According to my father, my grandmother was an alarmist. My mother, in turn, dismisses my father as a wishful thinker—a dreamer—as “it couldn’t happen here.” Until recently, I whistled along with my father, but no longer.

Since my colleagues and I were ushered out of our meeting, deprived of our phones and belts and housed in a storage room, I’ve been reflecting on Nana’s pronouncements.

Events over the past few years had already warned me that it might happen here. However, happily ensconced in the countryside enjoying his retirement my father had refused to hear the bells toll.

Today, he is looking forward to tomorrow’s Sunday brunch and a few hours of fly-fishing. Tomorrow, when he doesn’t hear from me as expected, he will imagine I am on government business and, in a way, I am. Unfortunately, it is not my government.

As I have no means of contacting my father, he will remain in blissful ignorance for a few more days.

Everything about today has been unusual. It began this morning with a peculiar experience: attending my first “in person” meeting and finding myself face to face with people who look better on-line that in real life. Minutes moved as slowly as snails and the discussion seemed interminable.

My grandmother once told me that they used to have these types of meetings all the time and there were rules about how they were conducted. As I sat there shifting in my chair, I wondered what other wisdom Nana had shared that I’d dismissed as fiction.

Even though he was well fabricated the meeting Facilitator appeared haggard from the word go. Three hours into the meeting, he looked like he should be shuffled off to the Health Centre. (I couldn’t help wondering who would pay because obviously this was a self-inflicted condition, and, as such, would not be covered.)

The topic—the only topic on everyone’s mind for the past few months—was what to do about the border. There were no easy answers. As a country, we pride ourselves on being open to the lost and the persecuted—whatever their predilections. Even those who still cluster around a religion are welcome.

Within the first six months of the Great Country Party’s election, when the new government was starting to build walls between their country and ours and the one to the south of them, refugees flooded across both borders.

At first we were welcoming. Many of us had family and friends trying to escape harassment or persecution and were sympathetic to the refugees’ plight.

With the media restrictions it was hard to get a handle on the situation so we relied on anecdotes from those who had fled across the border by car, foot, boat or small plane. (An unfortunate man who had tried to escape by balloon was caught and electrocuted in a public execution at a sport’s arena in the Great Country.)

These and other thoughts about the border challenge were rattling through my mind as the meeting droned on. I glanced out the window from time to time hoping to see a bird. A few weeks earlier a colleague had seen one near the town square. Not a drone bird a real one. Since the spraying by the Great Party, which, as we complained to deaf ears, broke into our space, there were few birds. (Our neighbors insisted that the birds had small cameras on them and were sent south to spy on the Great Country.)

So borders, our partner country and keeping the numbers down were topics being hashed and rehashed. After three hours we were no closer to a solution.

As if we didn’t know our own history, the morning had started with a review of what had happened to date and how sympathetic we had been to refugees when the Great Party had started purifying their population. Of course, we had taken all those they called “colored,” and Muslims, and what they referred to as homosexuals, but soon these folks were joined by many other unfavored souls, not least of all whites. And it was the latter that were causing the concerns now.

At the beginning most whites were safe south of the border but as time passed they were being questioned as to their allegiances. Once they had failed to prove themselves white (both parents), conservative (following the Book correctly), and Christian (true to the word of the bible) they were tattooed on the face. So anyone with a gun—well any Patriot Citizen over 10 years of age—could shoot them if they got into a disagreement.

The border question was a challenge because we supported the idea of a wall to ensure folks trickled across rather than poured in but building it took a lot of work and as we had to dedicate a lot of our workforce to farming (in response to the climate change and loss of available fruit and vegetables from the south) we were going full stop just to keep food on the tables.

“Christians,” the Facilitator had shouted, jerking me out of my stupor. What now I thought. “This is the final straw,” he continued flashing a video around the walls so that I felt engorged.

“In the past, Christians—except for Catholics who the government said were controlled by a foreign Pope—have been left pretty much alone in the Great Country. Now with many, except the fundamentalists, questioning the actions of the government, concerned Christians are being harassed, hunted and disposed of.

“Never since the days of the Underground Railway have so many tried to come into Canada,” the Facilitator said. (Nana had told me about the black slaves and also about the draft dodgers coming north but that was in the past.)

“We can’t feed them. We can’t house them. We can’t keep track of them,” the Facilitator moaned.

“But most of them are highly trained,” a member pointed out and we all turned to her for enlightenment. “They are teachers, medical staff, engineers, lawyers…”

“Yes, yes,” the Facilitator said, But that doesn’t put food on the table or build houses. And the European Whole refuses to take any more.”

“Well you have to acknowledge they took shiploads,” piped in the Foreign Minister.

As he spoke a video of the ships laden with refuges floated along the walls. A heavy silence fell over the room like the blankets of snow we used to experience in the winter. We sunk in our chairs, rung out with fatigue and a feeling of hopelessness.

Suddenly the door burst open. A warrior in a uniform speckled with stars and stripes, rifle in hand, burst into the room. “Is this a Border Committee Meeting?” he barked.

Terror clamped our mouths shut. When the soldier prodded the person closest to the door with his assault weapon, the man managed a nod.

“This Committee is charged with being sympathetic to hostiles and infiltrated by terrorists.”

“Excuse me,” the Facilitator piped up in a thin voice. “Who are you and what do you want?”

“Shut up,” the soldier snarled leading his swarthy armed-comrades into the room. “Get the hell up and out. Hand in your identification papers on the way.”

“Hey,” another soldier screamed, “Get off that phone.”

We were surrounded, frisked for devices and manhandled into a room where we’ve been ever since. As we are bereft of watches or other devices, we have no idea how many hours it’s been. On pain of a hit in the face, we’re forbidden to talk.

As things are, I have had a lot of time to think of my grandmother’s warning and to wonder if things could have been different if I’d listened to her. Images of a message scrawled on the wall of the Tower of London by a forsaken soul with no recourse to justice and stories about Guantanamo Detention camp are circling my terrified brain.

Tomorrow is Sunday. Dad and mom will be looking forward to my weekly visit. When the expected hour for my arrival passes, they will glance down the road, and then check for missed phone messages. Forever optimistic, Dad may speculate on my having finally found a partner and advise my mother that I am so head over heals in love I have slipped off for a weekend tryst and forgotten my weekly visit. He has always been a dreamer.

I too was a dreamer but now I am awake. The dream is dead.

~ Melodie Corrigall

Published in Slice Magazine, Issue 22, Spring/Summer 2018.