"The most notorious internee held in any of the Canadian [internment] camps was Leon Trotsky. When news reached North America in March 1917 that the Russian tsar, Nicholas II, had abdicated, Trotsky was living in exile in New York City. He immediately arranged to return to his homeland. On March 27 he boarded the Norwegian freighter Christianiafjord with his wife and two sons, bound for Petrograd. Trotsky had been under surveillance in New York where British authorities took note of his departure. The situation in Russia was confused, but the Allies knew that socialists like Trotsky wanted to withdraw Russian troops from the war. It was widely believed that they were enemy agents funded by the Germans to divide the Allied war effort. At Halifax, the British naval commander received orders to board the Christianiafjord when it arrived and to detain Trotsky and the other Russians with whom he was travelling.
On April 1 the freighter steamed into Halifax harbour. Naval officers marched Trotsky and his comrades to jail cells in the Citadel, the imposing stone fortification overlooking the city. Then, while Natalia Sedova Trotskaya and the boys were lodged with a police employee in town, the men were interned in a prisoner-of-war camp, a converted iron foundry at Amherst near the New Brunswick border.
Trotsky was not cowed by his treatment. Quite the opposite: he defiantly petitioned the Russian government and the British prime minister, protesting his illegal detention. Meanwhile, he began to harangue his fellow prisoners with speeches, in fluent German, proclaiming the need for a revolution in Germany. “That month the concentration camp very much resembled a perpetual mass meeting,” he later wrote. To the dismay of officials, he became a hero to the 800 other detainees. He was “by far the most popular man in the whole camp,” the commander reported. Another officer recalled that Trotsky “gave us a lot of trouble at the camp, and if he had stayed there any longer [...] would have made communists of all the German prisoners.”
Trotsky was a citizen of a country with which Great Britain, and therefore Canada, was an ally in the fighting, and he was travelling with perfectly legal permits and visas. His internment was giving Canada a black eye internationally. At rallies in New York and Russia, speakers denounced Canada as a tyranny, no better than the Tsarist autocracy. Finally, after a month in confinement, he won his release. A crowd of cheering prisoners lined his path as he walked to the gate, followed by an impromptu camp band doing its best to play the Internationale. And with that, Leon Trotsky’s sojourn in Canada ended."
- Daniel Francis, Seeing Reds: the Red Scare of 1918-1919, Canada’s First War on Terror. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011. p. 17-18.
Ooh, That Scene for Seeing Reds and Young & Proud?
Why does it not surprise me you would ask about these two??? Thank you so much for asking about them! <3
Okay, let me see. For Seeing Reds, the first scene I came up with, the one that convinced me to write the fic in the first place, was one of the last scenes in the actual story. It’s a scene where Caleb is basically seeking sanctuary with Athair and they are hiding out on the island. I’ve always known that Athair would be a big influence in Caleb’s life, even from afar, and it all starts back during Caleb’s years as a young child and in the Reds. I wanted to have that almost father-like person in his life, sort of guiding him, almost like a ‘conscience on his shoulder’ type of an influence, one that will help him get to a point where he can go on and become the Commander Shepard that we know from the games, but I don’t think I realized just HOW much of an impact he would end up having for him.
Skeptical, Caleb asks, “Have you brought any other Reds here?”
The priest shakes his head. “No, son,” he replies in a more solemn tone, “you are the first.”
Caleb’s shoulders slump slightly. The food has no taste and his mouth is dry as he stares down at his hands. “And the last.”
“Perhaps.” The priest rises and walks back over to Caleb where he crouches down and pats his shoulder. “You cannot worry about them now. There is nothing you can do for –.”
Caleb jumps to his feet, anger surging uncontrollably as he knocks the priest backwards. It only takes a few of his long-legged strides to reach the opposite wall where he slams his fist against the stone wall, knuckles first and heedless of slicing pain that shoots up his arm while at the same time, an unending roar of anguish that has nothing to do with his hand is ripped from the center of his chest.
For half a breath, as his cry rolls and reverberates throughout the room, as the skies outside seemingly echo his pain with a sudden explosion of light followed practically immediately by rolling thunder, the world comes to a halt and everything is still. Save for his heaving lungs, searching for more air to fuel another such outburst, all is quiet …
He turns on his heels, facing the priest, his eyes wild and seething. “The only way there is nothing I can do is if I am dead!” he bellows defiantly.
Athair stands and folds his arms across his chest as if waiting patiently for a storm to blow itself out. It is maddening, but not unexpected. And yet, Caleb knows from experience, this priest is a man of complexities; this is not the reaction he expects. Not this time. Not this situation. Eyes narrowed, Athair asks flatly, “Are you quite finished?”
Like kindling meeting flame, Caleb erupts again. Before he knows it, and without conscious thought, his arm swings in the direction of Athair, and there is nothing he can do to stop himself. There is a half second where, in the back of Caleb’s mind, he considers the repercussions of this action, the cost of attacking the one man in all the world who might be able to help him, but it is fleeting. In the next moment, the older man throws himself away from the fist while reaching to grasp Caleb’s arm, and somehow manages to twist in such a way that he pulls it up behind the teen, pressing it against his spine as he wraps his arms around and holds him close, immobile. “Let it go, son, now,” he breathes near Caleb’s ear, his voice a mixture of authority and pleading, “let it go before it eats you alive!”
Caleb chokes for air, horrified and stunned by the turn of events in the last few seconds. What have I done? Beneath him, his legs weaken and he crumples to the floor, sobs wracking his thin frame. Athair follows, his arms loosening but he does not release Caleb completely until the younger man’s body goes completely limp, all the while murmuring half formed prayers and words of comfort.
As for Young & Proud, it’s actually two scenes that blend into one another. Surprise, surprise, it’s a pub brawl! lol (I know you’re going to enjoy this one!)
“So, the Alliance allows any old Paddy into the service now, is it? Damned blighters can’t even aim properly!”
Images of the first brawl with Coats pass before Caleb’s eyes. Before he can respond, however, Coats slides between them. “C’mon, mate, it was your buddy over there who caused the ruckus,” he points at the other man now at the bar, “not him.”
The civilian places his beefy hands on Coats’ shoulders, pushing him aside to bring Caleb directly into view once more. “Wasn’t asking you, friend. Was asking –”
Coats’ hand wraps around one of the man’s wrists, removing it as he slips back between them. “You misunderstand, friend. If you’re talking to him, you’re talking to me. First. Or are you too thick to get that much?”
Caleb sighs, eyes rolling. He already knows how this is going to end, Coats’ stubbornness gives it away. A quick look over at the barman assures him he can see it too as he’s already making a call. “Hammersmith, let it go.”
But Coats shakes his head. “No, not this time.” He leans in nose to nose with the civilian. Caleb shifts to his right, attempting to get back a line of sight when the civilian’s hand flies up and solidly hits Coats’ left jaw. His friend grunts heavily in pain and surprise, but holds his ground.
“If I end up back in hospital, you’re explaining to Ceila again about how intellectual we are,” Caleb mutters just before throwing a punch with his left arm into the civilian’s solar plexus.
The fight that ensues is weirdly satisfying on several levels, not the least of which is that Caleb manages to avoid being hit. Whether that is due to Coats and the way he constantly jockeys around to protect him, or the rest of their sniper class who also get involved, Caleb doesn’t know, but by the end of the fight, as he and the others are being escorted out of the pub and back to base by the police, and the only pain in his shoulder is the residual ache left over from his surgery as his medication starts to wear off.
They are escorted to the Administrative section where he and Coats are directed straight into Major Walker’s office only to find that it isn’t their CO standing there, but none other than Commander David Anderson.
Startled, Caleb stands at attention, unable to salute due to the bandages on his shoulder. Coats is less than a second behind him. The older man eyes them both critically, his face a neutral mask. Caleb swallows and curses softly to himself in silence, hoping he hasn’t just ruined his one shot at a decent life outside of Ireland in front of the very man who gave it to him.
“Well, now,” the booming voice of the commander begins as he steps out from around the desk, “would one of you like to tell me what the hell is going on?” One dark brow arches sharply upward, but there is a hint of a twitch at the left corner of his lips that leaves Caleb wondering.
Neither Caleb nor Coats moves, but both try to find an extra inch of spine in their apprehension at the scrutiny, eyes straight ahead. Anderson crosses the room and shuts the door behind them. “At ease,” he finally tells them.
Caleb pauses, breath catching in his lungs. Beside him, he senses Coats’ trepidation as well. “Sir…?” he dares when Anderson returns to his previous position.
The commander’s face pinches slightly around the eyes, his lips pressed thin. This isn’t the face of a man about to dress them down, Caleb decides after a moment of study. He darts a quick look over at Coats, but his friend shrugs almost imperceptibly.
“Sit down,” Anderson says, a huff of laughter escaping with the words. “Go on, sit down.” A slow smile curves across his face, reaching his dark eyes. Both Caleb and Coats do as Anderson instructs, dropping into the uncomfortable seats. As the man leans forward, arms resting on the desk, he says, “Now, I think it is about time we three have a little chat.”
Coats is the first to respond. “A chat? Sir?”
Anderson nods. “I understand you two have had a bit of a…struggle with one another since your arrival.”
Caleb sits very still in his chair, opting to stay silent. The little he knows of this man, the few conversations they’ve had and the short time they’ve spent together, all which happened over a couple of years before just prior to his being sent to basic training, now tickles at the back of his mind. Anderson has a wicked sense of humor – that much he recalls. Add in his friendship with Athair, and it only makes the pieces that much more puzzling to put together, but he has an idea. The gleam in Anderson’s eyes is a hint at confirmation.
“Struggle?” Coats exclaims, darting a quick look over at Caleb as he huffs. “That’s putting it mildly.”
Caleb ponders a way to approach it without sounding like an accusation. The man had done him, and by extension Athair, a huge favor, but there were still limits to how far he could presume upon their friendship. Still, something about this current situation suggests he has a bit of leeway. “Sir, was this…a set up?”
Anderson’s gaze zeros in on him with the question, and for the first time, Caleb knows what it means to be targeted ‘in someone’s sights.’ It isn’t a comfortable feeling as such, but he’s sticking to his decision come hell or high water. “’Set up’ might be putting too fine a point on it.”
“So, you’re the one behind this?” Coats, apparently, isn’t afraid to sound accusatory.
“Behind you two being roommates? I am.”
There is a history here between the two, he thinks. Caleb knows from first-hand experience that Anderson is a man who masks his reactions well. Coats is good, but not quite that level of good. He recognizes a knowing glint in Coats’ steely eyes, the twitch of the corner of his lips as they curl upward just enough to form a smug, half-grin. Curious. Caleb sits back to watch.
Basically, I KNEW I wanted Coats and Caleb to be at odds with each other, to be English vs. Irish most of the way through sniper school, but by the end of it, they were going to be best friends. I ALSO knew that Anderson was responsible for it - setting them up as roommates. There’s a history there, between Coats and Anderson, one Caleb really wants to find out (and we likely will find out further details down the road...).
"Immediately after the passage of the September [1918] orders-in-council, the police began using their new authority in a series of raids aimed at getting the Reds off the streets. In Winnipeg in early October, Michael Charitinoff, a Russian Jew and former editor of the Russian-language weekly Robotchny Narod (Working People), was arrested for possession of illegal literature. Security forces had targeted Charitinoff as Lenin’s “ambassador to Western Canada,” supposedly sent to Canada with a $7,000 bankroll to foment revolution. Police magistrate Hugh John Macdonald, the sixty-eight-year-old son of Sir John A., the former prime minister, and a former Manitoba premier himself, sentenced Charitinoff to three years in prison and a $1,000 fine, though the editor won release on a technicality. Charitinoff was one of more than 200 people convicted of political offences—possessing banned literature, belonging to an illegal group, or attending illegal meetings—across the country between October 1918 and June 1919. Fines ranged up to $4,000, though most were much lower, and prison terms ran anywhere from a month to five years.
In Ontario, police stormed the offices of several of the banned organizations, seizing correspondence, books, and pamphlets, and arresting dozens of people in Toronto and other, smaller communities. Eighteen Finnish-Canadian militants were arrested in Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie. In Brantford, the local police chief, testifying at the trial of Andra Tretjak, a young Russian immigrant found guilty of conspiracy, claimed that the town was “the headquarters of Bolshevik advocates in Canada,” the centre of a vast distribution network of seditious literature. The police enjoyed fear-mongering about alleged conspiracies; the previous summer they had uncovered a nest of Russian conspirators in Windsor, Ontario, who, they told the newspapers, were at the centre of “a continent-wide plot to overthrow lawful authority and establish a similar regime to that instituted in Russia by Trotzky and Lenine.”
In Toronto, police descended on the offices of political and ethnic organizations across the city, arresting dozens of people, all of whom were alleged to be “active Socialists and Bolsheviks.” They carted away stacks of mail, flyers, pamphlets, books, and magazines. Among the twenty-two arrestees at the headquarters of the Social Democratic Party on Queen Street West were Isaac Bainbridge, secretary of the SDP, and Alfred Manse, the circulation manager of both the Industrial Banner and the Canadian Forward, the party newspaper. Bainbridge, who was a thirty-eight-year-old stonemason and the editor of the Forward, was all too familiar with this kind of harassment. During the previous year and a half, he had been arrested three times on charges of sedition and spent a total of four months in jail for promoting ideas that were considered anti-conscription.
Detainees appeared before magistrates, several of whom took very seriously their self-appointed role as the last bastions against Bolshevism. In Stratford, Ontario, where police arrested twenty-two militants, the case of Arthur Skidmore, a machinist and a member of the local trades council, attracted the most notoriety. He was sentenced to thirty days in jail and a fine of $500 for having in his possession a copy of the Forward. Following appeals to the government from his fellow union members, he was released after twelve days. Magistrate Makins, who had sent Skidmore to jail, chided the government for overruling his decision. “Skidmore’s release is having the effect of making these men very bold and defiant,” Makins told the Toronto Daily Star. “I feel that a stand will have to be taken in the near future against just such men.” And in Toronto, Magistrate Kingsford handed out a three-year prison term in the Kingston Penitentiary to Charles Watson for distributing a variety of books and leaflets that three months before had been perfectly legal. As a large deputation from the Carpenters’ Union massed in the street outside the court in protest, Kingsford declaimed from the bench:
Free speech has always been and is the birthright of every British subject; but free speech is not license [...] Sedition will not be tolerated [...] Persons of British birth or descent above all should not forget the orderly traditions of their race. It would be a disgrace if they associated themselves with the propaganda of foreign cut-throats.
Kingsford went on in his condescending manner:
Theoretical discussions about Socialism may do no harm even if, in the hands of uneducated men, they lead to erroneous ideas of political economy. But when they are publications which advocate in so many terms, robbery, plunder, and other crimes against public order and safety, they become a menace and must be dealt with accordingly.
- Daniel Francis, Seeing Reds: the Red Scare of 1918-1919, Canada’s First War on Terror. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011. p. 52-54.
"Police commissioner Perry decided to invite three of the “Revolutionary Socialists” to a secret meeting to get a sense of their intentions. Victor Midgley, Bill Pritchard, and Jack Kavanagh were all stalwarts of the Socialist Party of Canada from British Columbia. Midgley was the union official beaten by veterans during the sympathetic strike in Vancouver the previous August. He was one of the main organizers of the Calgary conference, which named him secretary of the One Big Union central committee. Pritchard joined him on the central committee. With his spectacles and a quiff, he had more the appearance of a mild-mannered school teacher than a longshoreman on the Vancouver waterfront. But Pritchard was a fire-and-brimstone orator who had played a pivotal role planning the Calgary conference, then guiding its debate. He would later serve a year in prison as one of the convicted leaders of the Winnipeg General Strike. Kavanagh, also a longshoreman and newly installed as the president of the BC Federation of Labour, was in charge of the committee that was meant to proselytize in favour of the One Big Union [OBU] in British Columbia.
In the report of the meeting that Perry made to his superiors, he described the trio of Reds as “intelligent, well-read men.” “They are tireless in pursuit of their objects,” he wrote, “and have all the fervour of fanatics.” He did not think they were plotting a violent overthrow of the government, but he feared them nonetheless.
I am not prepared to say that they are aiming at a revolution in the ordinary sense of that word, but I do say that they are influencing a section of labour in the West and unchaining forces which, even if they so desire, some day they will be unable to control. Here is grave danger to the peace and security of the country.
Even so, Perry urged caution. He feared that repressive measures would simply radicalize the more moderate members of the labour movement. Returning to the subject of armed revolution, he observed that “it can only succeed if a considerable number of returned soldiers join the movement.” The Reds knew this and were doing their best to court the veterans. He urged the government, therefore, to promote full employment and whatever other policies it could to placate the grievances of the soldiers.
Another crucial document influencing government thinking about the labour situation was a “Memo on Revolutionary Tendencies in Western Canada” prepared in early April by C.F. Hamilton. Hamilton was a former journalist (he covered the Boer War for the Toronto Globe) and wartime press censor. He had been assistant comptroller of the Mounted Police before the war and rejoined the Mounties afterward as an intelligence officer. He was a highly influential official within the force who reported directly to the commissioner. In his thirteen-page memo, Hamilton argued that there was a small but active band of revolutionaries at work in western Canada attempting to subvert the Canadian government.
Their openly avowed aim is to procure the establishment of a Soviet government, with its concomitants of the disappearance of parliamentary government, the subversion of the rule of the majority, the abolition of private ownership of property, and the destruction of the other institutions upon which society is founded.
Hamilton admitted that armed insurrection seemed unlikely in Canada, but he argued that there were circumstances in which it could occur. The key was the troubled labour situation, he said, and he sketched out a plausible scenario for the “would-be revolutionists.”
What they aim at is an intense conflict between labour and capital, embittered by riots and bloodshed; they calculate on a general dislocation of the industrial system, passing into an uprising of the working classes, probably reinforced by masses of discontented returned soldiers. The whole project turns upon the propagation of bad temper and mutual hate between classes …
Despite his dire prognosis, Hamilton did not believe that direct repression was the correct response. Instead, he called for a campaign of counter-propaganda highlighting the failure of Bolshevism to bring social peace and prosperity to Russia.
As alarmist reports piled up on the desks of senior ministers in Ottawa, the acting prime minister, Sir William Thomas White, panicked. White, a Montreal financier who had won his seat in Parliament in the 1911 election as an opponent of freer trade with the United States and had been rewarded with the finance portfolio in cabinet, was filling in for Prime Minister Borden who was still away at the peace negotiations in Europe. He cabled the absent prime minister in mid-April with the news that Bolshevism was rampant in Canada among soldiers and workers, especially in British Columbia. There was a revolution brewing, White reported, and he wanted Borden to ask the British government to dispatch one of its warships to Vancouver where “the presence of such ship and crew would have steadying influence.” Borden was in Paris hobnobbing with heads of state, making the world safe for democracy. He was impatient at White’s bothering him with what no doubt seemed like petty, and exaggerated, domestic problems. “I would very much like to reply, For Heaven’s Sake, let me alone,” he peevishly confided to his diary. Instead he advised White to do the best he could with the armed forces at his disposal. There would be no request for British help."
- Daniel Francis, Seeing Reds: the Red Scare of 1918-1919, Canada’s First War on Terror. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011. p. 82-84.
"THE BOLSHEVIK HAD many faces. There was the cartoon image of the Red—the wild-eyed radical with a bomb in one hand and a political tract inthe other—but there were many others as well. In the popular imagination the Reds were usually foreigners; that is, they weren’t “like us.” They were irresponsible, cowardly, and lazy. They might be misguided dreamers, as the humorist Stephen Leacock argued, or they might be determined terrorists. Some were disrespectful of women, but others were women themselves, feminists who wanted to achieve a dangerous equality between the sexes. Some people even thought that Red ideas were so extreme they were a sign of mental illness. This chapter takes a look at the multiple images of the Bolshevik that evoked so much fear and suspicion among Canadians during the Red Scare.
"It is becoming the habit in this country to designate every one a Bolshevist with whom we cannot agree,” said wounded war hero and Liberal Member of Parliament Charles “Chubby” Power scolding some of his seatmates in the House of Commons on June 2, 1919. Power was right. The definition of Bolshevism that emerged from all the Red Scare propaganda was infinitely elastic; it could be applied to almost anyone whose political views strayed from the straight and narrow. Some people believed that Bolshevism was essentially an economic doctrine proposing the abolition of the wage system and the transfer of the means of production from employers to workers. Others thought of it as a social doctrine promoting free love and the abolition of the family. To others it was nothing more than organized terrorism on a grand scale. For instance, the Liberal federal minister of public works, F.B. Carvell, defined a Bolshevik as
a wild-eyed anarchist looting a bank, shooting down all the Bourgeois or property owners in the country and carrying off their wives and children.
Despite the imprecision, there were certain recurring elements in the image of the Bolshevik that inhabited the collective nightmares of Canadians in the years 1918 to 1919. For one thing, Bolsheviks were usually aliens, immigrants from one of the poorer nations of Europe: Germans, Italians, Finns, and Slavs of all sorts. “The country has been stripped of much of the good old Anglo-Saxon stock,” explained Thomas Fraser in his Maclean’s article of January 1919, “and its place has largely been taken by workmen of foreign extraction, many of them of enemy nationality. That is the root of the whole matter.” Even when it was admitted, as it had to be, that most of the radical leaders responsible for widespread labour unrest were from Great Britain, and therefore very much of “Anglo-Saxon stock,” it was argued that this leadership only succeeded in spreading its dangerous ideas by exploiting the large immigrant population. It was not solid Canadian working men and women who fell into step behind the radicals, but ignorant “bohunks” and other undesirables from the teeming slums of Europe.
Much of the resentment expressed against Canada’s Reds stemmed from the strong animosity against those who were seen as shirkers of their military duty. Supporters of the war despised and ridiculed any able-bodied man who had not gone to fight, and for the most part the labour radicals fit into this category. From their own point of view, radical pacifists had refused to fight the boss’s war. But most members of the public did not see it that way. The shirkers were cowards who had remained in the safety of home while others had paid the ultimate price to defend western civilization. As Jonathan Vance points out in his book, Death So Noble, the call to service was a test of character, and those who did not answer, or who answered no, had none. Communities took enormous pride in their young men who had answered the call in the affirmative, and took a correspondingly dim view of young men who did not. Part of the image of the Bolshevik, therefore, was that he was a spineless snake in the grass, too cowardly to fight for his country, a man who had done nothing to protect Canada at its moment of peril. Why now, in the post-war world, should they be allowed to have a say in its future development? Much of the vehemence with which the Reds were treated had to do with this sense that they had betrayed Canada’s men and women in uniform. To accept that the Reds might have something to contribute to postwar reconstruction was somehow to endorse this betrayal.
Often, Bolsheviks and Germans were confused or conflated in the public mind. Because they had double-crossed their allies by withdrawing from the war, Russian Bolsheviks were seen as no different than the “Hun.” The Allies had defeated Germany on the battlefield, but now it was suspected that German agents were working clandestinely in foreign countries to foment revolution. In some people’s minds, the war against the Reds was an extension of the war against Germany. John Newton, vice-president of the Winnipeg branch of the Great War Veterans Association, explained how it worked. The conspirators’ plan, he wrote in a newspaper article, was to stir up trouble among labour groups, ignite a series of strikes to disrupt the economy, raise the cost of living, and set social class against social class, all of which would eventually result in civil war and the creation of a Soviet-style government in Canada. The Reds, he said, were “only the cat’s-paw of the still worse gang behind the scenes who are carrying out the orders of their overlord, the Hun.”
Bolshevism was considered to be an alien philosophy, profoundly un-Canadian, as anyone would know who truly understood the country. W. F. Cockshutt, another Member of Parliament, declared:
It is time that the laws of Canada should be enforced against those who come over from the old lands, have found sanctuary here and do not appreciate it any more than to preach doctrines so subversive of all law, order and decency as the Bolsheviki have done in Russia, and as they will do here if permitted. In a free country like Canada no such doctrines as those are justified.
What were these alien doctrines which the Reds allegedly would impose on Canada if their revolutionary plans were successful? Some of them were laid out in an editorial in the Toronto Globe in April 1919, titled “Bolshevism in Canada.” First of all, said the Globe, all private property would be seized and given to the state. (“The home, the very foundation of civilization, is swept away …”) Next, all civil liberties, all courts, all laws would be abolished. “Force takes the place of justice.” And third, manual workers would take over the government of the country; everyone else would be excluded from positions of power. “The time comes for the taking of defensive measures of a drastic sort against those who would reproduce in Canada the conditions now existing in Russia,” warned the Globe.
What most alarmed mainstream Canadian opinion-makers was the doctrine of class warfare, and the violence it implied. “They announce a doctrine which says that you shall shoot down every man who wears a white collar, or a white shirt,” exclaimed Cockshutt in the House of Commons. By setting one class against another, the Bolsheviks seemed to advocate a complete breakdown of civil authority. The result would be chaos and anarchy, and to prove the point one only had to look at Russia where, according to the stories regularly appearing in the Canadian press, murderers and thieves ran amok.
Early in 1919 the Manitoba Free Press reported in a front page article that conditions were so bad in Russian cities that peddlers were selling human flesh on the streets to eat. Most middle-class Canadians agreed that there was no need to preach class warfare in Canada. Canada was a democracy, they said, not some brutal dictatorship. Even if revolution might have been necessary in Tsarist Russia, in Canada freedom already existed, guaranteed by the very institutions—the family, private property, elected government— that the Reds sought to destroy. Bolshevism was not simply wrong to propose a reorganization of Canadian society along socialist lines, it was treasonous. It went against everything the country stood for, and as a result had to be suppressed with all the force at the state’s disposal.
Sexual licentiousness, indecency, and a lack of respect for women played a large role in the Bolshevik identity as many Canadians imagined it. Garbled reports from Russia described the “socialization of women” that went on there. Respectable opinion warned that the Reds had the same thing in mind for Canada. The “defilement” of women was a constant theme, though it was usually expressed in the allusive manner of this report by a police spy in Brandon, Manitoba:
Another deplorable thing has occurred here on several occasions, when several highly respectable married women have been grossly insulted in their homes by draymen and deliverymen. I could not find out what was said, but I am led to believe that it was of a very immoral nature and about what one might expect to come from men of ignorant Bolshevik ideas.
If the Bolshevik was believed to be gross and uncouth, he was also believed to be devious and ruthless, without any sense of fair play. Russia had proven this, after all, by withdrawing from the war so precipitately early in 1918. Abandoning its allies, it had come close to costing them the war. It was hard for many Canadians to forgive this act of betrayal, and it seemed to indicate how thoroughly all Bolsheviks lacked loyalty and honour. Without these virtues, Bolshevism could be nothing more than the rule of terror. The Reds might talk about the legitimate grievances of working people, but this was a front for their real intentions, plunder and robbery. “Bolshevikism [sic] is a remarkable manifestation of malice and ignorance and murderousness combined,” wrote the editor of the Ottawa Journal. In theory, the Montreal Star explained to its readers, Bolshevism appeared to be a Utopian-political theory. In practice, it was nothing but “brigandage,” the forcible transfer of wealth from those who had earned it to a small number of idlers, thieves, and murderers. The Winnipeg activist Sam Blumenberg was not exaggerating when he told the audience at the Walker Theatre meeting in December 1918:
Nine-tenths of the people accept the newspaper portrait of a Bolshevist as a man who never had a shave nor a haircut in his life, with a knife in his mouth, a torch in one hand and a bomb in the other, and Bolshevism is considered as something similar to ‘Flu’ or ‘black itch’.
Laziness was another common attribute of the “Imaginary Bolshevik.” Reds allegedly wanted to steal from the industrious rich and give to the indolent poor. “Broadly speaking,” H.F. Gadsby told the readers of the Toronto weekly, Saturday Night,
the Bolshevists in all countries are those who do not fit in with the age-old formula—that man lives by the sweat of his brow. They want to reap where they have not sown. They are the inept, the idle, the vicious—the semi-loafers who are half in and half out of a job, or who prefer no job at all. They have not the get-up to climb the tree and pick the fruit, so they want to shake the tree and bruise everything.
Middle-class Canadians imagined Bolsheviks to be furtive and conspiratorial, meeting in dark basements, sharing secret passwords and handshakes, spreading their poisonous messages in codes and subterfuge. The radical leaders who spoke openly at public meetings were just the tip of the 'Bolshie' iceberg; the majority of the movement carried on its revolutionary work below the surface. This shadowy world of Bolshevik intrigue was evoked in a memo from a police agent on the subject of “secret writing,” which reported that when “foreign agitators” communicated with each other they engaged in devious tradecraft. For example, first, the Bolshevik wrote an inoffensive letter on one side of a sheet of paper and then, on the other side, wrote a secret message “with a pointed stick dipped in milk.” The result was invisible until the recipient brushed some fresh ash across the page, making the milk writing reappear clearly. The wily Bolshevik was assumed to have many tricks every bit as ingenious as this one to avoid detection by the authorities.
This was the image of the Bolshevik then: a ruthless, secretive terrorist dedicated to the forcible dispossession of the employing classes and the socialization of wealth and property. “Professing to be democrats, the Bolsheviki attack democracies,” wrote the Ottawa Journal; “professing to be champions of the poor, the Bolsheviki murder the poor; professing to champion the progress of humanity, the Bolsheviki trample on education, the chief hope of humanity.” Socialists and labour leaders in Canada did not seem to fit this profile, but it did not matter. They were believed to be either the unwitting dupes of hardcore revolutionaries who created and manipulated social unrest from the background, or dedicated revolutionaries themselves who cleverly disguised their real intentions behind a screen of feigned moderation. Either way, mainstream opinion considered them to be an extreme threat to the Canadian way of life, a threat that had to be stopped by almost any means.
- Daniel Francis, Seeing Reds: the Red Scare of 1918-1919, Canada’s First War on Terror. Arsenal Pulp Press, 2011. p. 111-115.
The late-season biting chill off the North Atlantic cannot penetrate when body and soul are already numb. Three hours have passed since the news arrived; three unending, silent, aching hours. Hours that steal energy from the body necessary to do anything but sit, think and stare at the vast nothingness life becomes. Loss is a part of life, and the way in which one deals with it speaks volumes. Still, life must go on; their existence, the Reds existence, depends upon it.
Dhorn is the first to reach deep, find the will to move. Will is not the equivalent of want, but need, and the needs of the rest must come before her own.
With a little encouragement, Moira and Aoife move, pulling themselves together enough to stumble out to their patrol. Dhorn knows it isn’t fear that makes them hesitate, but grief, something for which they have no time at the moment. She secures the door behind them, whispers a soft prayer to the heavens above for their safety, and turns to face Caleb. Caleb, their leader, their huntsman … Caleb who has not moved an inch in over three hours, whose form is as stiff and solid as if carved of stone. Caleb for whom this blow hit far deeper than anyone, even she, expected....
Irish: Scath = Shadow; Ar dheis Dé go raibh a hanam = May she rest in peace.
Note: Not super graphic, but there is mention of blood and character death
Excerpt:
A soft squeak and the scrabble of scampering feet scurrying to safety echo hollowly throughout the darkened basement room, and though Aoife looks in that direction, she doesn’t see it. With no light to speak of, she uses the shadows to her advantage; the wall keeps her upright though her shoulders slump in exhaustion and fatigue. Quietly, she finishes the last of the meager meal. Her gaze may be pointed in that direction, but they are unseeing; her thoughts adrift, floating without purpose or intent … until they land upon him. Only then do they return to the one topic that neither of them can ignore any longer.
“Sealgaire, you should go.” Her voice is a barely audible whisper, softer than the trickling water as the rain leaks in through the crack in the lone window, but he hears. Of that, she has no doubt. She wastes no energy turning to look at him, and a part of her speaks in an effort to break the oppressive silence. Still, she has just cause for her arguments, and she isn’t afraid to bring it up. Again. “Leave Shannon. Find yourself a life, make something of yourself.”
The soft rustle of fabric, the slightest clack as he sets his weapon aside; he turns to face her. She shifts her head to look over at him. The room grows darker with each passing minute, and the sharp planes of his jaw and cheek are nothing but soft smudges surrounded by grey. They bunker down here for a reason, find safety in a time when little is offered. “Not again, scáth.” It’s an order, though there is weariness in his tone.
Aoife’s lips curve at the corners. Waif-like features framed by a mass of blonde curls, these days she looks far older than her tender age suggests. Maturity captured her early, but with it came insight, and for that she knows he listens even if he won’t fully accept. This particular topic has led them ‘round and ‘round for days, and with each that passes the urgency to make him see grows. His stubbornness is well known, but until he agrees with her, she will not stop. “Someone has to live,” she insists. “Someone has to tell our story or the Reds will die.”
He growls menacingly in the back of his throat; Scáth, however, is not worried. The reaction is not aimed at her, but at their situation. “Our story will be told by all of us!” ...
Thank you so much for asking about this piece! It’s quickly become a favorite of mine! :)
1. What inspired you to write the fic this way?
I initially wasn’t going to write about Caleb’s Earthborn background, actually. I was trying to figure out how Akuze played out for him. But early on in writing that, I realized that his past actually plays a very important role in the sole survivor tale, so I put that on hold and started writing Seeing Reds. Not only is this my first attempt at writing an Earthborn background, but it’s my first real try at a longer fic written in present tense. As such, I wanted to explore Caleb through the eyes of people who knew him best ... and that’s why most of the chapters are written from their povs. There are times when I had to write from Caleb’s pov (thinking specifically chapter 9), but I think the others flesh him out better than if I’d tried to write the entire thing from his pov.
4. What’s your favorite line of dialogue?
This short section from Chapter 6: Conairt:
“Sealgaire?” Glennon’s use of his name stops his momentum, but only momentarily. He remains silent, his back still to her, but he listens. “Do not go alone.”
“This is my duty,” he growls.
“And any good hunter knows to rely on his conairt,” she chides. “Do not go alone.”
It is difficult to miss the authority in her words, and he gives a clipped, reluctant nod in response. “As you say.” Three steps later, he is out the door.
Caleb is, as you will no doubt see in further adventures, stubborn. He also is loyal, almost to a fault. He doesn’t shirk away from what he views as his duty ... even if he has to be reminded, on occasion, that he doesn’t have to do it alone.
6. What makes this fic special or different from all your other fics?
I have no idea how to actually put this into words. Caleb evolved out of a writing prompt I did for @swaps55. I needed a Shepard I was familiar enough with that I could just assume a few things about them. While Earthborn is newish to me, many of my Shepards are Sole Survivor/Infiltrator, so it was easy enough to adjust. Also, that was my first try at mshenko, so that in itself made it unique. I tossed in the Irish language to define his character just a bit more - I mean, there’s only so much characterization you can do in less than 1K words, right? (and yeah, I went over :P ) But once I had him established, once a few people started to really react to him in such a positive way, he sort of snuck up on me, grew on me. I adore him now, and any of the fics I write or have plotted for him (and there are a LOT of those! lol) are very, very special to me. The more I write him, the more I love him. He and Kaidan are going to have quite a few adventures together! Never a dull moment! :D
15. What did you learn from writing this fic?
That it’s really difficult to establish a decent, fleshed-out Earthborn background in 10 chapters or less! LOL Also, that I am much more suited to plotting and writing longer fics. Give me 20+ chapters and I’ll make it SING! Anything this small and I feel like I haven’t given enough to tell the story as it should be told. (which will be alright for Seeing Reds in the end because I may go back and flesh out some of the parts with oneshots over time)
