Canadian Memories: An Ode to Inspector Clouseau

By Matt Chatelain

Canadian Memories stories are collections of the real memories of a real Canadian. He is, uh, I mean I am writing these collections to exorcise said memories. I don't know if you are like me but some memories just keep popping into my head, unbidden I might add. If it was here and there, it might not be so bad, but it's all the time. I began jotting them down in a file until, eventually, I had enough to collate into a book of sorts.
It's just a bunch of incidents, little moments in my life, my Canadian life, that have stayed with me for one reason or another. Not all of them are funny, though many are. Others are interesting, curious, or meaningful. It's quite possible you've had similar memories but mine happened in Canada which, my lawyer says, makes them Canadian Memories, so your 'similarity' con only go to a certain point. So there!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Matt Chatelain
• Release date: Apr 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463979389

Matt Chatelain

Born in Ottawa, fifty-two years ago, I have been the owner of a used bookstore I opened in Ontario, since 1990. I have been writing since I was ten. Beginning with poetry, I quickly moved on to short stories and non-fiction pieces. I stayed in that format for many years, eventually self-publishing a franchise manual, as well as a variety of booklets. Having semi-retired from the bookstore, I embarked on the project of writing my first serious novel, which I expanded to a four-book series after discovering an incredible mystery hidden within a French author's books. My interests are eclectic. I like Quantum Physics,Cosmology, history, archaeology, science in general, mechanics, free power, recycling and re-use. I'm a good handyman and can usually fix just about anything. I'm good with computers. I love movies, both good and bad, preferring action and war movies. I can draw and paint fairly well but am so obsessed with perspective and light that I cannot think of much else. I am too detail-oriented. I have been around books all my life. In my mid-forties, I decided to focus on writing as my future job. It took me five years to learn the trade. Now I know how fast I can write and how to develop my story and characters. I always wage an internal war to decide if my next story is going to be a mild mystery or a big stake epic. So far the big stakes are winning

Book preview

Canadian Memories

Matt Chatelain

An Ode to Inspector Clouseau

This book is a work of non-fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.

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An Ode to Inspector Clouseau

Recently, I assembled a collection of my early poems into book form. While doing so, I realized a large amount of them focused on Death, in one way or another, which led to the title of the collection: ‘The Evolution of my Dark Focus’.

The process of examining my past in detail made me reflect on my life as a whole. Taking amiodarone, a heart drug to control arrythmia, caused a previously unnoticed bipolar syndrome to intensify and become apparent. The review of my memories revealed the bipolar syndrome had always been there. The darkness which had plagued me through life was evidence of a bipolar-caused depression.

However, depression was only part of the cycle, as my memories easily demonstrated. I was also prone to upbeat moments, during which merriment had a tendency to ensue. In fact, my normal ‘cycle’ was to usually be upbeat, perhaps unreasonably so, with very short periods of lows.

Gradually, my introspection helped me realize there had always been two focuses in my life. One was dark, the other, humorous. Just as darkness followed my thoughts, so silliness invaded my life, became dogma, until, eventually, it grew into a way of looking at life. Of course, all this had to have a beginning. Something had to have caused this unquenchable need to be silly. After scouring the depths of my mind, I’d have to lay the blame squarely on the shoulders of Inspector Clouseau.

I’m sure you all remember him. The bumbling, irritating, French Police Inspector, who somehow always ended up smelling like roses. The films, starring Peter Sellers as the Inspector, were merely an excuse for one sight gag after another but, in my humble opinion, were the absolute best of their genre, setting the bar high for any would-be competitor.

‘The Pink Panther’ came out in 1963. I was four years old back then, having been born in 1959, so was unlikely to have seen it at the time of its release. I must have seen reruns on TV which, back then, was a choice of 3 black-and-white stations, one of them French. Don’t forget, these are Canadian memories and, in Canada, they force you to have French stations. Can’t say why for sure, maybe Quebec or something.

My most vivid memory of the Clouseau movies is of a home-recorded video of a CFCF Montreal TV station broadcast of ‘The Revenge of the Pink Panther’. CFCF must have had technical problem as the movie cut out or froze several times throughout the recording. Despite all that, I remember entire scenes from that particular movie, arguably the best one, featuring the long-suffering Chief Inspector Dreyfuss, who, driven mad by Clouseau’s antics, became an arch-criminal, focused uniquely on killing the Inspector.

No matter which one I saw first, Clouseau had an indelible impact. That’s my point. Not which one impacted the most or when. So, enough about that and let’s move on, if you don’t mind. Clouseau got into my psyche and deformed it. While I admit there may have been a certain predilection to irritate people already present in my burgeoning character, on the whole, I am sure Clouseau was principally to blame.

The proof can be found in my High School years (Ecole Secondaire Charlebois) when, as a fledgling writer, I penned 12 ‘Inspector Lonestar’ case files. Though these stories are amateurish, unplanned, they show how much Clouseau had already infested my brain. Here is one of these files for your perusal (please excuse, in advance, the poor quality of the writing).

Inspector Lonestar

The Electronic Class Case

It was about three days after the solving of the President’s kidnapping that one of my boys received a long-distance phone call from Ottawa. The caller was part of an electronics class in one of the Ottawa High Schools and their teacher was missing. For the first week it had been fun but, on the Monday of the second week, they had become worried and, after a look in his house, had officially declared him missing. They were getting desperate when one of them, having read one of my reports in a magazine, decided to call me. My boy was going to refuse but I, brilliantly, accepted.

I boarded a plane and arrived in Ottawa about two (2) hours later. I contacted the student who had called us and told him I’d be right over, if he’d give me his address. This done, I dialed for a cab to take me to his place. About 15 minutes later, the taxi screeched to a halt in front of the student’s house.

I went in, said hello to the student, who was so dazed in the presence of my dazzling personality that he couldn’t talk. All he did was show me to my room. The next day, I went to the high school’s electronics classroom to look for clues. Upon entering, I saw a shadow, in the shape of a man holding a gun, projected against the wall. The case was solved and I had done so by putting my life in mortal danger. The man with the gun had killed the professor and was now lurking in the shadows to dispose of me. I took out my gun and slowly crept towards the shadow. I jumped out suddenly and shouted, Hold it.

The shadow with the gun was really a boy with a