Bored Ultimatum

I just reaped the whirlwind that is Bourne Ultimatum. I couldn’t help leaving there feeling just a little bit like my life – at least two hours of it – was swept up in the heady intrigue of top secret intelligence. What would it be like to be followed by secret agents in trench coats and earpieces? Who are these people that get their phones tapped and have their name on files behind doors accessed only by those with the highest levels of security clearance? Who are these shadowy figures that walk amongst us?

Then I remembered. I am one of those people. Well, perhaps it would be more accurate to say I was one of those people. You see, in the 1980s – when the number 10 still came before the number 11 – there was very little for our Canadian secret police to do. It’s Canada for God’s sake – in the 80s. Was anyone causing any trouble in the 80s other than my friends and me?

Kingston, Ontario was a little hotbed of political activism during a time when the rest of the country was so high on the new car smell and hair mousse, they couldn’t have cared less what was going on. You name it, we were all over it: anti-apartheid, Oka. There were even some very cheeky covert operations involving, on one occasion, those black lawn jockey things and, on another, some posters of a campus rapist that was getting away with it because of his family connections. There were secret late night meetings and yes, once I even wore a balaclava. But for the most part our activities were mundane things like petitions and peaceful protests that attracted a hundred students on a good day.

When people started talking about being followed, hearing clicks on their phone and our meetings being infiltrated – I thought they were completely paranoid. We were just a bunch of mostly middle-class university kids. Why would our country’s precious security resources be spent on people that had a ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ bake sale?

But then, I started hearing the clicks on my phone too. There was no explaining it – one day no clicks then every time I talked on the phone – click, click. I started seeing dark windowed cars parked outside my house. I kept telling myself these were all coincidences. I was determined not to let my imagination run away with me. Then one day on my way to an organizing meeting, I saw them. Two tall, clean-shaven men on a roof – I swear to God – in trench coats – taking pictures of me.

I almost felt sorry for them. I have no doubt that when they took a lie detector test as part of their job interview they didn’t imagine themselves following a skinny, vegetarian ex-girl scout with a concealed staple gun and can of paint in her purse. Was this the equivalent of secret agent detention? How embarrassing? How boring?

I have to say; in a weird way it kind of made me feel proud and very happy to be Canadian. If I was our greatest security concern – things must be pretty good. At the end of the day, I don’t know if they really considered us a threat to national security. Maybe we had just become a real pain in the bum and the university administration called in some favours. All I know for sure is that on graduation day, the Dean looked me straight in the eye, handing me my degree and said “thank God”.