“Don’t think,” says Harold to the dog, “you’re going to get brioche with real butter in it every day. That’s not good for working dogs. You have to have your avocado oil.” He fishes in his pack for a handful of the Working Friend dog food he never fails to provide: he showed me, with some care and pride, that on the label it promises twenty-nine vitamins, no additives, 18 percent protein and a patented oil made from avocados and glucosamine, for dogs over the age of nine. For two weeks after the bag has been opened, Working Friend promises to stay tender.

But the brioche is dry and I wish I’d fished a bit of water from my death well and stored it in one of the Perrier bottles lying everywhere. Late roses and Jacob’s ladder have begun to glow bright as the plains develop a cold mist, silver sun-dogs retreating over Point-Levis across the river.

I sense drumbeats through the fog.

A young woman carrying the fleur-de-lys strides past us, purposeful, her pigtail swinging behind her hat.

“Excuse me,” I say to Harold as he fiddles around in his pack searching for a wet wipe, “but did she not look to you to be dressed exactly like le Marquis de Montcalm?”

But the woman has disappeared into the fog, headed for the museum grounds.

“His blue coat, his red vest and golden stripes…”

“I really don’t know, I didn’t see…”

I rise and Harold follows, past Joan of Arc on her beautiful horse, past willows and a little boy pulling his wooden toy truck behind him on the mown grass. We walk down to where the French and British armies have begun to assemble. As the museum attendant warned me, there are no folding chairs. The armies gather on a traffic meridian as he predicted. We have to stand behind a line of parked cars to watch as the woman who is Montcalm readies her troops:

“Assemblez, ligne un! Assemblez, ligne deux! Assemblez, ligne trois!”

A second young woman joins her. Is she—can she be—today’s Wolfe? She has a blonde pigtail and a beautiful replica of my Redcoat uniform, much grander than the original one I wore for the battle, and far cleaner than the version I have on my back. I wonder where she got hers. How is it that you can buy a replica of my coat made to fit a small young woman? I suppose that if she is affiliated with the museum there must be a tailor somewhere who has sewn the garment to her specifications.

The armies line up in a completely unbelievable way. Four tour buses pass through the road in the plains above. Construction racket clamours in the city at my back. Cyclists ride past the armies, uninterested.

The female General Wolfe and all her soldiers yell everything in French, before suddenly breaking into God save the Queen! God save the King!