The Republic of Nothing

Critical Acclaim for
The Republic of Nothing

Winner, Dartmouth Book Award

“A triple-decker of a yarn, shot through with mythic
possibilities, it's part fairy tale, part adventure story and
part coming-of-age testimonial; it manages to be earnest and
absurd, poetic and humorous all at once…
The Republic of
Nothing
is a pleasure to read and a wonderful antidote
to winter.” —
The Globe and Mail

“The Republic of Nothing
is an unpredictable universe…
It's this unpredictability that makes
the novel a success.” —
Calgary Herald

“A little gem of a story that should be granted its
appropriate label as the Canadian version of [Salman
Rushdie's]
Midnight's Children”
—
Montreal Gazette

“Radiant with energy… entertainment that is almost as
diversified as Choyce's own life.” —
Winnipeg Free Press

“This book is, without a doubt, the best book I have read
to date. Lesley Choyce does fantastic work with this story.
This novel evokes every emotion — humor, excitement,
anger, resentment, love, worry, jealousy — and does so
in a natural, comfortable way. I can't give this book enough
praise. Everyone should read it and hopefully enjoy it as
much as I did. Oh, and Alberta English 30-1 students,
it's on your reading list and is probably the most
fun choice [Choyce!] on the list.”
— that kid (on amazon.ca)

Also by LESLEY CHOYCE

F
ICTION
Sea of Tranquility
(2003)
Cold Clear Morning
(2001)
The Summer of Apartment X
(1999)
World Enough (199S)
The Trap Door to Heaven
(1996)
Dance the Rocks Ashore
(1997)
The Republic of Nothing
(1994)
Ecstasy Conspiracy
(1992)
Margin of Error
(1992)
Magnificent Obsessions
(1991)
The Second Season of Jonas MacPherson
(1989)
Coming Up for Air
(1988)
The Dream Auditor
(1986)
Conventional Emotions
(1985)
Downwind
(1984)
Billy Botzweiler's Last Dance
(1984)
Eastern Sure
(1981)

N
ON
-F
LCTION
Driving Minnie's Piano
(2006)
The Coasts of Canada
(2002)
Nova Scotia: Shaped by the Sea
(1996)
Transcendental Anarchy
(1993)
December Six/The Halifax Solution
(1988)
An Avalanche of Ocean
(1987)
Edible Wild Plants of the Maritimes
(1977)

P
OETRY
Revenge of the Optimist
(2004)
Typographical Eras
(2003)
Caution to the Wind
(2000)
Beautiful Sadness
(1998)
The Coastline of Forgetting
(1995)
The Man Who Borrowed the Bay ofFundy
(1988)
The Top of the Heart
(1986)
The End of Ice
(1985)
Fast Living
(1982)
Re-Inventing the Wheel
(1980)

LESLEY CHOYCE
With an afterword by NEIL PEART

Copyright © 1994, 1999, 2007 by Lesley Choyce.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or
used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or any retrieval system, without the
prior written permission of the publisher or a licence from the
Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright).
To contact Access Copyright, visit www.accesscopyright.ca
or call 1-800-893-5777.

Cover image: Brand X Pictures.
Cover design by Julie Scriver.
Typeset by Brenda Berry.
Printed in Canada.
10  9  8  7  6  5  4  3  2  1

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Choyce, Lesley, 1951-
The republic of nothing / Lesley Choyce.

Originally published, 1994.
ISBN 978-0-86492-493-3

I. Title.

PS8555.H668R47 2007      C813'.54      C2007-900203-X

Goose Lane Editions acknowledges the financial support
of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada
through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program
(BPIDP), and the New Brunswick Department of Wellness,
Culture and Sport for its publishing activities.

Goose Lane Editions
Suite 330, 500 Beaverbrook Court
Fredericton, New Brunswick
CANADA E3B 5X4
www.gooselane.com

Nothing has a stronger influence… on children
than the unlived lives of the parents.
Carl Jung

Whether you are really right or not
doesn't matter; it's the belief that counts.
Robertson Davies

Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life.
Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.
Henry Miller

My father declared the independence of Whalebone Island on March 21, 1951, the day I was born. It was a heady political time even on the Eastern Shore of Nova Scotia. New, pint-size nations were emerging all over forgotten corners of the globe and my old man decided that the flowering of independence should not pass us by.

He had also discovered that our island, large by local standards, was only somewhat smaller in land mass compared to Bermuda. Whalebone was eighteen square miles while Bermuda was twenty-one. In his mind it was clear that we were large enough to be an independent country. And traditionally, the provincial government had not been kind to the Whalebone Island men and women. Roads were a travesty. Electricity had not made it over the causeway and education was a mere rumour. Men had rebelled for lesser reasons.

My father, Everett McQuade, typed out the Declaration of Independence on the old Smith-Corona that had washed up on the beach in a shattered wooden box. The machine had required many hours of painstaking reconditioning, salt water being exceedingly unkind to abandoned typewriters. In the end, however, the machine worked. The typewriter ribbon, hung up to dry, was still salvageable. The keys snapped cleverly toward the platen with each hammer of his index finger. But the machine was missing a G. The tiny die-cast letter had
liberated itself at sea and never washed ashore with the mother machine. Everett had told Hants Buckler to keep an eye out for the G, but it never turned up. Instead, my father tried to fashion a G out of an old fish hook. But no luck.

Carbon paper had been mail-ordered from the Eaton's catalogue and on March 21, 1951, Everett scrolled into his Smith-Corona four sheets of paper and three crisp coal-black sheets of Midnight brand carbon paper, all ready to go. One copy would be sent to the premier of the province, another to the prime minister of Canada and yet another would go to the newly formed United Nations. The new sovereign country that was to exist on Whalebone Island was to be called the Republic of Nothing. My father was an anarchist in the purist sense who despised the petty loyalties of political parties and the inherent evils of patriotism. In truth, he was opposed to having a name for the country at all. But if he had to put a name down for his newly minted nation, a name that suggested total disaffiliation with any existing doctrine or country, it would be the Republic of Nothing.

The document stated simply but unequivocally:

To whom it may concern —

We the citizens of Whalebone Island do hereby declare ourselves a free and soverei n republic. Our rievances a ainst our former oppressors, reat Britain and more recently, the Dominion of Canada are well known and, in defence of our well-bein and free spirits, we find that independence is our only recourse. We herewith ask for formal reco nition from you and look forward to a Ion and healthy career of diplomatic relations (if any) with your overnin body.

Sincerely,
Everett McQuade
Actin Head of State

The original copy was kept for archival purposes. The second, a legible carbon copy, went to the United Nations. The third copy went to the legislature in Halifax and the fourth copy, posted to the Prime Minister of Canada, was very faint and most probably the message was unreadable. My father saw the importance of Ottawa to be minimal anyway, so he signed the document and mailed it forthwith as a matter of courtesy. As the weeks passed, there was no reply from the provincial capital or from the United Nations. A reply, however, did come belatedly from the office of the prime minister. It read:

Dear Mr. McQuade,

It was so kind of you to think of me and take the time to write expressing your views. As you might assume, it is not always possible for me to deal personally with every item of correspondence that crosses my desk. I do, however, wish you hearty good cheer and trust that you will be successful in your endeavours. My regards as well to your family at this festive time of year.

Yours sincerely,
Louis St. Laurent

The letter arrived in July but had a curious Christmas-card tone about it. My father did not question that perhaps the faint carbon quadruplicate had arrived unintelligible. Instead, he celebrated by blowing up the bridge.

Whalebone Island was lashed to the mainland by a tenuous thread of steel and creosote wood that converged on either end with a snaking, gullied, potholed dirt road spiked with jagged granite upthrusts hungry for Chevy oil pans and Ford mufflers. With the bombing of the bridge, independence would be complete, my father reasoned. He had been saving a single stick of dynamite for several years now. It had fallen off a railroad car on the old CN tracks that wobbled from Middle
Musquodoboit to Dartmouth. My mother had tried to remove the explosive from the house many times. She alternated between throwing it in one of the saltwater ponds and burying it in the back yard but somehow Everett always sniffed it out and returned it to its sacred home under the bed. So, when my father carried it away to blow up the bridge, my mother was quite pleased to see it gone.

Not twenty minutes after the prime minister's greetings had arrived that exhilarating July day, my father was down under the bridge with his stick of dynamite. The bridge spanned a narrow tidal inlet that rose and fell in accordance with the whims of the moon. Mr. Kirk was just then driving back to Whalebone from a shopping trip to town. He slowed to see what Everett was tying onto the bridge.

“We're now officially free,” he told Mr. Kirk. “Whalebone Island is now the Republic of Nothing.”

Mr. Kirk was a man who believed he had heard it all before. There was nothing in life that could surprise him, and he accepted everything with a degree of friendly cynicism. His father had worked around harpoon guns as a whaler so he was familiar with explosives and was probably not overly shocked to see one of his neighbours fooling with a stick of dynamite.

“I'm blowing up the bridge,” added my father, feeling that some further explanation was in order.

Mr. Kirk was not perturbed. “Well, it's good to see somebody doing
something
around here for a change,” he said simply as he drove on.