Aloha, Candy Hearts (8 page)

Crikey, I felt like throwing up.

First things first. I headed straight to the car wash to rinse off last night’s Caesar salad debauchery. Then it was on to Colourful Mary’s for a nice big cup of coffee. My friends Mary Quail and Marushka Yabadochka own the restaurant/bookstore. Its reputation for fabulous food, much of it influenced by the Aboriginal and Ukrainian (respectively) heritage of the couple, far outdistances that of its being the only gay-owned restaurant in Saskatoon.

When I stepped inside, I spotted both Mary and Marushka already hard at work: Marushka in the kitchen, Mary on the floor.

Although I was happy to see them, I’d wished they’d at least take a Sunday morning off. As far as I could tell, they worked too many hours, and played too few. With the recent explosive development of the city’s south downtown, Colourful Mary’s—right in the middle of it all—had become more popular than ever.

Mary suggested and I accepted a sunny table on the outdoor patio. This was really nothing more than the empty parking lot adjacent to the restaurant, but you’d never know it. The space was decorated for the summer months to look like a clearing in a tropical jungle. The floor was littered with flats of plants that looked like undergrowth and piles of rocks on which you could believe a lizard might be sunning himself or a leopard might be hiding behind for protection from the hot midday sun. Tarzan-worthy vines, papier mâché monkeys, colourful plastic parrots, and lethal-looking rubber snakes hung from the gnarled limbs of overhead foliage. Outdoor speakers completed the illusion by playing tracks from The Sounds of the Amazon. It was a magical atmosphere, and I could swear the humidity was higher here than anywhere else in the city.

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While Mary went to get me a Kenyan coffee and low fat tamarind muffin, I got comfortable in my seat and glanced around.

I noticed a few people I knew, including my friend Louis Volz. He was entertaining a large table of family and friends, one of which fit nicely into the theme of the place with her zebra print sarong and rather unique, hyena-like laugh. Louis and I exchanged friendly nods, and then I got down to business. I pulled out the map I’d found in my carry-on.

As I’d noticed when I first saw it on the plane, Walter Angel’s treasure map didn’t much look like one. The background drawing of Saskatoon was crude at best, meant more, I guessed, as the first hint to the reader of what city they were to look in to find the treasure. The real clues were in the text. Here’s where things got interesting. Although there was nary an “Aye, Matey!” or “Beware the Black Spot!” warning in the whole thing, the passages were certainly obtuse and challenging enough. While I waited for my caf-feine, I read it over:

Begin where it ended,

For the first of Saskatoon,

Next to baby Minnie,

Margaret tells you what to do.

There it is,

What it is,

Where it is,

But where is what it is where it wasn’t?

Morning, noon, night,

Behind a door too high,

Years and weather ingrain,

Now to fame’s portrait in a frame.

Beneath the lonely trio

Where consumption did reside,

Nicknamesake toiled to foil

Then died.

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Finally it hides,

Below sparkling skies,

Within a golden urn,

Treasure you will find.

It wasn’t Yeats or even Keats, that was for sure. But who was I to pass judgment? I could barely manage a dirty limerick.

What did it all mean? Each stanza seemed to refer to a specific place. Reaching one, I hoped, would lead to the next. For a few minutes I studied the last verse. If only I could figure that one out, I’d be set. I wouldn’t have to bother with the rest. Sparkling skies?

A golden urn? Where the heck could that be? I had no idea. This treasure map wasn’t about to let me cheat my way to the prize without doing the work to get there. All I could do was start at the beginning and see what I came up with.

Begin where it ended,

For the first of Saskatoon,

Aww, jeez, I was stumped already. Great detective I was. But I gave myself a break. It was Sunday morning, after all, and I was suffering from jet lag and a lousy night’s sleep.

“What’s this?” Mary asked as she set both herself and my breakfast down. “Have you taken to writing love sonnets for Alex?”

I smiled at Mary, as always taken in by her glowing, dark eyes.

“Nah. It’s supposed to be a map to find…something…I’m not sure what.”

“So why are you looking for it if you don’t know what it is?”

Good question. “Curiosity, I guess. But if my first try is any indication, I’m never going to find it anyway. Listen to this.” I read her the first four lines. “What does that mean to you?”

Mary turned the page so she could see it straight on. “I love stuff like this,” she enthused, taking a sip from my coffee cup.

“These are like clues, right? You have to figure them out to know where to go next. Like a scavenger hunt.”

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I stared at Mary, surprised by her zest for the project. The things you don’t know about your friends. “Yeah.” I pulled my coffee closer to me.

“So they’re obviously telling you where to start,” she said as she mulled over the words and chewed on a piece of my curious-ly sweet-and-sour muffin.

“Doesn’t seem so obvious to me.”

“Begin where it ended, for the first of Saskatoon,” she repeated. “Hmmm, the first of Saskatoon.”

“They’re clearly talking about the first settlers,” I said, “the pioneers.”

Mary gave me a kind but indulgent smile. “That depends on who you think our pioneers were. My people, the Cree, the Northern Plains people, were the first to settle here. They’ve gathered here for six thousand years, to hunt bison, gather food, find shelter from winter winds, open a restaurant/bookstore.”

I smiled at her gentle way of giving me a much-needed history butt-kicking without making it seem like a lecture. I tried for some brownie points: “I’ve heard that some of the sites discovered at Wanuskewin are older than the pyramids.” Wanuskewin is a heritage park just five kilometres outside of Saskatoon.

She nodded. “Uh-huh, that’s right. But by the look of this map and the clues, something tells me they’re talking about something a little more recent, and a little more white.”

“So that would be the Temperance colonists?” I said, scouring my mind for whatever I remembered of city history. “Early nineteen hundreds.”

“The first immigrants to Saskatoon arrived in more like the late eighteen hundreds,” Mary noted.

“Brought here by John Lake, right?” I said, impressed that my memory banks were beginning to open up. High school social studies class hadn’t been such a waste after all.

“On the advice, once again, of one of my people,” Mary proudly announced, “Chief Whitecap of the Dakota Sioux. Check out the statue by the river.”

Mary was right. A twice life-sized bronze statue of Lake and Whitecap had recently been erected at the base of the Traffic Bridge DD6AA2AB8

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to commemorate their meeting. Conceived as an agricultural utopia on the unspoiled prairies, far from the wickedness of Toronto and Montreal, Saskatoon was founded in 1883 by the Temperance Colonization Society. It was an organization dedicated to the ideals of capitalism and prohibition. Strange combina-tion, I always thought. John Lake was their representative, come to check things out. Things have changed a bit since he was last here.

Especially the no drinking part.

Mary mumbled under her breath as she considered the rhyme.

“Where did it end?”

“The river?” I suggested. The muffin was delicious. “They came from wherever they came from, and started building sod shacks by the river. The river was the end of their journey.”

“Maybe,” she drawled, not sounding convinced.

“What else is there? They came. They worked. They died. End of story.”

“That’s it!”

A nearby elderly female couple looked over, with worried looks on their time-and-sun-worn faces (big golfers, I was betting).

“Sorry, gals,” Mary apologized to the women. “I’m getting a little too exuberant for a Sunday morning, aren’t I?”

The women smiled good naturedly and went back to their own conversation.

“What’s it?” I asked.

“What you just said,” Mary continued, quite enjoying her coup. “They died. That’s where it ends for all of us. You need to begin where it ended for the first residents of Saskatoon.”

She was on to something. As I sipped my coffee, I scoured my head for something I knew was in there somewhere. Finally I had it. “There’s a cemetery near the exhibition grounds.”

Mary nodded encouragingly.

“Actually, I think it’s even called the Pioneer Cemetery or something like that.” I knew that because it was on the way to Diefenbaker Park where they set off fireworks every Canada Day.

Mary looked exultant. “You’re right. It’s right on the river.

That’s where the first Saskatoon settlers were buried. That’s got to be it, Russell,” she agreed. “And look,” she said excitedly, pointing DD6AA2AB8

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at the poem. “Next to baby Minnie, Margaret tells you what to do.”

I looked at her, a pained look on my face. “I don’t get it.”

“That cemetery is filled with babies’ graves.”

I winced.

“I know, it’s sad, but that’s just the way life was back then. The conditions were harsh—the weather, the food, the insects.

Sometimes they didn’t have proper clothing and medicine for the children. A lot of these pioneer women were young mothers with little experience, and good doctors were scarce. A lot of babies simply didn’t survive.”

I shook my head and looked around at the plenty surrounding us. Only a hundred years ago, the thought that someday Saskatonians would be seated in a mock jungle eating muffins and drinking designer coffee from Africa, would have been unthink-able, almost laughable. Those people struggled every day just to stay alive, to start new lives. And this is what it turned into only a few generations later. We truly did owe our pioneers an unfath-omable debt of thanks.

“All you have to do, Russell,” Mary told me, “is go to Pioneer Cemetery and find a grave for baby Minnie.” She stopped for a moment, then said, “More of your people should visit her.”

I gave her a questioning look.

“Even though she was so young, she was among the first,”

Mary said, “to give her life for Saskatoon.”

“You are both beautiful and wise,” I praised my friend. “And hungry,” I added. “You ate most of my muffin.”

Nutana Cemetery, also known as Pioneer Cemetery, is located where Ruth Street ends at St. Henry Avenue. It’s a narrow rectan-gular plot along the east bank of the South Saskatchewan River, right before it leaves the city limits. A plaque confirmed that it was indeed Saskatoon’s first cemetery. Although a number of graves had subsequently been moved to other sites due to riverbank slumping, the plaque went on to say that members of many of Saskatoon’s most notable pioneer families remained, including Robert Clark, who was the first resident to die (while fighting a DD6AA2AB8

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prairie fire), Grace Fletcher (Saskatoon’s first businesswoman), and Edward Meeres (who died in a blizzard). No mention of baby Minnie.

At first, there looked to be about forty or fifty headstones, but as I walked further into the grounds, I saw that there were many more gravesites than visible markers, some with nothing more than a stone stump or rusted steel plate obscured by overgrown grass. There was no way to know where baby Minnie was laid to rest. I mapped out a simple grid that would take me up and down the length of the burial ground, I hoped without missing any of the graves, and began my search.

I was on my fourth lap when I found her. Minnie Caswell. She died in 1896 at only four months old. I mulled this over and wondered if the area in town called Caswell Hill was named for her family. Was that where I was being sent to next? Right beside Minnie, as the poem suggested, was Margaret.

At the base of an impressive monument that had obviously been constructed long after Margaret’s death, was a square of mar-ble. The engraving read: In Loving Memory – Margaret Marr –

1853-1889. I shook my head. People certainly didn’t enjoy long lives in the early days of Saskatoon. I pulled the poem out of my pocket and read the part pertaining to Margaret: Next to baby Minnie, Margaret tells you what to do.

Humph. I read it again. Stared at the stone. Read it once more.

I didn’t know anything about Margaret Marr, but I did know there was a place in Saskatoon called the Marr Residence. I only knew that because my friend Brenda, a local singer-songwriter, had once been artist-in-residence at Marr Residence. I didn’t really know what an artist-in-residence was or what they did when they were in residence, but I was pretty sure I knew what Margaret was telling me to do.

A few minutes later I pulled up next to a white, clapboard, two-storey house on a heavily treed street, just a block up from the river. A white picket fence surrounded the large yard, half of which was given over to a pleasantly landscaped garden. I knew DD6AA2AB8

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this because a sign on the lawn announced Marr Garden. Another sign on a gate beneath a graceful, arched arbour said “Welcome.”