Coming to Prince George was a fine day with a perfect beginning, a perfect middle, and a perfect end. Florent (of whom more later) and I started out with breakfast at a country diner near Hixon, a wide spot in the road north of Quesnel.
The conversation in the diner among ranchers, tow truck operators, local Indians, local loungers, was pure Canadiana. Both charming and illuminating. Who knew that ranchers have dreams of what they would like to do someday? This one wanted to ride a horse from Inuvik in the Canadian Arctic to Tierra del Fuego. He was proud of being a 6th generation Canadian tracing his ancestry to Ireland. The tow truck driver was the son of a Polack. He mentioned that Poles whose last names ended in -ski had been landowners and those whose names ended in -sky had not. His ended in -sky. His tenant-buyer whose name ended in -ski had twitted him about it until she fell into arrears. Then he got his own back by happily evicting/foreclosing on her, for non-payment. The Indian held his piece about ancestry and origins. A lady whose business was organizing rodeos came by, had coffee and pie, and left a check with the obviously gay owner of the diner for somebody who was sure to come by just in the nature of things, for some horseshoeing he had done for the rodeo.
After breakfast Florent and I rode 90 kilometers to Prince George.
Along the way he had contacted friends of friends of friends of friends of his parents to whom he had been directed. They invited us to a dinner party at their home. The house was big and luxurious, the food elegant, the company charming, the wine good. Afterwards we all went for a dip in the pool. I kept thinking about F. Scott Fitzgerald and the word 'halcyon'.
The friends of friends of friends were Roy and Marie Louise. Roy is a barrister who apparently represents substantial business interests, and Marie Louise is Crown Counsel, a prosecutor. The other sweet lady with big eyes and quick wits, there with her husband, was also a lawyer. A very nest of attorneys.
Later it occurred to me that the two conversations were separated not only by 90 kilometers but also by class and the membrane between country and city. Even so, the people at the diner were none of them poor and none of them alienated, except perhaps the Indian and the lounger. Nor were they ignorant or ill-spoken.
These reflections faded as the long northern twilight and the cognac turned the trees still in the light to gold and at last to silhouette.
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