Without les habitants there would be no Québec.
But he’d also used another word, a word charged with meaning for the Québécois. Their patrimoine. Their heritage. Their language, their culture, their inheritance. Their land.
“He lived in Montréal but decided to move down here, to the Townships,” said Bergeron. “He set up cartography offices around the province, but chose to map this area himself. I think he must’ve fallen in love with the Townships and its history.”
“Don’t you mean geography?” asked Amelia.
“They’re the same thing.” The middle-aged bureaucrat looked across his desk at her. “Antony Turcotte knew that you can’t separate history and geography.”
“I can,” muttered Amelia. “So could my teachers.”
“Then they were fools.” The bald statement was made all the more forceful by its simplicity. “A place’s history is decided by its geography. Is the terrain mountainous? If so, it’s harder to invade. The people are more independent, but also isolated. Is it surrounded by water? If so, it’s probably more cosmopolitan—”
“But easier to conquer, like Venice,” said Amelia, picking up on what he meant.
“Oui,” said Monsieur Bergeron, turning an approving eye on the Goth Girl. “Venice gave up trying to defend herself and decided to open her doors to all comers. As a result, it became a hub of commerce, of knowledge and art and music. Because of its position, geographically, it became a gateway. Geography decides if you’re the invaded or the invader.”
“Look at the Romans,” said Amelia. “And later the British.”
“Oui, c’est ca,” said Monsieur Bergeron, looking slightly manic now. “Britain was invaded over and over, until it realized its weakness was also its strength. Britannia turned her efforts to ruling the waves and so, in turn, ruled the world. That wouldn’t have happened had it not been an island nation.”
“Geography is history,” said Amelia, taken with the idea. She loved history, but had given absolutely no thought to geography.
“But what does that mean for Québec?” Huifen asked.
“Stuck between two powerful forces?” asked Monsieur Bergeron. “The Americans to the south and the British to the west and east? There was no defense militarily. But one way to defend the patrimoine was to map it and name it.”
“And claim it,” said Huifen.
“There’re earlier maps, of course. Most famously, Champlain’s maps of New France and David Thompson’s maps. Antony Turcotte is less well known, but more beloved, because he didn’t make maps for governments or conquest or commerce. He made them for the people.”
He looked at the paper, as though the map was the man.
“This”—his hand hovered over the map—“isn’t one of his official maps, of course. It looks like one he made for fun. It actually looks like an orienteering map.”
“We think so too,” said Huifen. “You know about orienteering?”
“Of course. But this is different from even those old maps.”
“How so?”
“Well, the snowman, for one thing.” Monsieur Bergeron smiled as he looked at it. “This looks like a sort of hybrid. A real map showing all the topography though without place names, and an orienteering map, showing the man-made structures like stone walls and mills. But then there’re those whimsical touches, like the three little pine trees that appear to be playing. It must have been a map made for his own amusement.”
Monsieur Bergeron leaned in even closer, as though the paper might whisper to him.
“Or maybe it was made for his son.” Huifen laid her iPhone on the desk. “We think this is him.”
The stained-glass boy appeared to be walking into the map.
Monsieur Bergeron shifted his gaze to the iPhone. “A remarkable expression. Where was this taken?”
“It’s part of a stained-glass window, a memorial window, for those killed in the First World War,” said Amelia.
Monsieur Bergeron grunted. “Poor boy.” Then he looked up. “What makes you think this is Turcotte’s son?”
Huifen enlarged the image and Bergeron’s eyes widened when he saw the map just sticking out from the soldier’s knapsack.
“Mais, c’est extraordinaire,” said Monsieur Bergeron, then he shook his head. “When you think of the lives lost for inches of soil.”
He tsked three times, disapproving of war and the slaughter of youth.
Amelia got up and walked to the huge map behind him. Her finger followed the roads and rivers, and stopped in a valley.
She turned. “There’s no Three Pines.”
“There must be,” said Huifen, going over. “I can see it being forgotten by the GPS and commercial maps, but this’s the official map, right?”
Monsieur Bergeron got up and turned to face it. “If it’s not here, it doesn’t exist.”
“But of course it does, we’re staying there,” said Huifen, staring. “This map is incorrect.”
“Can’t be. Turcotte drew it himself,” said Bergeron. “His work was the foundation. We add new roads and towns, but it’s all built on Antony Turcotte’s original surveys. Maybe he just missed it. It must be pretty small. I’ve never even heard of it.”
“But Turcotte lived there himself,” said Amelia. “Why would he leave his own village off the official map?”
“Maybe we got it wrong and he didn’t live there,” said Huifen. “Maybe he made the orienteering map and gave it to someone else. Someone who did live there.”
“Then how did it get into the stained-glass window in Three Pines?” asked Amelia. “Non. That map was made by someone who not only lived in the village, but loved it.”
“So why did he disappear it?” asked Huifen. She turned to Bergeron. “What do you know about him?”
“Not a lot, really. I don’t think many people actually even met him.”
“Was that unusual?” asked Amelia.
Monsieur Bergeron smiled. “Not many meet me. The Société des cartelogues du Québec tried to do a biography of Turcotte for the Canadian Encyclopedia. Here, let me find it.”
He pulled a thick book from his shelf. Wiping off the dust, he found a page, then handed the book to Huifen.
“Antony Turcotte, cartographer,” she read. “Born in LaSalle, in 1862. Died in 1919.”
“But not in Three Pines,” said Amelia, reading over her shoulder. “It says here he’s buried in a place called Roof Trusses. Roof Trusses?”
She looked at Monsieur Bergeron, who smiled. “I’m afraid so. Turcotte’s one great error. It’s become legendary in the toponymie world.”
“He named a village Roof Trusses?”
“We can’t explain it. Well, actually we can, sort of. At the entrance to the village, there used to be a small business that made—”
“Roof trusses?”
“Oui. Those wooden things that hold up roofs. We think, because he didn’t speak much English, that he mistook the sign for the name of the village.”
“He never explained?”
“He was never asked. He sent in his map, with the place names, but this was a tiny village and no one noticed until years later.”
“So how do you know he didn’t make other mistakes?” asked Huifen.
Monsieur Bergeron looked affronted and even slightly confused, as though the idea of Antony Turcotte making another error was incomprehensible.
“He was human, after all,” she prompted, despite the mythologizing that had apparently happened over the years.
“Antony Turcotte did not make another mistake, and the one he made he owned for eternity, by choosing to be buried there,” said Bergeron, his voice clipped.
Amelia was about to point out that Turcotte had left the village of Three Pines off the map, but stopped herself. She suspected that had not been a mistake.
“This biography doesn’t mention a wife or children,” said Huifen.
“No, there was no record of either. It doesn’t mean he didn’t have them, just that the records were lost. As you can see, we couldn’t find out much about him.”
The entry was indeed sparse.
“Can you show us Roof Trusses on the map?” asked Huifen.
Monsieur Bergeron looked a little sheepish. “I’m afraid not.”