“Does this also affect the transportation of products?”
“Absolutely. I would not be surprised to see blockades of grain shipments to the grain ports. The trains go through several Indigenous territories. It just takes one disaffected band to stop them.”
“You also mentioned manufacturing. How could this be affected?”
“You need to understand the overarching goal of environmental groups. Most people who consider themselves environmentalists just want clean air and water and to live in pleasant surroundings. All they ask is that industry clean up its act. But the leaders in the environmental movement see industry itself as the problem. They don’t want to clean it up, they want to shut it down. They long for a return to some idyllic state of nature. Manufacturing is the antithesis of that.”
“Phil, do you see all of this as the work of environmental groups?”
“Not entirely. They are the vanguard. They provide the activists to work with native communities and try to influence them. Since the Supreme Court decision, that has become a lot easier. But much of the financing comes from companies south of the border that are looking to block competition.”
“Wait. Are you saying American companies are behind this?”
“Not most of them. American companies are willing and ready to compete with anyone. But there are a few who would love to shut down competition and who aren’t above donating money to environmental groups to finance protests. We have evidence that the blockade by the Sumac First Nation was financed behind the scene by a consortium of forest products companies in the States.”
“To block competition?”
“Exactly.”
“And they’re aided by the Supreme Court decision?”
“Absolutely. They couldn’t have wished for a better outcome.”
“So what can be done about it, Phil?”
“It’s not rocket science. The government has to flex its muscles, override that decision, and get the goods flowing again.”
“Wouldn’t that just add to the protests and the violence?”
“Probably, at least in the short term. But the alternative is the collapse of the economy.”
“Is this a long-term risk?”
“Long-term? Andrew, imagine a town with just one industry. That industry is responsible for most of the income the town receives. For the money spent in its stores and restaurants. If the industry closes, what happens to the town?”
“You’re asking me? I guess it collapses.”
“It collapses.”
“But, Phil, the Canadian economy is far bigger than just one town.”
“Of course it is. But the same principle applies. Shut down industry, and you shut down income. Shut down income, and you shut down prosperity. That’s a collapse. Our economy is large and strong, so it will take time, but like a disease that festers for years before it erupts, when that happens, it can be sudden and catastrophic.”
“Are you worried?”
Phil McQuarrie sat back in his chair, the camera focusing on his face. There were lines that hadn’t been there before. “Andrew, I’m petrified.”
15
DEPARTURE
Darius crouched beside the railway in the late afternoon sun. In both directions, the tracks sliced across the flat land, once the home of crops that seemed to reach to the horizon, now reclaimed by natural grasses and weeds. He had heard that big ships came to the West Coast and unloaded things that someone else had loaded onto them. He couldn’t explain how it worked. Where were these things made? Where were the trains carrying them to? Why didn’t the people there just make them themselves? On the other hand, economics works even when people don’t understand it. Traders don’t need to master supply/demand curves to know they can charge more for things that are scarce.
And Darius didn’t have to understand global commerce to know that every couple of days, a train rumbled across the prairies headed to the West Coast to pick up things that the ships had carried there.
The trains went to the West Coast. So would he.
But people weren’t supposed to ride on the trains. It was a law and the Peaks enforced the laws. Darius had heard stories of people who had tried what his uncle Rolf called riding the rails, only to be caught and either tortured or Vanished. But all good stories have lessons. Never get on a train when it’s standing. The Peaks are watching. When your train slows to stop, leap into the bushes beside the tracks. The Peaks will inspect all the cars. Never ride in a car with others. They’re likely to do something to give themselves—and you—away.
Darius was about to put those lessons to use. He had heard tales of trains charging across the prairie faster than a galloping horse, faster even than a Peak rover. But that was when the land was wealthy enough to maintain the tracks and to keep them level and strong. Now, the trains crept along as if untrusting of their steel roadway, slow enough for a swift man to run alongside a railcar with an open door, grasp a ladder, and swing up to the side. Slow enough for him to examine the inside of the car and if it wasn’t right, to drop back into the ditch. There would be another train.
Dusk was descending. The fall air grew crisp as if taunting the weakening sun. He shivered and pulled his coat tighter around him as he stared down the track, willing the train to appear. He heard it first. A distant rumble from the darkness of the eastern sky. The headlight appeared, like a low star growing as it approached. When the train was upon him, it was wallowing along not much faster than he could run.
So it was that Darius landed inside a half-empty freight car on a train heading for the West Coast.
On his second day inside the rail car, he thought he could walk to the coast faster than this train would carry him. It crawled along not so much because the uneven tracks made it tentative, but because it didn’t seem to care. Every few hours it would stop to take on fuel from depots that squatted beside the tracks. He wasn’t sure how the fuel got into the depot tanks. Probably other trains carried it there.
He knew the train was stopping when the car he was riding in jolted against the car in front, and the steel brakes squealed. When the train neared the depot and slowed, he would don his backpack, leap from the car, and roll into the weeds that lined the track. He would creep forward, a few cars ahead of the one he had been riding in. When the Peaks had jumped back into the train and it started to move, he would run alongside it and haul himself back into the car.
The first couple of times he did this, he thought it was silly, but the third time the train stopped and he jumped out, he heard shouts. From his hiding place in the weeds, he saw a couple of Peaks haul two men from one of the cars, tie them up, and toss their bodies onto the tracks in front of the wheels of the train. When the train started, the screams when the wheels sliced the men in half killed any doubts Darius had about the wisdom of jumping from the train as it stopped.
They were climbing into the mountains to the west. The train labored up long grades, the ground dropping down to valley bottoms several hundred feet below.
Once again, the train stopped to refuel. Hiding in the weeds, he waited for the Peaks to walk back to the end of the train, but this time, they stood beside it as it moved forward. As the last car passed, the Peaks jumped on board. The train dawdled down the track.
He cursed. He would have to wait for the next train. That would be in two or three days. He had enough food to last that long, but if the Peaks on that train did the same thing, he wouldn’t be able to get on it either. He could walk along the tracks, but anyone he found would either be Peaks or armed communities. Waiting for the next train seemed the safest choice.