For all my colleagues, union sisters and brothers, who currently struggle for a new and just collective agreement.
Once upon a time, in the early days of Acadia, there was a wee girl named Ti-Flor who was something of a trouble-maker. You could always count on her to do exactly what she was told not to do. At least she was dependable this way.
Now, in those days, life was hard and the people were pious. People had to be very careful about how they lived for it was said that the Devil walked the land openly in those times. He was always on the lookout for new souls that he could collect and, if he tricked you, he could take your soul.
Though life was hard, there was one time a year when everyone celebrated especially well. This was Ti-Flor's favourite time of year - it was Mardi Gras - the day before the beginning of the 40 days of Lent that would end with Palm Sunday and Easter. Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday, was a day of celebration and all the villages of Acadia held wonderful parties.
Now, not all of the villages were so lucky as to have their own musicians. And the village where Ti-Flor lived didn't even have a fiddler. Well, Ti-Flor would see to that and, despite having been told never, never to go out of the village, she snuck away to the cabin at the crossroads where people met and gossiped in the winter months. She would listen to the old men, careful to stay hidden. And soon she heard what she needed. Someone spoke of seeing a figure with what appeared to be a fiddle and who was wearing a most wonderful scarf, long and wrapped many times round his neck and it had all the colours of the rainbow in it.
Ti-Flor began her searching. Each day she would sneak out of her village and go to a different crossroads. It was on Tuesday morning of Mardi Gras that she spotted the fiddler people had spoken of. Sure enough, his scarf waved in the wind and had in it all the colours of the rainbow. Ti-Flor, bold as could be, walked right up to that fiddler and asked if he would play for her village. That fiddler, he smiled a big, toothy smile and said, "I'd be glad to play at your party, little girl."
Ti-Flor marched triumphantly into town with the fiddler at her side ready to receive the praise and thanks she knew she deserved. But all she got was a scolding for having left the village. The villagers were happy enough to see a fiddler come to their town but Ti-Flor was told to stay with the other children who had already been brought to the house near the barn where they would spend the night so the adults could dance.
Dance until midnight, that is. For everyone knew that Mardi Gras ended at midnight and anyone who partied past midnight risked having the Devil take their souls. Of course, no one in the village worried about that since all knew what fine people they were.
Ti-Flor was upset that she was not thanked for helping and all the more angry for being locked up with all the other children. She would not stand for that and, true to her nature, snuck out of the house and made her way over to the barn to watch the preparations.
She was about to walk around the barn when she noticed the fiddler, wrapped up in his scarf, sitting on a bench against the barn wall. Ti-Flor decided not to disturb him. After all she might be found out and sent back to the house. The fiddler was plucking at the fiddle strings when one broke. He pulled the strands off, reached into a small pouch about his waist and drew out a shiny new string. He strung it onto the fiddle and was tuning it up when a second string snapped. Again he reached into the pouch for a new string and, as he tightened it onto the fiddle, the third one snapped. He looked very annoyed as he tugged the pieces of this last string off the fiddle and replaced it from the pouch. He tightened and tuned his three strings, played a few notes and seemed pleased with the results. Suddenly, before Ti-Flor could surprise him from her hiding place, the fiddler collected his things, got up from the bench and went around the corner to go into the barn which had been prepared for the party. It was then that Ti-Flor noticed something glittering on the ground by the bench.
When she looked closer she saw that it was the three broken strings. And they seemed to gleam golden in the light of the setting sun. She picked them up and now she was sure that they were made of gold. They were smooth and cool to her touch.
Suddenly, she heard her name called and turned around quickly to see who had found her. There was no one there. But she was sure she could still hear her name being spoken. Perhaps it was the wind? But the air was still. She listened hard and realized with a shock that the sound was coming from the golden strings she held in her hand. This was most unusual for she had never heard fiddle strings talk before. She was a bit afraid but that had never stopped her before. She held the strings closer to her face and now she could hear clearly that they were speaking to her saying, "Ti-Flor, Ti-Flor, you are in great danger. You must stop him."
"Who are you?" Ti-Flor asked.
"We are the souls of people whom the Devil has tricked. For the fiddler you have brought to your town is the Devil himself. Tonight, he will play his fiddle, but that is no ordinary fiddle. When he plays, it is impossible not to dance. He plans to play past midnight and then the souls of your village will be his to take."
Ti-Flor was horrified to realize that she was the one who had brought the Devil to their town. If anyone lost their souls it would be her fault. "But how can I stop him," she asked the strings. "I'm just a little girl."
"There is one way to break his spell. When midnight approaches you must throw us under his feet while he plays and dances. When he steps on us the magic spell will be broken. You will know when it is time."
Ti-Flor knew what she had to do. Though she was afraid she also knew that it was her doing that had caused this. She was determined to set things right.
Careful, so as to let no one see her, she snuck into the barn and hid in a corner. The fiddler began to play, his scarf flowed about his head like a cloud of colour, and Ti-Flor could see the magic at work. Everyone was dancing and no one seemed to notice that they had no choice but to dance when the music played. And they said to each other that they had never heard such beautiful music. And Ti-Flor, protected from the magic by the strings she held, also had to admit that she had never heard such beautiful music.
Midnight was approaching and, though everyone looked exhausted, still they danced. Ti-Flor looked at the dancers and saw that none of them were touching the ground. And they seemed to be rising higher as she watched. She knew that it must be midnight. She snuck out of her hidden corner and made her way carefully to within reach of the fiddler. The Devil was dancing and laughing and playing his fiddle while his scarf of many colours moved in time to the music.
He jumped up and Ti-Flor threw the strings under his feet. When the Devil stepped on those strings he screamed as though he had stepped on knives. He stopped playing for a second and the spell was broken. All the dancers thumped onto the floor and, in that moment, they knew what had happened and how close they had come to losing their souls. They saw Ti-Flor standing at the front of the barn and they knew who their saviour had been.
Everyone turned to look at the fiddler who was still playing despite the magic having been broken. Now it was the fiddler who was floating above the floor and every second he rose higher. All the while he continued to play and, still, everyone had to admit that it was the most beautiful music they had ever heard. Well, it looked like that fiddler would bump into the roof. But he passed right on through.
Everyone ran outside and, sure enough, there was the fiddler floating right above the barn, his scarf waving its colours across that night sky. He looked down, saw Ti-Flor looking back up at him. Oh he smiled a devilish smile, he did and then he winked at Ti-Flor. He floated right up into that night sky, playing his fiddle all the while, until all that could be seen of him was his scarf. Those colours danced across that sky just as they do to this day. And that is what we call the Northern Lights, l'Auroure Boréale.
It is said that when the Northern Lights dance across the sky, if you listen really hard, you can hear that fiddler playing still.
Some Thoughts:
This is a bit of a longer story than I usually share on the internet. Unlike the short short tales that I like to share and tell frequently in a variety of contexts, I tend to reserve this story for this time of year: Mardi Gras (a month ago now). As you can see this story takes place on Mardi Gras. It is one I learned from my Acadian grandmother though my recall is very imperfect. I pieced this story together when I was about 17 from fragments that floated up from my amnesiac childhood. I don't remember if the hero of the story had a name but I named the character for my grandmother whose name was Flora and for the ubiquitous trickster figure of Acadian storytelling Ti-jean. My grandparents were migrant workers who spent their life travelling up and down the New Brunswick and Maine coasts. My grandfather who was a carpenter, according to one of my cousins, worked on the Acadian memorial of Grand Pré, pictured above.
As I studied storytelling and anthropology, i eventually learned that this story was a type which is common across many cultures and referred to in some of the scholarly literature as "the victory of the smallest." Unlike the biblical "smallest" of David in his famous fight against Goliath, the "smallest" of the many folk and fairy tales usually wins by some form of trickery and cleverness, often after some acts of foolishness
Whenever I have walked a picket line, I have thought of this story and the many i've learned that are similar. A union taking on the power of capital is often an asymmetrical fight. Both because of the material advantage that the employer has and the dominant common sense which, unfortunately, continues to be anti-union. It is common that when a union chooses to strike that the majority of the population, including the mass media, will often blame the union rather than choose to see how the actions of the employer have usually forced the union to mobilize its most powerful weapon: the withholding of the their labour. Every strike is a struggle to win both materially as well as in the minds of the public.
Stories and heroes like Ti-flor remind us, in tricky ways, how and why to fight. For these struggles are also part of an ancient dialogue about power and resistance that we all need to learn new in every generation. I hope that we win this battle, for, while we are fighting for decent and fair wages (especially given the cost-of-living that has gone up so much on account of inflation as well as the machinations of the provincial government whose have used legislation unjustly to hurt us), we are also fighting for the quality of education and teaching and learning. When CUPE members do more than 50% of the teaching (which is the "product" for which the university is charging ever-rising tuitions), when the university is investing in new buildings with inadequate financial resources and management, when the university sees fit to increase senior administration numbers (by 37%) and "related compensation (salary, benefits, bonuses and stipends)" (by 47%) according to the December 2023 Office of the Auditor General of Ontario’s Value-for-Money Audit: York University Operations and Capital, then we need to remember the stories that have been told for hundreds of generations around the world. The "smallest" prevail. Though this does not always mean that we win. For sometimes all that we can do is to tell the stories of our battles in the hope that we will be remembered and can inspire those who next take up the fight. Chinua Achebe in Anthills of the Savannah (Heinneman, 1987) shares a complicated piece of wisdom through the character of an elder giving advice to a group of people protesting the unjust actions of the government:
Once upon a time the leopard who had been trying for a long time to catch the tortoise finally chanced upon him on a solitary road. ‘Aha,’ he said; ‘at long last! Prepare to die.’ And the tortoise said: ‘Can I ask one favour before you kill me.?’ The leopard saw no harm in that and agreed. ‘Give me a few moments to prepare my mind,’ the tortoise said. Again the leopard saw no harm in that and granted it. But instead of standing still as the leopard had expected the tortoise went into strange action on the road, scratching with hands and feet and throwing sand furiously in all directions. ‘Why are you doing that?’ asked the puzzled leopard. The tortoise replied: ‘Because even after I am dead I would want anyone passing by this spot to say, yes, a fellow and his match struggled here.’
In the novel, which I highly recommend, one of the protest leaders gives a title to this story: “The Tortoise and the Leopard—a political meditation on the imperative of struggle.” Then, after recounting this story in a new context and reporting to the assembled that the elder from whom he learned it had been jailed, responds to exclamations of "Why?" with:
"... Because storytellers are a threat. They threaten all champions of control, they frighten usurpers of the right-to-freedom of the human spirit—in state, in church or mosque, in party congress, in the university or wherever. That’s why.”
We will end this strike with stories to tell one way or the other. But I hope our victory will be for what we are only fairly demanding.