Too bad Victor Hugo
never made it to Canada. Even though it’s not Guernsey, he would have liked it
here. He had that kind of soul.
Knowing that I was
going to see the Musical Comedy Guild’s production of Les Mis, I headed off to
the public library and borrowed Hugo’s Les
Miserables for a couple of months. He wrote and published his massive text
in early 1860 while in exile. At the time he was living on the island of
Guernsey, which he loved, but not as much as his beloved France. For me,
curling up with the book each evening was a reprieve from the daily brew of
grinding news. One gets overwhelmed trying to figure out who is the real coach
behind the bench of the Ottawa Senate, how hockey is going to evolve and where
to find the best deal on a new tablet. And I wanted to learn why the words
Javert, Valjean, Fantine and Cosette have become part of our vocabulary.
This diversion to
Victor Hugo has pumped up my regard for nature, which is helpful as we deal
with shorter days and a deeper cold. Winter arrived early and now has settled
in for the season. Maybe that excellent bounty of berries this summer was an
indication of a long hard winter. But that’s ok. Like the rabbits that have
turned white and the foxes that grow thick fat tails, we too, can adapt. The latest bout of sub zero temperatures has
accelerated ice formation. The water in the top layers of the little lakes has
succumbed and ice now covers our favourite little mirrors. This early ice is surprising
but it does bring us a favourite winter pastime - skating. While the joy in a
pond skate is delicious thing, the exhilaration of a Lake Superior skate is a
bit more of a shaky promise. But, it could be different this year. Ice has
crept into some of the more secluded bays. Plus the Batchawana, Goulais and
Pancake Rivers are glossing over. Here at Montreal River Harbour, our present
version of ice is slippery bedrock. A solid Lake Superior might appear much
later in the winter, if at all.
A December skate on a
frozen pond is one of our unique cultural treats. Combine this with the early
darkness and you can skim across the ice under a sky parade. The moon slides
across the black velvet of a star riddled backdrop. Then the shower of light
from the Milky Way and the bold angle of the Big Dipper steal the show.
Hugo would have
appreciated the magic of such simplicity. His writing describes all that. “When
after a day spent in meditation he returned home by the evening light of the boulevards
and saw through the branches of the trees the measureless space of the
infinite, the nameless lights, the darkness and mystery, it seemed to him that
all things not simply human were of little account.”
No wonder Hugo’s words make
one want to sing. The drama of his heart wrenching story, combined with Boubil and
Schonberg’s music, entrances an audience. And the Sault’s Musical Comedy Guild
outdid themselves with their version of this story. I was at the Kiwanis
theatre for opening night and thoroughly enjoyed the performance. The singing
was superb. The choreography was delightful. The interactions on stage were
infectious. The performance imitated one of Hugo’s quotes from Les Miserables. “If you are a stone, be
magnetic; if a plant, be sensitive; but if you are a human, be love.”
And love they were. The
joy and excitement in all the performers was contagious. One could feel the
anticipation right from the opening scene when the prisoners ambled down the
aisle with their invisible chains, chains that held us all captive throughout
the performance. Javert’s flaming torch, alive with fire, reminded us that this
theatre was real. The pure exuberance of the finale filled the hall with pure
true spirit.
Hugo had much to say
about human spirit. “He ( Marius) believed, and perhaps he was right, that he
had penetrated to the heart of life and human philosophy, and he came to pay
little attention to anything except the sky, which is the only thing that Truth
can see from the bottom of her well.”
Yes, Hugo, you would
have loved our open spaces and the truth to be found in our trees, water, rocks
and sky. You might have been in exile but you stayed close to home with your
thoughts and words. And maybe, just maybe, through them you came to Canada
after all.