City Wolves

  About this book

  City Wolves is lively, insightful historical fiction about Canada’s first female veterinarian, Meg Wilkinson.

  Born in 1870 on a farm near Halifax, Meg resolves from childhood experiences with wolves to become a veterinarian. Supported in this quest by the eccentric Randolph Oliphant and inspired by the ancient story of Inuit who first turned wolves into sled dogs, Meg surpasses the “horse doctors” at vet college and becomes Halifax’s notorious “dog doctor” in the 1890s.

  After her unusual marriage to Oliphant ends tragically in Boston, Meg shakes free by travelling to the Yukon in search of the legendary sled dogs. Arriving just as the Klondike gold rush begins, she is soon making her way amidst Mounties, dance hall girls, Klondike Kings, mushers, priests, and swindlers—all the mangy and magnificient people, dogs, and spirits populating raucous Dawson City.

  Observed in part through the restless spirit of ancient Inuit character Ike, City Wolves subtly reveals the wolf-like nature of humans and the human nature of wolves. Both earthy and reflective, this compelling story is told with compassion, literary flair, humour, and unflinching realism.

  In this, her fifth novel, Dorris Heffron creates unforgettable characters and achieves a breadth of vision enabling her—and her readers—to explore the deep conflicts and interconnections of social beings in ways uniquely Canadian yet profoundly universal.

  CITY WOLVES

  “Historical romance, pioneering feminism, rough sex, Inuit spirit guides, wolves, dogs, more wolves, real people mingling with fictional ones, a fresh take on the Dawson City gold rush—this is entertainment. An indomitable heroine takes city wolves into the wilderness and makes them howl. I for one could not stop listening.”

  KEN McGOOGAN, Pierre Berton History Prize winner, author of Fatal Passage and Race to the Polar Sea

  “Over time, our instinctual, embodied way of knowing has been banished, rupturing our intuitive connection with nature. Now Dorris Heffron, in her insightful exploration of the profound and mysterious relationship between a woman and her wolf-dogs, offers us a metaphor for healing the terrible breach. In this larger than life novel, power/love, greed/sharing, vengeance/mercy are among the archetypal tensions spurring the plot along and the reader with it, as the author draws us irresistibly into a world where connecting with our fellow creatures means the difference between life and death. A marvelous work! I look forward to it becoming a Canadian classic.”

  ROSEMARY GOSSELIN, BJ, MSW, NCPsyA, Jungian Psychoanalyst, Integrative Consulting Services

  “Dorris Heffron has illuminated a fascinating and little-known aspect of human behaviour—the degree to which humans have modelled their social structure on that of wolves—and turned it into story. City Wolves is a wonderful blend of fiction and history, natural and unnatural: high art indeed!”

  WAYNE GRADY, Naturalist, author of The Nature of Coyotes

  “City Wolves takes the insightful truth of good biography and runs with it, imaginatively rollicking into a gripping narrative. Dorris Heffron’s meticulous research allows her to give life to a neglected theory about who really first discovered the gold that started the Klondike rush and to compelling portrayals of historical characters like Kate Carmack, Belinda Mulroney and their cohorts in Dawson City. This novel celebrates and breathes real life into the women of the gold rush, opening up a new vista in historical fiction.”

  JENNIFER DUNCAN, writer, educator, author of Sanctuary and Other Stories and Frontier Spirit, biographies of women who went to the Klondike gold rush

  Novels by Dorris Heffron

  ADULT FICTION

  City Wolves

  A Shark in the House

  YOUNG ADULT FICTION

  Rain and I

  Crusty Crossed

  A Nice Fire and Some Moonpennies

  CITY WOLVES

  HISTORICAL FICTION

  Dorris Heffron

  © Dorris Heffron

  All rights reserved. Written permission of Blue Butterfly Books or a valid licence from Access Copyright is required to copy, store, transmit, or reproduce material from this book.

  Blue Butterfly Book Publishing Inc. 2583 Lakeshore Boulevard West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M8V 1G3 Tel 416-255-3930 Fax 416-252-8291 www.bluebutterflybooks.ca

  For complete ordering information for Blue Butterfly titles, go to: www.bluebutterflybooks.ca/orders

  Soft cover edition: 2010

  LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

  Heffron, Dorris, 1944– City wolves : historical fiction / Dorris Heffron.

  ISBN 978-0-9781600-7-4 — ISBN 978-1-926577-01-2

  Electronic edition, ePub format:2010

  ISBN 978-1-926577-21-0

  I. Title.

  PS8565.E33C48 2008 C813’.54 C2008-905564-0

  Design, typesetting, and maps by Gary Long / Fox Meadow Creations. Historical photographs from Library and Archives Canada

  Front cover photograph © Veer.

  Blue Butterfly Books thanks book buyers for their

  support in the marketplace.

  This book is dedicated to Elizabeth Love Kane,

  dear friend, great supporter of the arts,

  choirmaster of the malamutes of Beaver Valley.

  It is inspired, if not commanded, by our own Yukon Sally,

  regal Alaskan malamute, yet definite wolf throwback.

  She led the way.

  Some of the characters in this novel are fictitious and some

  are not.Those who are not, bear their real names.

  PROLOGUE

  Ike’s spirit was restless, always had been, even before it left his worn-out body. For Ike was a man of good intentions who fulfilled his dream, created something good, useful and much sought after in society, but he suffered guilt at the cost and at his inability to control what became of it in the hands of others. He saw all of that come out in his lifetime. He was not at peace with himself in his lifetime and so, when his old body died, his spirit continued in restlessness, hovering through the years, through centuries, finding kindred spirits here and there, trying to influence like-minded people who instinctively loved wolves of the wild as he did and saw in the working dogs he created from them, the creatures of complexity, of greatness and greed, that are found in country and city, in wolves, dogs and people.

  Ike’s wife, Piji, was his equal partner in the original project. His partner in crime, he sometimes felt, though she did not always think as he did. In the end, they said she lost her sanity. But Piji’s spirit found rest. Her body died clothed in malamute fur and her spirit carried on reasonably contentedly in the minds of breeders of the highest standards.

  As for Ike, he hovered anxiously through many centuries. His story was handed down from generation to generation and eventually written down, though not published. Disgusted, often, Ike’s spirit moved on and found its greatest hope in the birth of Meg Wilkinson who was determined to become the first woman veterinarian, though she began, like Ike, as a wolf hugger.

  PART ONE

  HALIFAX

  1

  THE ORIGINS OF MEG

  MARGARET ANNE WILKINSON was born in 1870 on a farm near Halifax, a city on the south-east coast of Canada. Margaret, dubbed Meg, was the seventh child of Emma and Herbert Wilkinson.

  “Lucky number seven,” said Herbert. “And born in ’70. This calls for a cigar.”

  Exhausted from the strain of childbirth, Emma kept her thoughts to herself. She had a long habit of keeping silent, for her thinking was not always pleasing to others. Her thought on this occasion was … let me have the luck of this being my last baby.

  But it was not. Three years later, at age forty-one, she gave birth to another girl, Alice.

  “Now, my dear,” said Herber
t, “you have two girls to help with the housework.”

  “That’s enough,” said Emma. “No more, Herbert. No more.”

  All very well for our Queen Victoria to have so many children, Emma had thought to herself, time and again, as she washed soiled diapers in buckets of cold water, bent over in her smoky, dark, log cabin on a lonely farm in the wilds of Canada. Our queen has a palace and servants.

  Emma undid the top buttons of her flannel nightgown and expertly guided her new baby’s head so that her mouth found the nipple oozing the first drops of nourishment. Ah, Emma sighed quietly as she relaxed against the goose-down pillows. This is the easy part. She smiled at Herbert as he turned to leave her with the midwife from Halifax. A smile from Emma was a rare thing.

  “Good wife.” Herbert nodded jauntily. “Good mother. My little Emma.”

  “He’s a right gentleman,” said the midwife after he closed the thin plank door.

  “Yes,” said Emma. “Always has been. He’s the fifth son of the squire of Squirrel Hall. Back in Yorkshire, that is, in the old country.”

  “Squirrel Hall,” the midwife laughed. “That’s a good one!”

  “It was very grand.”

  “Aye.” And spare me the details, thought midwife McLarty. I’ve heard it all before. The grand life left behind. “My old country is Ireland. I’d a starved to death if I’d stayed there. Guess prospects weren’t too good for a fifth son, either. But you’ve got yourself a fine looking farm here, Mrs. Wilkinson. And a fine family, I must say. I’ve delivered some shockers, believe me. Especially to women your age. The dead ones are a relief. It’s the ones born witless, or without limbs, or with cleft palate. You wouldn’t believe …”

  “I believe you,” said Emma. She closed her eyes as though too tired for further talk. And would you believe me if I told you I was a scullery maid at Squirrel Hall? That I saw more at age twelve than you think you know now? But I won’t tell you, for I’ve learned that once you uncover yourself, people don’t forget what they have seen and may use it against you. And you, my good midwife, have seen quite enough of me. Quite enough. She opened her eyes to shift baby Alice to the other breast.

  “I’ll be going now, Mrs. Wilkinson, seeing as you’re managing well enough on your own.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. McLarty.”

  Three-year-old Meg then burst into the room, having escaped from her bed in her nightgown. She was tripping upon it as she forced her way around the skirts of Mrs. McLarty.

  “Mommy. Mommy. Is this tomorrow?” Meg asked excitedly.

  “Now that’s what I call a sunny disposition!” Mrs. McLarty laughed. “Top o’ the mornin’ to you little Missy.”

  “Hello,” said Meg, curtsying slightly as she had been taught to do, then she turned to her mother. “Is that the baby you promised me tomorrow?”

  “Yes, my little Meg, this is your sister, Alice.”

  Alice struggled to open her eyes then cried at all she saw.

  Is this tomorrow?

  “It’s an interesting question,” said Herbert to Emma. “She should not be discouraged from asking it. She’s a questioner and an optimist by nature. Like me when I was young.” He smiled at Emma. “I knew you would marry me eventually. And come to Canada with me.”

  “Such a bright face you put on everything, Herbert. And still do.” But you would have had your way with me, without benefit of marriage, had I let you, thought Emma. It is a great lesson to impart to our daughters.

  Emma recalled Herbert trailing after her when he came home from boarding school. She was then fourteen and he seventeen. He was not at all like the handsome and mysterious Mr. Rochester, hero of her heroine, Jane Eyre, star of the runaway best seller Jane Eyre, the book that was passed or nicked, from upstairs to down, in every cultured household of the time. Squirrel Hall had been exceptionally cultured, thanks to Mistress Wilkinson, who kept the best library in the county. She was a great fan of Charles Dickens’ novels and had entertained the man himself to a grand dinner at Squirrel Hall when Dickens was in the vicinity doing research for the boarding school background of his novel Nicholas Nickleby. That the novel turned out to reflect badly on local schools did not endear Mrs. Wilkinson to some of her neighbours.

  But all that had occurred before Emma came to work at the Hall. Mrs.Wilkinson endured as a prominent hostess and defender of Dickens and other writers whom she called “forward thinking.” She read Jane Eyre as soon as it came out but found the story of a modest young governess marrying the master of the house not very likely. She knew from her own household of a husband and five sons that a governess was more likely to be taken advantage of and then sent away on spurious grounds. But the need for governesses for her sons was long past when Mrs. Wilkinson loaned her copy of Jane Eyre to her head housekeeper, who soon passed it on to young Emma who read and re-read it.

  During a re-reading at the servants’ table in off hours, Emma suddenly had the feeling of being watched. She looked up and there in the doorway was young Master Herbert looking most intently at her. She was too fearful of what he might do, to speak.

  “You like to read?” he asked.

  She nodded.

  “I’ll get you any book you want.”

  Emma accepted with much trepidation the loan of books, since it was approved by Mrs. Wilkinson, but she would not converse with Master Herbert about the books or remain for more than a moment alone in his company. She knew about servant girls who were dismissed because they had got with child, or even become too familiar with a master. Mrs. Wilkinson treated her staff with respect and generosity. She had been involved in the abolition of slavery movement when she was young. She was a supporter of public education and she tried to raise her sons with a high regard for women. But when one of her sons got a servant “in trouble,” it was the servant who was dismissed, albeit with payment. The baby was delivered to an orphanage and the fifteen-year-old girl was said to have ended up on the streets of London. Emma was determined not to end up in that faraway den of iniquity. She planned to marry at the mature age of seventeen or eighteen a sober, hard-working blacksmith, or the like, whose house she would keep in good order, and hopefully have a nice little family.

  Thus Emma was terrified when Master Herbert waylaid her, alone, on the path back to her home in the village. It was in just such places that the ruination of a girl could occur. She stood paralyzed as Herbert lifted her hand to his lips. “You’re the prettiest little thing in all the world.”

  She looked up at a window and saw Mrs. Wilkinson looking down upon them. She turned and fled to her home. She pretended illness, not daring to return to Squirrel Hall. A week later, Mrs. Wilkinson drove up in a carriage. She asked to speak with Emma privately.

  “Our son, Master Herbert,” she said, clasping her gloved hands tightly together, “wishes you to accept his apologies for frightening you. He made it very clear to us that you are not at fault. He has gone to look for a job in London and prays that you will return to your job at Squirrel Hall.” Mrs. Wilkinson coughed, not used to the heavy cloud of coal smoke lingering in the small room. “As do the squire and I. Will you come now, Miss Emma?”

  Emma drove back to Squirrel Hall in the carriage with Mrs. Wilkinson.

  Herbert came home at Christmas and behaved with perfect decorum, though it did not hide the fact that he was still smitten with Emma, still trailed after her, still coveted her, with her carrot-coloured ringlets, sea-green eyes, healthy face and figure. Mrs. Wilkinson looked worried. The squire was disgusted.

  “The lad has never had any common sense.” The squire’s raised voice could be heard from behind closed doors. “He’s too much like you, my dear wife. Full of books, ideas, questions. His head in the clouds. How can he still be so damn moonstruck! All very well for a woman to be such a … what did you call it?”

  “Romantic?”

  “It doesn’t do for a man. A man has to get on with things. Why can’t he be more like me?”

  “George, I fear he is to
o much like you. A very determined young man who chooses just the woman his parents warn him against.”

  The squire laughed heartily. “But you were such another kettle of fish, my dear! Emma is a mouse, meek and silent as a mouse.”

  “I should think so, around you!” Mrs. Wilkinson’s laugh was heard, followed by a pause for another sip of port. “I have spoken with her. She’s a bright little thing. Understands what she reads. Though it’s hard to understand her. She has the accent of her class, of course. Maybe we should encourage Herbert to converse with her. Allow more familiarity. Yes! Let us try that, George. Absence has served only to make the heart grow fonder.”

  Emma never forgot the offence she felt at hearing that conversation. It spurred her into a new direction. She had been promoted from scullery maid because she showed that she was diligent at any task set to her. Now she would learn to speak like a governess. Why not? And if Master Herbert spoke to her, she would answer. Yes she would. And if that got her dismissed from the household, she would find another position. If Master Herbert dismissed her … so be it.

  But Herbert was charmed, impressed, intrigued by her. She made him feel looked up to, admired, worldly, as though he had the attributes of a man like his father, though in fact he had no property or authority. Herbert went back to London, worked away at his dull, low-level clerking job. The fifth son of a not extremely wealthy squire of the hunt, the squire of Squirrel Hall, young Herbert was not a great marriage prospect. Interesting women like his mother did not surround him. He needed to make his own way in life. He devised a plan. Next Christmas he went home with a proposal for his parents and for Emma.