington, D.C. (Other paddlers joined in as the trip progressed.) The purpose of the trip was take the message to both capitals that protecting rivers and waterways is a priority that should overcome the divisions of national boundaries and all politics. The paddlers were also advocating for a twinning of both countries ‘national’ rivers the Ottawa and the Potomac as way of celebrating and encouraging citizens to preserve and protect the health of these rivers. Clive is married to his first wife. They have two children and four grandchildren which they adore and spoil at every opportunity.

Book preview

SHOOTING THE BRUCE

by

Clive Doucet

SHOOTING THE BRUCE

Copyright 2013 Clive Doucet

Published by Muriel Street Publishing

Cover Design by JoJo Design

Formatted by IRONHORSE Formatting

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

Muriel Street Publishing, 38 Muriel Street, Ottawa, Canada, K1S 4E1

CliveDoucet.com

ISBN 978-0-9918638-0-8

Table of Contents

Preface

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Acknowledgements

About the Author

The Bosnian War was an international armed conflict that took place in Bosnia and Herzegovina between April 1992 and December 1995.

The war came about as a result of the breakup of Yugoslavia. Following the Slovenian and Croatian secessions from the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1991, the multi-ethnic Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which was inhabited by Muslim  Bosniaks (44 percent), Orthodox Serbs (31 percent) and Catholic Croats (17 percent), passed a referendum for independence on 29 February 1992.

This was rejected by the political representatives of the Bosnian Serbs, who had boycotted the referendum and established their own republic. Following the declaration of independence the Bosnian Serbs, supported by the Serbian government of Slobodan Milošević and the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA), mobilized their forces inside the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to secure Serbian territory and war soon broke out across the country, accompanied by genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Bosniak population, especially in Eastern Bosnia.

As of early 2008, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia had convicted 45 Serbs, 12 Croats and 4 Bosnians of war crimes in connection with the war in Bosnia. The most recent research places the number of people killed at around 100,000–110,000 and the number of people displaced at over 2.2 million, making it the most devastating conflict in Europe since the end of World War II.

from Wikipedia, August 4, 2012

Preface

Travis sat cross legged in his underwear on the floor in the empty room. It felt reassuringly familiar. In the army, you didn't like to get your clothes on until absolutely necessary, because clothes meant work. Better to hang out in your gotchies. There were no parades in underwear. Civilian life had no clear line between work and non-work. Dinah had clothes for every activity, leisure clothes for the house, gardening clothes for the garden, sport clothes for work-outs, office clothes for 9 to 5, evening dress for restaurants, casual clothes for meeting men, all of which she exchanged in the most casual manner.

Travis walked one more time through the empty house, his bare feet making a soft, pleasant padding sound as he went from room to room. Her last words to him had been charged with the emotion of separation and leaving her house. There was lots to get upset about and Dinah had focused on the house. But for Travis, it was the least of his worries. The house had never felt like his place. It had been filled with Dinah's many possessions, chairs from her parent's, paintings and books that she had collected, souvenirs from her travels. He always wondered how someone so young could have collected so much stuff. At 33, she was ready for a Rosedale mansion.

The empty rooms felt like every barracks that he had ever lived in. There was no clutter, no bother, just plain, clean floors and the expectation of life passing through. He'd gotten used to it; never realized it before but kind of liked it; beyond personal hygiene, barracks life asked little of its occupants.

He pulled the closet door open in their bedroom and began packing his two duffle bags. He did it with the practiced ease of 20 years of military life. 'Never take what they tell you, pack what you need'. He could hear himself preaching to his guys. Now, he had an audience of one. He smiled to himself. He didn't miss a stroke. At the end, the two bags would be tight as drums, impossible to damage and the clothes would roll out at his destination with scarcely a crease. He would have made a good gypsy.

Travis reached into the closet for a T shirt, jeans and a green crew neck sweater. These things seemed to have become his new uniform. They were comfortable enough, a civilian version of fatigues, but he pulled them on reluctantly, signifying that he would have to go out to face the world, to begin again. Before, his new beginnings whether in Africa or Bosnia hadn't really mattered because his country had been the army and that never changed. He had been Captain Tom Robert Travis, RCR, 0-26634. Now, he would have to do what civilians routinely did―he'd have to find his own home, make his own place. He looked down at his stomach which was hard and flat and thought about putting something in it and then dismissed the idea. A glass of water would do.

The doctors had warned him he would miss the army more than he realized. Somehow, he didn't think they had been clear enough on that point. His hand went absent mindedly to rub at the tension around his temples, then he picked up his duffle bags and walked towards the front door. He left without looking back.

Chapter 1

Life on earth depends on plants. We depend on them for the air we breathe, the food we eat and the medicines which cure our ills. Not even the little lady slipper orchid may be so dispensable as we think.

T.R.Travis

Travis circled the province like a migrating bird looking for a place to settle. His first choice had been Point Pelee. This was the greatest single migratory stop for birds in all of Canada; the first spit of land birds came to flying north across Lake Erie. Throughout the spring and then south each fall, birds arrived at Point Pelee in enormous flying wedges of hawks, ducks, geese and all manner of songbirds. In May, the sky over Point Pelee National Park feels as if the century had been ratcheted back to a time when the continent was flooded with oceans of life and humans were just one species among many.

Then homo sapiens start arriving in the parking lots at the edge of the park in four wheel drives, on two wheels, on foot. The marshes quickly become awash in these two legged creatures, Thousands of them were out with their binoculars, striding through the duck walks saying things like, my God Martha, there's another Peregrine falcon; Their rear lines were fortified by phalanxes of bed and breakfasts, tea rooms, and a genteel approach to holidaying with nature.

Nature had long been an industry at Point Pelee. Ducks had been immortalized in every pose possible, in photographs, etchings, carvings, paintings. A new photographer on the block would have been like a new duck carving in a shop window. Nor were local shutterbugs especially happy to see another competitor on the horizon. Point Pelee needed another photographer like a bucket needs a hole.

So Travis turned east along the southern edge of the province, following the lake shore back towards Toronto. Several times, he stopped and almost stayed. East of the big city Prince Edward County, tucked away on a peninsula jutting out into the Lake Ontario, tempted. It was warm and benign and quietly agricultural, apple trees in farm yards and tranquil little villages dotting the landscape. It was a place he could walk along country roads with his camera over his shoulder without being noticed. He circled more closely; maybe this was the place he should be setting down roots in his new life. But the more he circled, the more he heard the rumble of the freeway in the distance and click of the Toronto commuter train. Already there were 'For Sale' signs springing up on old farms with a banner, ‘perfect for a bed and breakfast'.

The rough diners with Formica tables were being replaced by restaurants with French names and wine lists. The cutting edge of the city discovering the country was in the air everywhere and Travis could feel his little income shrinking under an attack of gentrification. It felt like the kind of place where he would always be conscious that he had less money than his new neighbours who would change with the seasons.

He turned north, crossed the southern edge of Algonquin Park, coming out on the other side into the Upper Ottawa Valley. It was a country he knew well from his army days. Wild and rough and cold, with farms planted like tough lighthouses on the landscape, the towns huddled, the sweep of the country sheeting upwards towards the north. Spring had not yet quite arrived in the valley. You could still feel the steely freeze of winter in the breeze and see snow wrapped around the bases of trees. In the valley, winter hung on like a grim visitor who endures long after she has been asked to leave.

He dropped in on an old army friend. Doug Littlehammer had married a local girl when they had returned from Africa and left the army thereafter. The visit was a strange combination of old comradeship and familial confusion. Doug and his wife had three little ones. The house was alive with the presence of children, toys scattered about, clothes hanging from every doorknob. The youngest, still in diapers, was crawling after a kitten. The older ones were squabbling. Doug laughed and said his job was the same as it had been in the army, to prevent homicide and suicide. But his wife did not laugh and Travis caught the woman looking at him out of the corner of her eyes.

It would have been pleasant to think that she was thinking of him in a sexual way but he doubted it. He had lost the patina of the predatory male that sex required. It had something to do with the long months in the hospital. His sexual persona seemed to have drained out through his fingertips, leaving him with all the allure of a monk. It bothered him but he had come to accept that he could not do much about it. You either had it or you didn't, and right now he didn't.

It struck him that Doug and his wife must have heard about his troubles. Bad news travels fast. If he had been in the hospital for an arm which had been blown off, there would have been just a cursory look at the missing arm, some perfunctory expressions of sympathy and that would have been it. You got on with your life. But a mind thing was different. You couldn't measure it. Couldn't see it. What part of him had been broken? How did he explain waking up one morning and not recognizing his own face in the mirror? How did he explain it to himself? So the curious looks kept coming. He had the impression sometimes that people would relax if he would just start doing something obvious, like talking nonsense or drooling. Then, there would be a visible, understandable symptom but the more he looked normal, the more it seemed to bother people. What was really wrong with him?

On Saturday afternoon, they drove about the town with Doug pointing out familiar places. His wife was from a large family and the ambling drive had the feel of aunts and uncles at every corner house, with every laneway a memory. Doug's old personality seemed to have disappeared into a new one; one that Travis had a hard time coming to grips with. Much of his conversation was in the first person plural. We did this and we did that, only pronouncing on activities of the family group as if he could no longer talk in first person singular. Travis remembered his friend as a devil-may-care lieutenant with more nerve than brains. He could no longer imagine Dougie standing at a checkpoint with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth, facing down a crowd of trigger happy kids with automatic weapons. It was as if he had become a different person. Was this what marriage did to you? This soporific calm shot through every movement?

In the evening, they left the protective shield of the house and went to a tavern for a few beers, where protected by the noise of the tavern, the walls between them came down to garden height. Travis decided he might as well talk a little about Bosnia, the hitch that Doug had missed when he checked out for his girl friend in the Valley. He began easily enough. The thing of it was, Dougie, no one knew what the U.N. was supposed to be doing in Bosnia. Bosnia was a war, the real thing, with big weapons, trenches and two sides ready to send the other to hell and both thinking they were on God’s side. We were supposed to be ‘peacekeepers’, the way we were in Africa and Cyprus, but there was no peace to be kept. We were sitting in the middle of the frying pan wearing our little blue helmets looking stupider every time a bomb detonated, a sniper picked a civilian off or a battle engaged. It felt like the charge of the light brigade except we had no horses and no idea where we should die uselessly. In the end, we threw out the precious rules of engagement we were supposed to wear like a shirt because they didn’t work. The rules made us like the big, strong kid in the school yard that no one wanted to fight but you knew if you stepped off your big kid podium and chose a side, you were going to get hurt and hurt bad. So we did this kind of crazy dance. Sometimes, we fought. Sometimes, we didn’t. My principal talent was learning how to kill snipers.

You always could shoot, said Doug laconically.

Most of the time, we just leaned on our rifles and let them go at it. The shrink told me that’s what made men crazy in Bosnia. It wasn’t the fear of dying. It was the not knowing what you were supposed to do before you died. It made people crazy and I guess it did me.

There was a long silence while Doug regarded his beer and then he asked quietly, what do you mean crazy?

Travis shrugged. Running the same images over and over again in your head like an old newsreel that you can’t shut off. Seeing the same young woman die again and again. After a while, it starts to seem that the past is more vivid than the present. It’s as if you lose the capacity to see yourself in the present or the future, all you can see is the past and it starts to make you crazy because you can’t do a thing about it. But that doesn’t stop your head from going around and around like a little wheel as if you repeat each memory enough it will actually change, that it will somehow get better, that somehow you’ll start remembering it a different way. The reality is the opposite, the more you remember it, the worse it gets. So the trick for me now is to turn off the memory machine.

How are you feeling now?

I’m thinking about the future, about being a photographer, not the past. I’m even starting to think about women again, that seems fine, but who knows? I thought I was perfect right before and I woke up and couldn’t recognize my face in the mirror. Who is this guy? That was my principal thought for months. I got really irritated when people told me I was Captain Tom R. Travis, son of Tom V Travis. Really pissed me off. Then one morning I woke up and could see myself again. It was as if a light switch had been thrown inside me. One minute I wasn’t Captain Tom Travis. The next minute I was. To be perfectly straight, every morning when I settle in front of the mirror to shave, I’m kind of nervous I’ll see someone strange, but so far―so good.

Doug Littlehammer sighed. "Looks like I got off easy. The only thing that hurt on leaving the RCR was my finances. I didn’t realize it but I was addicted to the combat pay. I had always saved over half my salary and I still lived well. The first couple of months of investing in the firm