In truth, the temptation of history is rooted in its instability. Even though the past is presumably complete, its rich contingency is evidenced by our revisiting stories, shaping them into a tale or a dish to tempt contemporary palates. We are treated to another book on Napoleon, on Sir Wilfrid Laurier, on crinolines and creosote, new details previously overlooked. History does its turn on the cultural boards, then retreats, a shabby coat in the back of the winter closet, shoved there on a spring day wanting to be done with the weight of wool. There it hangs, a scarecrow with aphasia, holding the rag and bone shop of experience but unable to transmit that to a constant audience. And so I marinate and barbecue Brisebois, give him ulterior motives and base desires, try to make him more interesting than the ineffectual or dreaming busboy he doubtless was.

Hyperhistory would sieve the past as a site of cumulative indeterminacy, readily cross-referencing virtual sources of information that tell us how to connect and disconnect the years between now and then. This past is still a foreign country, but one we expect discount tickets for, to visit in the Disney emporium of the simulacrum of experience. And Canada’s fraught relationship to history, a tension arising from many different histories competing with one another, reflects the extent to which we are dozens of different countries collaged together. It is impossible for contemporary Canadians to imagine the many nations of the people who lived here for thousands of years; this geography was home to at least fifty different aboriginal languages, which signals just as many nations, some of which vanished, while others adapted and flourished. And just to complicate that mélange, immigrants brought and bring their own cultural and historical baggage. So the peculiarly Canadian twist to history (we are remarkably oblivious to our history, even while we fixate on the dirty details of the past and yearn for grand outcomes) can be laid at the doorstep of our uneasy communal identity, our lack of monuments or institutions or even excavatable sites. The shadow micromoments, the winters of Brisebois’s discontent, we ignore and forget, when through that curious and unusual crack a beam of light streams. It is in those sparsely documented spaces, the surprises of history, where we might discover what we do not expect to know about ourselves.

Brisebois was miserable because of the weather, the snow, the cold, the sparse firewood, the grumpy men, the predictable food, mostly bison varied by an occasional deer haunch. No vegetables for sure. He hoped to be a hero but found he had to dole out orders on guard duty and latrine digging. He remembered Italy, the quick and cooling heat of the sun and soil there. He remembered the taste of fresh figs. He retreated to his quarters in search of warmth, and slowly added to the layers of that warmth, first buffalo robes, then the one iron stove into which he could feed the snapping sticks of wolf willow, then the body of a woman. He was nervous, and he was cold. He had nightmares. He cried out in his sleep. He spoke both French and English but lost track of which was which. He fretted, he tugged at his shoelaces, he wanted to go home. He was a captive of the moment, the shabby fort, his pissed-off men, the oblivious and unimaginable city that shimmered on the horizon of the future. Forgotten and passed over, he did not want to be forgotten, but despite his determined toast to Fort Brisebois he was. He left us no charming ephemera, no pocket flask or pinkie ring, although he did sport a good watch chain and fob.

Gone, all gone.

I cruise up Brisebois Drive, an uninspiring street curving north on a flat stretch below the big hill that looms over Calgary. My hybrid pretends to be soundless; I am protected inside its shell from the drying Calgary wind, the harsh light. History is somewhere else. Buffalo robes inhabit museums, and iron stoves are no longer used, except in lake-side cabins. The Metis women I know are designers and university professors and artists.

I wonder what Brisebois would say if I could talk with him. Would we exchange the ritual weather and water, clothes and furniture? Would we be able to talk at all, or would we be separated by a chasm of computer messages, the price of gas, the quality of olive oil, prescriptions for drugs? Or would ordinary misery, the commonplace of daily bread, connect our conversation? That and the ghostly towers of a Calgary that does not yet exist.