As the school bus leaves, taking the children’s voices with it and leaving lonely the sounds of jackhammers and distant sirens, Harold, Veronica and I walk to a small memorial stone in the distance, next to which someone has planted a sapling. The plaque honours Montcalm: this is the place where he received his mortal wound on this very date, yet there is no one to notice but the three of us. Like us, the Marquis de Montcalm has become nobody.

“It’s because he did not win,” says Harold. “There lies a sadness around Montcalm that will never go away. But,” he reaches for his knitting bag, “sadness isn’t the right word, now, is it? Maybe the public emotion around Montcalm isn’t sadness at all, but ignominy. People avert their faces from him, and from you, both of you turned to stone and clothed not in glory but in a disease infecting body and psyche of the New World. No one can deny it but neither will anyone admit it. Instead we go on teaching the children our bright, empty game.”

Harold retrieves wool out of his bag, sits under Montcalm’s memorial stone, and knits.

“You like knitting this much?” I ask. In the time I have known Harold, he’s left a trail of holy circles with almost everyone we’ve encountered: ticket takers at the Metro stations, a policewoman manually operating the traffic lights at the corner of Rue Jacques Parizeau and Rue de la Chevrotière, the cashier at Dollarama.

“Even people who’ve known me a very long time,” he stretches the phrase so it hangs like a soft reproach in the air, “think I find it relaxing.”

“And you don’t?”

“No! It’s not at all relaxing. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. You’ve been on many a battlefield, so you know.”

“What has knitting got to do with battlefields?”

“I’m firmly of the opinion that every meeting of the United Nations, and every war fought on every battlefield, should have a person present who is devoted to knitting.”

“In the midst?”

“Exactly. But not concentrating on the knitting—instead very much engaged in the talks or in the conflict.” He fishes from his pocket the chain on which hang his keys and his folding scissors, and snips his wool.

“Are your scissors a part of your equipment like my musket or my dirk?”

“They most certainly are, as is my yellow attire.”

“I was wondering how many of those yellow shirts…”

“I have quite a lot. I was in Orillia working as a caregiver and I had a little bit of money and saw them on sale in a shop, and I bought eighteen of them. They were ten dollars each.”

“Eighteen?”

“It’s important for a knitter to wear high-visibility gear.”

“Instead of camouflage gear?”