Apocalypse North

Who Killed Stebbin Harpoon?

A young man in Kingston, Ontario ponders the perplexities of his life as a first-year university student. Should he date the poetic Keiko, the athletic Meg, the temperamental actress Daphne – or all of them? How can he prevent his eccentric father, dressed as a woman, from visiting him in residence? Why is Professor Svensen, the icily beautiful Swedish genius, behaving so oddly, and can he possibly pass her Economics course? 

Soon, the young man will be a hardened saboteur blowing up pipelines and refineries in the Tar Sands region of northern Alberta, and setting explosive charges under the CN Tower in Toronto. The idyllic university campus where he flirted, and occasionally attended class, will be a battlefield. For “Apocalypse North” is set in a parallel Canada which takes a dark turn into civil war. 

Ex-Prime Minister Stebbin Harpoon, bitter at his recent loss of power, appoints himself Lord Protector of the Greater Albertan States and invades Saskatchewan. Peter Mansbridge and Rex Murphy slip away from their CBC handlers and broadcast Harpooner propaganda from the Lord Protector’s capital in Red Deer. Mayor Rob Ford undergoes a religious conversion to overcome his multiple addictions, changes his name to Rahil Fuad, and establishes a brutal Caliphate in Toronto. Foreign fighters flood into the Caliphate; the city’s leading newspaper is renamed “The Toronto Star and Crescent”. 

In Ottawa – that “city of sheep ruled by weasels” - wily Gilles Luthier, Bloc Québécois Prime Minister, fights a two-front civil war to hold Canada together. Though his former rivals, the charismatic young leader of the Limber Party, St. Just Trudel, and the morose First Nations leader of the Noble Dreams Party, Tomtom Mad Bear, have joined Luthier’s government of national unity, Lord Protector Harpoon is winning battle after battle on the Prairies, and the Toronto jihadis are marching towards Ottawa. Worse, a powerful faction in Beijing is moving towards support for Harpoon. 

Can the Prime Minister trust the Public Service, whose cynical motto “Do, Undo, Redo – It’s All Good Pensionable Time” suggests that its loyalty to Canada may not survive the cybernetic deletion of federal pensions by Harpooner hackers? Will new technology – drones, the Loyalty Detector, remote-controlled assassination devices (including a homicidal electric toothbrush) – turn the tide for the feds? Can the Luthier government control its erratic allies, such as Moira Magdalen Kelly, the green-eyed Irish temptress, or Bernadette Archdyke-Dworkin, the brilliant guerrilla warrior whose ultra-feminist splinter group may be planning to execute the broadcaster Jian Ghomeshi for crimes against womanhood? Finally, why does Vice-Chairman Chiang of the Communist Party of China have a blue left eye? 

This story of intrigue, love, and treachery is seen through the eyes of an obese, cross-dressing computer geek. There has never been a novel set in Canada anything like “Apocalypse North”.