Wake The Stone Man by Carol McDougall

talk about his life back in the States I realized we had something in common. We’d both been separated from our families, and we were both stuck in the bush in the middle of nowhere.
    â€œHey, look at this.” I passed Mr. Klein a photo I had found.
    â€œWhat is it?”
    â€œIt’s the Mariaggi Hotel in 1884, the year it was built. Says here it was considered one of the grandest hotels in Canada at the time.”
    â€œIs it still standing?”
    â€œYeah, but it sure doesn’t look like this. It’s a dump. I think Social Services owns it now. A lot of homeless people live there.” I read from a newspaper clipping taped to the back of the photo: “The dining room was hung with Union Jacks from one end of the hall to the other and two long tables ran the length of the room. Around the tables was a miniature railway track with trains and a telegraph line making up the story of the completion of the track.”
    â€œSo what was the dinner for?” he asked.
    â€œSomething to do with the building of the railway I guess. Look, they even give the menu: Lake Superior whitefish, braised fillet of beef, roast partridge with bacon and for dessert Charlotte Russe — whatever that is.”
    Mr. Klien picked up another clipping: “Three hundred guests gathered for the grand march descending the staircase into the ballroom for the Bal Poudre.”
    â€œWhat’s a Bal Poudre?” I asked.
    â€œIt means literally ‘powdered wig ball.’”
    Mr. Klein passed the clipping to me and I saw the ladies in their fancy ball gowns coming down a winding staircase. “Hard to believe this town was such a happening place back then,” I said.
    ***
    That afternoon I spent hours cataloguing each of the Mariaggi photographs and cross-referencing them by the names of the people, the clothing and the events. I made a photocopy of the Bal Poudre and put it over my desk, beside the photo of my great grandfather.
    After work I walked out of the library along First Avenue. After a long day in the basement looking at old photos it was hard to get my head back into the present. I felt like Billy Pilgrim — unstuck in time. One minute I’m walking down First Avenue in 1971, then zap, it’s 1898 and there’s a dirt road lined with wooden shacks, then zap, it’s 1910 and there’s a horse and carriage going by, then zap, it’s 1958 and the Santa Claus parade is coming down a paved street.
    I stopped on the street that evening and looked up at the clock on the tower of the Empire Building. It had stopped. I wondered when. I looked down the street again and I saw that everything had stopped. The front of the Odeon Theatre boarded up, Portland’s Ladies Wear closed. There was a homeless shelter beside the Lorna Doone. The street was dead.
    When did it happen? I looked down First Avenue again and felt like I was living in a ghost town. No rotten egg stink was coming out of the mill — the mill was shut down. No Auto Works rolling subway cars off the assembly line — the factory was closed. No grain being loaded into grain boats — the grain elevators had been empty since the grain started moving west to Asia.
    I heard a plane overhead and looked up. Flying east. Probably filled with people with one-way tickets to Toronto. Lucky them.

chapter twelve
    Late in August I found a stack of six cardboard boxes piled outside my office door. I went to Mr. Klein’s office to find out what they were. He was talking on the phone and motioned for me to wait until he finished.
    â€œYou found the boxes?” he said when he hung up the phone.
    â€œI did. What’s in them?”
    â€œI don’t know. They were brought in yesterday.The woman who brought them said she works in the office at St. Mary’s residential school. They’re tearing it down apparently.”
    â€œTearing it down? I didn’t know that.”
    â€œShe said she’d