The Citadel Summit

 Premier Ludovic Ouillesophe of Québec hates the new GG for inviting Anglo galoots to overrun La Citadelle, which is both a Canadian military fortress and an official Residence of the Governor General. But Ludovic has other plans for La Citadelle:

Once Québec declared independence, he would make it his palace. . . . His provincial government had got federal permission to use La Citadelle for an international conference. At that occasion his spellbinding speech would surprise the world! He would denounce Canada and announce Québec’s destiny of separation and sovereignty.

TiDorque l’Incomplet also reacts with rage. As leader of a group of Québécois nationalists, he’s planning revenge on the Anglophones who stole North America from France. 

He would reclaim the past possessions of New France – New Orléans, Des Moines, Détroit, and other cities that Americans couldn’t even pronounce right. Through his strategy of urban ransom, cities with French names would pay monetary tribute.  . . . And he could use the Gouverneur Général’s outrageous speech, he suddenly realized, to re-inspire his anti-Anglophone group for action.

TiDorque soon decides to raid La Citadelle itself.

James Shining Coat is a dishonourably discharged U.S. Marine, of mixed blood and dangerous mind, hiding out in his home territory of Rat River in northern Quebec. Hearing the Governor General’s speech over shortwave radio, he begins to think of a kidnapping.

 “That old bastard.” James looked out the window at the few miserable Native houses and the dead mine’s discoloured smokestack sticking up like an elevated anus. “Made his name whining about poor Indians, and now he’s moving into a Quebec City castle.” . . . 

Enough of Rat River. There must be a way out. And yes, God damn it, he would get to the Quebec Citadel. Soon.

Larsen E. Sloat is about to become Canada’s Prime Minister, succeeding the LeapAhead government that just appointed an Indigenous man to the country’s highest office.

Trailing in the new Governor General’s procession to the Hall of Honour, Larsen E. Sloat gritted his teeth. That radical was known for socialist blather about sharing. He’d urged Indians and Inuit to beware of oil pipelines in favour of fish, birds, and worms.

Maybe he’d even influenced the LeapAheads to set up that atrocious Department of Reserve and Rural Rehabilitation. Left-wing bureaucrats wanted only to be agitating Indians and other rural losers against progress, which was to say, pipelines. But they would be foiled.

In the Hall of Honour, he jabbed a finger at the Clerk of the Privy Council. “Come to my office in fifteen minutes. I’ve got orders about a government department.”

The Clerk of the Privy Council, Canada’s top bureaucrat, quickly adjusts to new orders – he must kill off a do-gooder department set up by the same LeapAheads who had appointing the Indigenous GG. 

If Sloat wanted to destroy the Rehabs and that new Deputy Minister, Solenko, they must die. But with none of his own fingerprints visible.

Bruce Grawbul is the scheming mastermind who guided Sloat’s Responsibility Party to power and has still bigger ideas.

Larsen would have to go. The man was a dope. Whispers to the big Responsibility donors would remind them that it was Bruce Grawbul who masterminded the election victory, Quebec slap-down, and Rehab demise. They would see the need for new leadership.

Jack Solenko, the veteran official leading the Department of Reserve and Rural Rehabilitation, thinks his job is to help hard-pressed small communities and First Nations. But he gets the extra job of keeping Premier Ouillesophe’s Citadel Summit closed to media. It’s a trap, as Bruce Grawbul explains to Prime Minister Sloat. 

“Larsen, if the Summit does cause a public stink, we can blame it on the LeapAheads and Solenko himself. We say his Rehabs, whom we promised in good faith to support, have created a separatist mess. That gives us a reason to shut them down and blast treasonous Quebec in the bargain.”

“Wait – I see what to do if Solenko screws up.” Sloat made a fist. “We kill off his Rehabs and clobber the Frenchies and LeapAheads.”

“That’s brilliant,” Grawbul said.

Louise LaSorcelle, the Siren of Sovereignty, wants to keep Premier WheelsOff under control before he inadvertently wrecks Québec’s chances of independence. She and Solenko become allies in keeping the Citadel Summit quiet. Until he learns from his trusted Quebec aide, a former separatist:

“Beware the government of Québec, including LaSorcelle. . . . She’ll be happy when Sloat and Grawbul get you.”