Robert G. Collins
Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1983
241 pages
Four years ago, while driving home from a grocery run in Kemptville, Ontario, I happened to tune into North Country Public Radio, Canton, New York... then pulled onto the shoulder of County Road 43 and phoned my wife.
The station was broadcasting a live report of a violent assault on the American Capitol.
Two weeks ago, the man behind that failed insurrection was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States of America. On the very same day that felon, who treats his oaths of office as he has his marriage vows, pardoned men and women who had assaulted police officers. The Capitol Police stood by their oaths; had they turned away, it is entirely possible that Members of Congress, Senators, and the Vice-President would have been killed that day.
Senator Josh Hawley, who'd urged on the insurrectionists, ran for his life like a little boy as Officer Daniel Hodges served to protect him.
Of all I saw on 6 January, 2021, this is the footage that most haunts:
Paul Williams lookalike Patrick McCaughey III is one of the insurrectionists who very nearly killed Officer Hodges.
Judge Trevor N. McFadden, a Trump appointee, found McCaughey guilty of:
- three counts of aiding or abetting or assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers, including one involving a dangerous weapon;
- one count of obstruction of an official proceeding;
- one count of interfering with a law enforcement officer during a civil disorder;
- one count of disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon;
- one count of engaging in physical violence in a restricted building or grounds with a deadly or dangerous weapon;
- disorderly conduct in a Capitol Building;
- committing an act of violence in the Capitol Building or grounds.
On April 14, 2023, McCaughey received a seven year and six month sentence. The felon apologized to the police officers, adding that he was unworthy of the rights he'd once enjoyed.
On January 20, 2025, President Donald J. Trump restored those rights by pardoning McCaughey and more than 1500 other tried and convicted insurrectionists.
Tolerable Levels of Violence takes place over a period of several days in the summer of 1999. The setting is not far from where I live in the Ottawa Valley. John Cobbett, professor of English at National University ("what had been known as the University of Ottawa"), is burying the body of a man who'd managed to elude his family's security system. The intruder's head was blown off by Anne, John's pregnant wife, who'd walked in on the attempted rape of her nine-year-old son. Care is taken in disposing of the body; the dead man's friends will soon come looking.
John and Anne's mornings begin with CBC reports of violence forecasts:
It will be another day at least before public transportation begins again and schools and theatres reopen. The National Capital Region computer forecast for today remains at Unacceptable Levels of Violence. But we're only one point below that red line, and I think we can promise our audience a socially active day tomorrow... and probably for a few days after that, with Tolerable Levels of Violence for the rest of the week.
This optimism counters the trend. Economic crisis and declining living stands have spurred violence and lawlessness, bringing an end to parliamentary democracy. Canada and the United States have been in decline for well over a decade. Their combined populations – no one pays much attention to the border anymore – is officially 120 million, with a further 35 million roaming the continent grabbing what they can and doing what they want.
When conditions are deemed tolerable, John commutes to Ottawa as the as part of an armed convoy. He's as dedicated to his profession as he is to securing the family home. When possible, he works on his latest essay: "Moral Illusions in Renaissance Literature." Anne what she can to contribute to the household income by writing optimistic children's books featuring young brothers named Tony and Toby.
The Cobbett family lives in Braeside, an unfortified hamlet roughly fifty-six kilometres west of what was once Parliament Hill. The church is a ruin, as is its gas station; most neighboring homes are burnt out shells.
In his 10 December 1983 Globe & Mail review, published three weeks to the day before 1984, William French writes:
The chilling message of this futuristic novel is that Orwell and the other doomsayers were wrong in predictions of man's fate. It's not the tyranny of totalitarian governments we have to fear, or the prospect of nuclear wasteland, but merely the escalation of the kind of random violence and terrorism that are already established throughout the world.
I was a young pup at the time, steeped in the music of Bertolt Brecht, Pete Seeger, Neil Young, Gang of Four, the Mekons, and Heaven 17.
I'd read George Orwell, Hannah Arendt, John Stewart Mill, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Thomas Hobbes, and watched SCTV religiously. Even then I knew that William French, for whom I have great respect, was all wrong; totalitarianism, random violence. and terrorism are an unholy trinity, as evidenced by Trump's release of Enrique Tarrio, Stewart Rhodes, and even so insignificant a figure as Patrick McCaughey III.
This past Sunday, after another grocery run, this time to Brockville, Ontario, I looked across the St Lawrence to Morristown, New York. You could see its scattered houses quite clearly, not two kilometres across the water. Morristown was so close that I could make out the green letters on the water tower.
I hope to visit the United States again in 2029.
I have no idea what to expect.
About the author: The jacket provides scant detail – "Robert G. Collins is Professor of English at the University of Ottawa. This is his first novel." – but there is a photo.
Object and Access: A deceptively slim hardcover bound in off-white boards, anyone familiar with much-missed publisher Lester & Orpen Dennys and its much-missed International Fiction List will remember the format. Tolerable Levels of Violence was #16 in the series, sandwiched between D.M. Thomas's Ararat and Childhood by Jona Oberski.
Though there was no second printing of the Lester & Orpen Dennys edition, the novel enjoyed a second life in 1985 as a Totem paperback.
I rolled my eyes at the cover, but I now see that it is faithful to the novel. The Cobbetts do indeed live in something that looks like a Confederate plantation house. I don't know whether it is based on an actual residence, but do recognize that Braeside has some unusual dwellings, the old Usborne residence being a prime example. My only complaint is thgat the motorcycle should be purple.
To those who live in Braeside today, I'm sad to report the your local public library does not hold a copy, even though the old library building features in the novel.
