The Man Who Stole Christmas

On a dark day in January in Toronto, when the sky was much too close to the ground, I went to see the grave of Timothy Eaton with my friend Tom Walmsley. We wanted to memo­ri­al­ize our mutual friend Brian Shein, who had first pro­posed Timothy Eaton as a cul­tural demi­urge, and whose death a few years ago had cut short his ongo­ing study of the sober Methodist. I took a cab from my hotel over to where Walmsley was stay­ing, and after a hearty lunch we swung out onto the side­walk before a bit­ter fol­low­ing wind. I took my hands out of my pock­ets long enough to get my col­lar up and we made lit­tle quick steps down a long hill cov­ered in ice to the sub­way sta­tion, where we turned in just as I was begin­ning to regret not hav­ing suit­able boots. Walmsley handed me a token to put in the box and I slipped behind him through the rotat­ing bars into the Paid Zone. 

We had gone down a set of con­crete stairs and were mov­ing out onto a plat­form cov­ered in slip­pery yel­low tiles when Walmsley said, have you any idea what a Great Attractor is? And I did have an idea, a vague idea any­way, because I had been read­ing about chaos the­ory only a few weeks ear­lier. A train pulled in and we stepped inside and I asked him where he’d heard about it. In the New York Times, he said, and I was sur­prised: I had no idea that Walmsley read the New York Times. We found two seats fac­ing for­ward and Walmsley said it was some­thing about the Milky Way, which was falling into this Great Attractor at 400 miles a sec­ond. I tried to remem­ber what I had read about Attractors. It seemed to me that they were more like rela­tion­ships than actual things. Our train was hurtling for­ward by now, through a long tun­nel. Walmsley said, what the hell is chaos the­ory? and I had to admit that I couldn’t quite get a han­dle on it. But it seemed to me that this news about the Milky Way ought to put the kibosh on the Big Bang Theory. What did we know about the Big Bang, really? You would have had to be there in that first one-millionth of a sec­ond (the rest, of course, is entropy). We mulled this over as the train decel­er­ated, stopped, opened and closed its doors, and pushed on again, press­ing east­ward beneath the freez­ing city. I remem­bered read­ing some­thing some­where about the Entropy Barrier, which is what stops us from going back in time: appar­ently entropy approaches infin­ity as you slow time down. Walmsley said: how would you do that any­way? The train con­tin­ued its erratic haul, stop­ping and start­ing, as we leaned back and then for­ward, com­pen­sat­ing for the Gs. 

We left the train at Walmsley’s sig­nal and he led me into a crowded war­ren of esca­la­tors and hall­ways, talk­ing over his shoul­der as he led me up, or down, and around, along cor­ri­dors filled with peo­ple mov­ing rapidly with us or against us, finally out onto yet another plat­form sheathed in damp yel­low tiles. All sense of the com­pass had by now deserted me. A cold wind sucked in along the tun­nel and another train pulled up in front of us. Walmsley was say­ing, you know what Hans Kung says about rein­car­na­tion: given one impos­si­bil­ity — the first birth — there is no rea­son not to accept another — a sec­ond birth, and so on. 

A few min­utes later we were out on the side­walk, bent into the wind, and I knew that I was com­pletely lost. It’s along here some­where, Walmsley said, and we began work­ing our way across and up side­hills, past the brick and glass facades of minor thor­ough­fares, until we came upon a hedged breach in one of them, and a low sign denot­ing the entrance to Mount Pleasant Cemetery. As we entered the ceme­tery grounds along a nar­row byway, the sounds of the city fell away, and we felt the tem­per­a­ture drop another notch. Before us white ground rose up to grey sky, all etched over by the skinny black skele­tons of inde­ter­mi­nate trees hiber­nat­ing like the low bushes, also black and leaf­less, that smudged the nearby snow. We were walk­ing into the land of the dead, although nei­ther of us real­ized it at first, and soon we began to notice tomb­stones deposited here and there along the path, and to feel the sur­prise that grave­yards always invoke. The road dropped down into a creek bot­tom and then forked at the base of a steep bluff. A wooden sign with dia­gram­matic mark­ings on it poked up from the snow; when we got over to it we found it that bore num­bers only, no names, and we had snow stick­ing to our socks. The rich would have bought the view, we rea­soned, and so took the left fork up the hill. Off to one side a black mar­ble block lay in the snow, one word engraved in its shiny sur­face: BLACK—a blunt, mod­ernist touch, and then, as we gained the ridge, the larger crypts began to heave into view, first a series of mod­est eight-or nine-footers, then larger ones cast in a Grecian mode and bear­ing Anglo-Saxon names set into grey con­crete. Everything was grey or white and it was get­ting colder with each step. 

The Eaton crypt was by far the largest of the Greek tem­ples; we glimpsed it first through a screen of gnarled black branches and knew it imme­di­ately to be what we were seek­ing. It was a squat, sullen ver­sion of the Parthenon, with heavy con­crete pil­lars and a pair of con­crete Roman lions crouch­ing by the stairs. To approach it we had to break trail through an expanse of crusted snow; by now I could feel my knees aching from the cold. The mau­soleum was entirely grey, and bore chis­elled into its upper facade a terse leg­end— EATON—in the famil­iar sans serif of the com­pany logo. We could find no other epi­taph; indeed the com­pany logo seemed to serve well enough, emblem of the Cash System and reminder to all who behold it that Honesty is the Best Policy, that no tobacco, liquor or play­ing cards are avail­able on these premises. Where was Shein now? All that remained of Timothy Eaton, at least, was right in front of us. Cautiously we mounted the icy steps of the crypt and peered into its dark inte­rior through a tiny hole in a grille set into the main door. In the weak light we could make out a strip of car­pet on a con­crete floor, a large can­de­labrum and, set into the inte­rior walls, an array of hor­i­zon­tal doors laid out in the man­ner of a lat­eral fil­ing cab­i­net — twenty-two of them, har­bour­ing, we pre­sumed, the bones of the Eatonian gen­er­a­tions. We were look­ing in upon the after­life of Timothy Eaton and both of us were freezing. 

We made our with­drawal rapidly and with­out cer­e­mony, shiv­er­ing and blow­ing into our hands, and we slipped down the hill into the city. Back in the under­ground train we relaxed with our chilblains and spoke in low­ered voices. There was some­thing I was going to say, but then the train stopped and Walmsley leapt up and we dis­em­barked into a stream of com­muters car­ry­ing shop­ping bags and mov­ing intently in sev­eral direc­tions. Walmsley was talk­ing over his shoul­der again and I under­stood that he was expert at this; he talked and led me through the mael­strom of shop­pers onto an esca­la­tor with­out jostling, and I real­ized that we were com­ing up into the Eaton Centre and knew then what we were look­ing for. 

We’re nearly there, said Walmsley. Just push on behind me. We tran­sited sev­eral depart­ments — per­fume, jew­ellery, men’s wear — before com­ing to the statue, tucked up against a pil­lar near the main door: Timothy Eaton in bronze and, mod­estly, only slightly larger than life, set stiffly into a straight-backed chair with his hands on his knees, one foot in front of the other, every inch the thrifty Methodist mer­chant. His chair was on a pedestal about three feet high; a dirty green rust cov­ered him and the chair com­pletely, save for the toe of his left shoe, which extended slightly for­ward, and which gleamed metal­lic yel­low in the flu­o­res­cent light. The toe was the only thing about him that might be said to give off light; it glowed warmly before us: I reached out — as had myr­iad cus­tomers before me seek­ing Shopper’s Luck —and let my fin­gers rest there on the cold bronze toe of the mon­u­ment. When I got home a few days later I pulled out a let­ter from Shein writ­ten ten years ear­lier, to which he had writ­ten the fol­low­ing postscript: 

Must tell you that, using map and caliper, I spent an after­noon last week deter­min­ing the pre­cise cen­tre of Canada. It is 43 deg 39′ 22 1/2″ North by 79 deg. 23′ 00″ West and about 83 metres above sea level. This is the still unturn­ing point from which rises the greenish-black mar­ble sup­port­ing the statue of Timothy E., the Man Who Stole Christmas, Born 1834 — Died $5,000,000.

Click here to read Tom Walmsley’s response, orig­i­nally pub­lished in Geist 15.