Sunday, October 31, 2010

Things in History You Should Know: John Diefenbaker




Here is the spooky Halloween special I promised. Make sure you stare at the above picture for at least five minutes before attempting to sleep this night.

Gather ‘round the fire, boys and girls, and huddle close together. You thought you heard something in the bushes, Timmy? Man up, little boy. Don’t you know the wind when you hear it?

Now then. It was a dark and stormy night. For decades, the Liberals under Mackenzie King and Louis St. Laurent ruled over Canada with iron fists. All across the nation, the people cried out for change. Little did they know the cost this ‘change’ would bring.

Election season, 1957. St. Laurent – called ‘Uncle Louis’ by the fear-gripped populace – felt his stranglehold on power weaken with his increasing age. A grandfatherly demeanour was no longer enough and it was his bad luck to be up against a wild-eyed madman from the godless west.

But who was this ‘madman’ who captured the hearts of the people with his promises of rainbows and ponies for every child? Raised in a land called Saskatchewan, he dreamed of the day he would rise to seize the office of prime minister – by force if necessary, preferably by gilded words. His mother attempted to dissuade him of these notions by telling him that it was impossible for a western lad to become PM, as she knew the havoc her spawn might unleash. But he would not hear of it.

His course decided upon, nothing could steer him from it. Even then-sitting Prime Minister Laurier – who, as a Liberal, sensed the dark future this lad might cause – tried to push him away from politics when the lad gained an audience from him whilst selling him a newspaper. Diefenbaker brushed him off like he was so much lint and went to sell more newspapers to bolster his war chest.

And though the heavens struggled mightily against him by inflicting a German last name upon him and having him move to safe Liberal ridings, Diefenbaker struggled even more mightily back, until he became a Member of Parliament in 1940. He continued much as he did in the seatless years, fighting battle after battle in periodic leadership races. Arthur Meighen was old and crotchety (and a bit of a dick). He would be put to pasture sooner than later. So this proved true, as it did for the failed John Drew.

Thus we return to 1957, with its red scares and pipeline debate and all that petty nonsense. St. Laurent was rather more in the mood to retire early with a glass of warm milk than fight an election, but Diefenbaker? Ah, he fought dirty. And he had a power that St. Laurent didn’t: the ability to take advantage of the West’s collective Napoleon complex with the mighty force of populism. Against all expectations, he won. A minority government, yes, but he did win.

And you know what? He didn’t do too badly that first year. This was aided by the fact that the Liberals were still trying to puzzle out this brave new world in which, oh my stars, they were the opposition and in which they had a leader that was well under sixty. So Diefenbaker called an election because that uppity bowtie-wearing egghead Lester Pearson was clearly trying to undermine him. The Governor General was like, why the hell not?

The year was 1958. That’s right; Diefenbaker couldn’t even let more than a frickin’ year pass without another damned election. Being Prime Minister wasn’t enough for the likes of him. He had to have a sweet, sweet majority. He achieved this handily by promising the world – one in which he, as the fabled ‘Chief’ would stand at the right hand of the J-Man in ability to grant grace to the hope-starved masses and the frozen north would be transformed into a land of milk and honey. Then the Dark Times came.

The Canadian dollar lost parity with its American counterpart. Darkness descended and a plague of locusts overran the land. The Bill of Rights was introduced, which was like the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms if the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms was completely fucking useless. The thought of language rights for francophones made him chortle like a whiskeyed-up schoolgirl. To trick people into believing that his reign was not an unmitigated disaster, he brought forth a woman cabinet minister, a native senator, and native voting rights upon the nation. Admittedly, this was pretty awesome.

But then... he scrapped the Avro Arrow. Because the man loved his America and wished for nothing more to complete the perfection of his life than to be BFF with President Eisenhower. (Kennedy, now, he could piss up a rope.)

The Canadian people slowly began to awaken to the hellish reality they had summoned forth, knocking Diefenbaker back into a minority in 1962 and into the humiliation of being leader of the opposition once more in 1963. Lester Pearson became PM and the long national nightmare was largely over, if one ignored the fact that Diefenbaker refused to leave. Like a decrepit zombie whose jaw had long since rotted off, he stalked the chambers of the House of Commons, shouting incoherently in debates. Maple leaves and Oh Canada? Ha! A real Canadian would stick with the red ensign and God Save the Queen until hell froze over the land. Old age conspired to put a stop to him in 1979.

But even death was not enough to free Canada from ‘The Chief’s’ tyranny, for his corpse-stuffed coffin was dragged across the country by train at taxpayer expense with pomp and ceremony! To do less would be an insult to his majesty, he felt.

If you listen closely to the howling wind on chill prairie nights, you might pick out his everlasting moan of “Everyone is against me except the people!” Don’t try too hard to do so, though – hearing those words have been known to drive men mad as they became more and more obsessed with discerning the statement’s logic.

Timmy, seriously, you’re cutting off the circulation in Beth’s arm.

The Goose Girl, Part II

You thought I forgot to finish this one, didn't you? You were wrong. Donate, if you're inclined.

Where was I? Oh yes.

~

The journey to Isolder was peaceable enough. The roads were well-maintained and it was a pretty sort of scenery of the type birds and other forest creatures frolic in and in which the sort of soul who was inclined to such frippery might burst into song. ‘Velda’, so I had dubbed her, sulked in silence, too overcome with this inexplicable turn of events to say anything. Were it anyone else, I would say that she was too smart to attract any attention from me unless it were part of a plan. But had she had any brains at all, she wouldn’t have allowed me to trick her so easily in the first place.

The only trouble came from Falada. I counted myself as respectably skilled at the art of horsemanship, but the beast troubled itself to move roughly with every step and motion of its back. Neither carrot nor stick would cure it; soon I was sore enough as if I had travelled an entire day on the camp trail. Even focusing on the silence of it all did not alleviate my discomfort, for just on the edge of hearing, I could hear those damnable words.

“If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.”

Was it directed to Velda or myself? I wondered.

~

Prince Belder of Isolder was more a boy than man – less coddled than Narthena, but with still many years of growing ahead of him. Given what our relationship was to be, though, I made the effort to discern his better qualities. A pleasant smile, a strong jaw. A frame that was just the right height, for his eyes could meet my own on the same level.

“And your handmaiden? How shall we accommodate her?”

I considered. The continued fact of her meant the possibility that she might find her courage or her pride and tell someone, anyone of the deception. Concocting some flimsy excuse for her execution, however, would arouse suspicion. Keeping her by my side would allow me to keep an eye on her, but increased the number of people of actual importance she might inform.

“She is a peasant that was hired to accompany in my journey; she is no longer needed. Please find a purpose for her elsewhere.” That was promptly agreed to. “But as for my steed... She has been a most unruly beast throughout the journey and I am afraid she is fit for nothing more than to be put down. Please see to it in the most swift and merciful manner possible.”

Velda was placed with a goose herder. I thought it appropriate.

~

Belder and I wed immediately. We enjoyed the wedding night, even though both of us were nervous despite ourselves. I shivered at his touch, he shivered at mine, and I whispered in his ear. After many long hours, he collapsed upon the mattress, exhausted. I followed not long afterwards. I am still human.

~

That night, I dreamed of my mother.

She was a handsome woman, strongly built but with the most beautiful eyes imaginable. (I had not inherited them.) She was a weaver by trade and all through the day and into the night, she would sit at her loom, weaving, weaving.

“I always knew, my daughter, that you would be strong,” she said, weaving a tapestry of fabulous patterns such as that the blessed king of Gamelin would not be ashamed to wear. I, sitting at her feet, nodded eagerly, beaming at her praise.

“That you would be strong enough to challenge princes, nations, gods, whatever your heart might set upon. And you would come out stronger still because you were my daughter and my daughter could do no less.”

Her tapestry grew ever more complex, with fields and forests and battles, moreso than any human could possibly create in reality. But this was a dream and dreams were not beholden to reality. “But this?” she asked.

My heart fell.

“Isn’t this beneath you?”

~

The days passed banally enough, the nights kindly. I allowed my brain to drown out the nonsense of the Isoldian court, it possessing no heart nor interest for me. But the nights? I allowed myself to see more than the strong jaw, but the way his breath pulsed and his lungs breathed in the whole of me. I grew to enjoy my prince’s company. I whispered in his ear every night, as per my duty, about the wicked ways of Cordelon and Tanefor and all the enemies of Gamelin and he dutifully repeated my suspicions to the High Council and to his lord father, the king.

Velda the goose girl did whatever a goose girl did during her days. I kept watch over her, because I refuse to be stupid, but she did nothing but drive the geese out every day with Conrad the herder.

I heard troubling rumours, though.

Of a horse head, hung over the gate where the goose herder and his girl passed through every morning and every night, that constantly spoke these words: “If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.” I went to this gate many times, but the horse’s head was always gone by the time I arrived.

Of a girl who charms the wind so as to blow the loose strands of her hair away, so that the herder may not claim them. But when I went to see in secret, she was attending to her duties as suitable and the wind behaved as normal.

Of a herder who refused to work with the girl any longer and a king who grew suspicious and a girl who overcame her fear enough to tell her troubles to an iron stove. I whispered and whispered into the prince’s ear, but it was not enough.

~

I dreamed of my mother, night after night after night, always fluctuating between shame and pride and fear. I did not know what this constant dream meant, only that it was likely I was never to see her again.

~

Everything had gone wrong.

The prince – technically my husband, although I should not think he was of the same mind any longer – clutched the hilt of his sheathed sword as though it were a neck. The number of guards in the dining hall was just ever so slightly higher than normal and no longer kept to the perimeter. And in front of me was the one person in all the world I least wanted to see. Why did I not find some way of offing her instead of shoving her into honest labour? Ah, hindsight!

She looked very fine and composed, which was such a rare thing for her that I had to stop myself from marvelling at it and giving the game away. Not that, I suspected, that such efforts would last much longer.

“Good day, my lord,” I said, curtsying with my knees bent low and my skirts dressing the floors. “How might I serve you?”

But the king spoke first. “I have a query for you, my daughter. And I require you to answer truthfully.”

I nodded, knees still bent.

He related to me the situation of the Narthena, Velda, whomever, leaving out no detail whatsoever save for that of the name of the personages involved. I listened, nodding. Then he asked me, upon finishing, “What should be the punishment of such a blackguard?”

“Tear the clothes from her back,” I said without hesitation. “Shove her in a barrel lined with nails, and drag her throughout the city until she breathes no more.”
“So shall it be done,” said the king, as the guards rushed forward and seized my arms. I did not fight them. What was the point?

~

And yet, not long afterwards, the clothes stripped from my back – they were of the mind that the nakedness would shame me, little considering that the lack of warmth would pain me more – I was shoved in a windowless cell. Dark and bare. A cot would have been a luxury. Food and water? Ha!

I sat in the black for a long, long time. Doing nothing. Saying nothing.

But I was not Narthena. Torture? Certainly, they would like to drive my secrets and orders from my flesh with all the devices their mind could devise, whether true or false. But I refused to let that happen.

The punishment I described? A shameful thing, not fit for beasts! Certainly it would meet the needs of the bloodthirsty weaklings of Isolder and Cordelon, but they needed to create strength where they could.

But they would try and I was not certain that my strength as a soldier of Gamelin would sustain me. So I slept instead and thought.

~

In the morning – near as I could tell, as the cell had no windows and was lit by a guard’s lantern when there as light at all – they took me by the arms and carried me bodily to another dark chamber. They had many fine instruments there and they introduced me to every one of them, explaining their purpose in great detail. Then, they proceed to use them. I screamed. I refused to yield. And I tried my very level best to...

~

My vision faded. All turned black.

“If your mother only knew, her heart would surely break in two.”

I know not what I told them.

~

In the morning – near as I could tell, as the cell had no windows and was lit by a guard’s lantern when there was light at all – they dragged me out of the cell, pushing and shoving, hungry and thirsty, cold but still strong. They shoved me out into sun’s glare, crowds at my feet with an insatiable hunger ill-disguised.

The king stood before us all, explaining to the peasant and merchant and noble my ‘crimes’ in the name of my own king and country and nation, even though he knew nothing, really, as my once husband and his soon to be bride stood to the side in their grief and satisfaction. Could I detect a hint of grief on Belder’s face? Remembrances of private jests and kisses stolen when we were certain that most of the court had their gazes turned away?

Could that have been the product of my fevered imaginings as I faced my death?

It mattered not. Into the barrel they shoved me, nails all around. My breath shallowed and I am ashamed to say, I cried. But there was still more to be done.

The bottom was not lined with nails, nor the top. I braced myself against either end, allowing my breath to become ever the more shallow, lest they be pierced with the nails all around. I heard them as they tied the top of the barrel to the horses and braced myself against the top and the bottom, as they urged the horses along and the barrel tilted until it was sideways.

Hours passed. I refused to give up. Bled and scratched and pierced though I was, I did not allow myself to be driven through with every bump and turn, with every passing whimsy of an animal. I cried with the pain and I remembered my mother, at her spinning wheel, at her loom, shaking her head with every deviation from what she thought I ought to be.

The pain did not depart. But the minding of the pain! Ah, that did depart.

Hours passed. I kept my strength. I kept it until I was certain the ravenous crowds would become bored and depart and the streets would empty of all but their refuse. My arms felt like jelly, and still I held firm. As did my legs, but still I held firm. As did my will, but as an agent of Gamelin, I held firm.

It stopped. Horses could only go on forever. The good soldiers of Isolder broke the top of the barrel open again and dragged me out. They considered me. Give the public a show and admit defeat with the first go around or dispatch me then and there?

~

Which would you choose? They chose as I would have done.

Friday, October 29, 2010

Translink Haiku #13 and #14

I skooch around him
As he stands still – confused, mad.
“You're going to fall!”

Recall Olympics.
The endless crush of people,
Elbows in your boobs.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Things in History You Should Know: Hal Kolger

Along the lines of the Queen Crisantha piece, here's another 'Things in History You Should Know' article set in the same world as 'Strike in the Shining City' and the upcoming Nanowrimo work, 'The Spell of Vesperia.' Incidentally, if you wish to sponsor me for that, please regard the Paypal button on the right of the page.

If there’s one thing anyone has noticed about a map of Norland, it’s that it’s big. Really big. ‘Very nearly the largest country in the whole damned world’ big. The thing one must remember, though, is that the map didn’t get so large by itself, nor did all the fiddly little lines and other bits get in there by themselves either. Someone had to explore about, armed with sophisticated instruments, amenable guides, and stuff to write it all down with. One of these someones was Hal Kolger, gentleman of fortune.

‘Twas the year 1117. The mother country of Spira was off warring the other mother country of Langpald (again; it was kind of their thing.) As such, the colonies were warring with each other too, because as much as they would’ve like to keep their noses out of it, the powers that were wouldn’t let them. Ursalia was no exception, for it was a Shulmanian and Shulmania was allied with Spira, QED. Enter Kolger.

We don’t know much about Kolger’s early years. Tradition has it that he was born in the coastal township of Blauenburg in 1086, the son of mariner parents, although there are some tasty indications that by ‘mariner’, they meant ‘pirates of a most criminal and bloodthirsty bent.’ Young Hal grew up all right, though, and by the time 1117 rolled around, he is not on record as having keelhauled anyone.

Nevertheless, he was disinclined towards soldiering on sea or on land so the man described as a ‘giant with a bonfire for a beard’ sought other opportunities to assist the war effort. Such as filling in those tantalizingly blank portions of the map. Find a place, claim it and its resources for your lords and masters, profit as a proud patriot. So he set out into the wilderness, accompanied by a Dakala woman known to posterity as Benathidt.

He kept a journal throughout the journey, writing in it every day and so well that it is known as one of the classics of Shulmanian literature – odd when you consider that none of his previous writings, if they existed, were considered important enough to preserve. He wrote of canoeing to the very source of the Maximilien River, traversing the Giant’s Spine Mountains, legging it across the seemingly endless prairies of Mesopelagia – all and a thousand more feats before finally setting his eyes on the Eila Ocean, near the site of modern day Arms of Gold. When he did so, he writes, he fell to his knees and wept, overcome by it all.

The Nelurians who had set up shop nearby sheltered and fed him, Benathidt, and their three month old son Willem before allowing them to hitch a ship ride in the general direction of home. They were cool like that.

By the time Hal and Benathidt stepped foot in Blauenburg again, it was four years since their initial departure. The war had ended. Hochelaga was now a Spiran colony, along with their original set of Rochilda and Cabotia, leaving Laurentia the sole remaining Langrish colony in Deralea. Hal was hailed as a hero, his journals immediately published for a most respectable sum and financial awards and medals showered upon him by Governor Brauer. As witnessed by the journals which he continued to maintain, Kolger revelled in it. Another son, Erich, arrived in 1123. He and Benathidt wed in the Shulmanian fashion shortly thereafter.

He was happy, wealthy, and honoured. And as everyone with a sense of dramatic narrative knows, that’s when everything went to hell.

First came the death of Erich when he was but two years old. The reason why is uncertain – Kolger’s journals stop at this time. Then Benathidt, the love of his life and without whom his journey west would not have been possible, was found washed up on the shore after a stormy night. Whether her death was an accident or purposeful is, again, uncertain.

The journals never resume, although written accounts of Kolger do. Town records report him stumbling through the streets at all hours of the day, mumbling and sometimes sobbing, drunk to a sickening degree. The situation deteriorated to the extent that Benathidt’s sister was given custody of Willem and leave to spirit him off to her own people, never to see his father again.

Hal Kolger eventually became a ward of the state and he didn’t last long afterwards. He hanged himself in his room (or rather, cell) one morning in 1130, a letter addressed to the long-dead Benathidt the only thing he left behind to explain himself. It didn’t explain much, except how much he wished she would visit him again.

The consequences of his journey outlived the man, the first of these being that the Dakala Tribe became very rich off of his still respectable estate and the sales of his journals. The second of these was tied into the fact that he was Ursalian, or rather, Shulmanian.

Shulmania, after founding Ursalia, had little interest in branching out on the Deralean continent. Nevertheless, by the ‘laws’ of exploration so far as Estelians were concerned, most of it had been claimed by Kolger on their behalf. Neither Langpald nor Nelura were in a position to commandeer this territory and Spira had no desire to piss off a long-standing ally. Thus the hundreds of tribes in between the two coasts went virtually unmolested until Norrish Confederation (with added Ursalia!) in 1245. The individual treaties took decades to hammer out, including those allowing the Great Railway to be built, outlining the conditions for Estelian settlement, and ‘requiring’ assistance in hunting wendigos. This did not stop the occasional armed scuffle, but nothing ever does.

Prime Minister Lark downed several bottles of whiskey and acquired most of her grey hairs because of this Kolger. He likely wouldn’t have felt that much pity, though.

Translink Haiku #11 and #12

How curious, this stench!
It goes wherever I go
I sniff. It's not me.

~

Many empty seats,
Yet he sits down next to me.
Don't make eye contact.

Nanowrimo!

I am preparing myself for it. The tentative title is The Spell of Vesperia (a riff of of The Spell of the Yukon by the barely known Canadian poet Robert Service). It is set in the same universe as Strike in the Shining City, at about the same time period, and it involves girl adventurers, wendigo hunters and magically-powered automatons. Will it be awesome? Yes.

I humbly solicit donations at this time in order to shore up the scant funds I'll garner from two part-time jobs. The Paypal button is on the right; please regard it and donate what you feel what a 2000-word chapter a day is worth.

In addition, I will be posting new content every night until Nanowrimo actually starts. Translink haiku will come very shortly tonight, along with a Nano-related 'Things in History You Should Know'.

Until then.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Not dead.

I'm working on something; progress is much, much slower than anticipated. (The lack of stimulation due to the soon-to-be-ending-yet-still-long spell of unemployment is to blame more than anything else, I reckon.)

Stay tuned, etc.

Monday, October 11, 2010

I'm going to start something today.

I'm not going to tell you what. You'll find out. Oh yes.

To organise my thoughts, here are lists I made of things I like and dislike in fiction. If you've a similar list, feel free to share it.

Stuff I Like:
1) Kick-Ass Heroines
2) Metatext
3) Lots of Implied History
4) Fantasy Not Based on Medieval Europe
5) SCIENCE!
6) Old Wise Mentors (Who Live)
7) Steampunk (or Dieselpunk or Atompunk)
8) Robots of Some Sort
9) Superheroes
10) Sense of Larger World/Universe

Stuff I Don’t Like:
1) Too Stupid to Live Hero/ines
2) Gratuitous Romance
3) Mystical Wishy-Washiness
4) Monolithic Cultures
5) Strawmen
6) Being Bashed Over the Head with the Author’s Message
7) Emo-ness
8) Vampires (Unless They’re Really Frickin’ Scary)
9) Excess of Pointless Tragedy
10) Psychics (Unless They’re River Tam or the Doctor)

Thursday, October 7, 2010

I have a cunning plan.

As some of you know, I'm planning on participating in National Novel Writing Month. I know some of you are as well. This made me think. We all know how dangerous that is.

Why don't we do this as a shared world type of deal, where every story takes place in different places and times of the same larger setting? We could get a Wiki going (which would be pretty easy to set up, actually), take the rest of October to populate this Wiki with our ideas and tell each other of our incipient plots, and then, in November... write.

This could easily be expanded to include those who aren't up for 50,000 words of a single narrative or those artist friends of ours with a more visual skill set. Short stories or novellas could be written instead, pictures could be drawn, and other fabulous things.

I think, if pulled off, this could be magnificent. Who's interested? Show of hands, please!

Saturday, October 2, 2010

50-Word Short Story #4

Only fascists wouldn't consider participating in this clash of carefully chosen words in the comments, because fascists don't know how to have fun.

There were things lurking underneath the bed. Dark things. Terrible things. Maggie tried the old ‘put the sheets over your head’ trick, but she knew it only delayed the inevitable crunch of her bones.

This is where axes come in handy. She had much to explain to her parents, though.

Things in History You Should Know: Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie

A 'Thor is My Drinking Buddy' original! Are you feeling privileged yet?

Back in the early days of British Columbia – ‘early’ in this case being defined as after it became a colony and before it became a province – justice was a tricky thing to administer. Tensions, both racial and national, flared. The amount of land to cover wasn’t exactly compact, nor was it easy to traverse, what with all the mountains in the way. And people, being people, refused to stop committing crimes to make things easier for a poor, beleaguered law man.

Enter Matthew Baillie Begbie, the so-called Hanging Judge. Born at sea in 1819 to Scottish parents, he frittered away his first four decades in Great Britain – attending Cambridge, being a lawyer, and that sort of thing. He must have made a decent account of himself in that field, for when the Colony of British Columbia was formed in 1858, it was decided that he should definitely go be a judge there. (Fun fact: the man who introduced the bill in the British Parliament to make BC happen was none other than Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, of ‘it was a dark and stormy night’ fame. A robust literary career was no bar to politics in those days.)

It wasn’t a cozy desk job like he had back in London and it’s not certain why he accepted it. Most likely, he was the type of person to whom travelling hundreds of miles on horseback to hear a case sounded romantic. He rode about in his circuits, always holding court in full costume and often in his tent. And yes, there was some hanging involved, but not as much as you might think.

At the time, hanging was the only possible sentence for murder. Fifty-two murder trials were conducted during the colonial part of his stint, with thirty-eight convictions and twenty-seven actual hangings. (Begbie had asked for and got clemency for the remaining eleven convicts.) Nevertheless, the soubriquet stuck. Not that he didn’t take advantage of its intimidation factor, which was probably aided by his giant stature.

It also seems like he made it a personal policy not to be an asshole towards the locals, which was always a fine plan when they outnumbered the British in the area ten to one. He still insisted on having his trials be as British as possible, of course, but he made allowances such as switching out the oath on the Bible with something that would actually mean something to them and conducting the proceedings in their language. Did he use an interpreter? No. They were for the weak. He learned those languages, man.

Furthermore, those eleven convicts that he got clemency for were all natives and he could and did convict white men for crimes against natives using evidence from natives. This made him more progressive than approximately 95% of the English-speaking world of the time, give or take.

Now, how did Begbie get along with James Douglas, the governor of BC? It’s complicated. It seems as though most of the time, he dealt with the cranky old bastard quite well. He spoke up for a friend who wished to marry one of Douglas’ daughters and did not immediately get thrown out of the house. He served as a pallbearer at his funeral.

But Begbie made his true feelings be known at Douglas retirement party in 1864. Not only did he have the unmitigated audacity to plonk down beside the soon-to-be ex-governor whilst smoking a pipe – this was considered to be as rude as all hell even back then – he proceeded to give a speech about how he had hated every one of Douglas’ policies and he wasn’t the only one to think so. This didn’t go over well and he was booed into silence.

After BC joined up with the rest of Canada in 1871, Begbie was named its first chief justice of its supreme court. But four years later, during his first vacation in a very long time, Queen Victoria knighted him by surprise and he became Sir Matthew Baillie Begbie. Once he came back, he still rode his circuits and participated in what passed for progressive politics at the time (“I’ve got an idea, everyone! Let’s not be complete jerks towards the minorities and the poor!”). While he charmed the socks off of all the ladies, he never married. Perhaps he never met anyone who was so into horseback riding.

He died in Victoria in 1894 of cancer and buried at Ross Bay Cemetery. It is said that if you visit his grave on the night of the full moon, nothing much will happen. Maybe you’ll get rained on.