Dispatch from the Front Lines: Cosplaying as the country we once were
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Hello, Line readers!
We have a packed dispatch today, but also some housecleaning, so let’s get that out of the way as fast as possible and then get to the good stuff.
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And with that, onto the dispatch …
On Saturday, Brian Mulroney was laid to rest.
And it was a thoroughly depressing affair. This is not meant to, in any way, comment on the efforts of the Mulroney family, who clearly spared no effort to ensure a fitting tribute to the former prime minister. It is meant as a more general comment on the protocol and trappings of the event.
It felt to us like the final chapter closing on our parents' Canada. In the same way that, after the death of a parent, the entire family gathers at the next Christmas and tries to re-enact the old rituals in the vain hope that everyone simply ignores the void. There was the beautiful Red Serge, crisply draped over the shoulders of the nine young Mounties charged with carrying the casket, playing the role of the heirloom china. Intended, as always, to remind us of happier times when we got together to celebrate things, or when we could haul it out for important State occasions to impress foreign dignitaries.
But the Mounties have almost exclusively made bad news for the last half decade, from the many misadventures of former Commissioner Brenda Lucki, to Portapique and the steady drumbeat of internal misconduct scandals.
The entire ceremony was held at the Notre Dame basilica in Old Montreal, a city that seems to function as a kind of Laurentian mausoleum, forever stranded on the night of October 30th, 1995, the day of the referendum. Grand buildings stand, weatherworn and slightly abandoned, as a testament to Montreal's once-mighty corporate power.
But that’s largely moved on down the 401 to Toronto, driven out by three decades of national unity crises in which Mulroney was a central figure. The basilica itself, maybe the most architecturally fantastic church in the whole country, is two years older than Canada and the scaffolding that seemed ever present in every exterior shot of the proceedings seems to indicate that it, too, has seen better days.
The ceremony concluded with two symbols too on-the-nose to avoid mention.