Free Self by Yann Martel

skills by reading anything relevant, usually biographies and autobiographies, but also Hansard, parliamentary committee reports, Royal Commission reports and the like.
    Question Period, which I attended as often as I could, was the highlight of my apprenticeship. I revelled in this theatre of power, this heady mix of principle and posture. I never sat in the Public Gallery, at one end of the House of Commons above the Speaker and the parliamentary reporters; the view was not very good and it was noisy with groups coming in and out. Instead I obtained passes from my Member of Parliament, borrowed a tie and jacket from my father and sat in one of the members’ galleries, which are on the sides of the House — one side reserved for the governing party, the other shared amongHer Majesty’s Loyal Opposition and the other parties. Since the MP for my constituency was Progressive Conservative, I always sat above the Liberal government benches, facing the Conservative opposition. I was therefore more familiar with the performances of those without power than those with it. An arrogance of Prime Minister Trudeau’s I would witness only from the back of his head, but the convulsions of indignation, the shouts, the pounding of desks, the gibes, heckles and taunts that were barely within the bounds of parliamentary decorum (and sometimes not) that it provoked I would get full front. I loved these men without power, whether official opposition, New Democrat or Social Credit. I was as fast as the Speaker himself in identifying So-and-so standing up for attention as “The Honourable Member for Winnipeg North Centre”, or Esquimalt-Saanich-The-Islands or Missisquoi-Brome.
    Of these hours perched in the Members’ Gallery during Question Period, what struck me most forcefully about the opposition — which had legitimacy but no power, or only the power of words — what has stayed with me to this day is that no matter the pitch of emotion in the House, the din of howling, the cries of fury and resentment, the shaking of fists — and sometimes it was no pretence, sometimes the smugness of men of long-standing power is enough to leave one bereft of articulate expression; once I saw a book flying through the air, hurled by a red-faced member overcongested with his impotence — no matter the decibels or the state of near insurrection, except for the words of the one member who had the official attention of the House, this overflow would all go down in Hansard as:
Some hon. members: Oh! Oh!
    These shorthand compressions of emotion jumped out at me whenever I came upon them. They conjured up in mymind all the rage and hurt of disenfranchised men. I modelled myself after these members of the opposition. Their rage became mine. Everything would be different, I vowed, when I got to power.
    So you see, when you are a good student and a future prime minister, you can be happy at times despite your acne and your adolescent gawkiness.
    TEN WHO SEIZED MY IMAGINATION:
    (1) Sir Edmund Hillary, to name only one of the many mountaineers who awed me with their devotion to the beautifully useless, despite the price in fingers, toes, eyesight, even lives — a New Zealand beekeeper who was the first man to reach the summit of etc.
    (2) Neil Armstrong, who etc.
    (3) The Second World War and her brood of heroes and villains, all there in black and white photos and colour movies to fascinate every boy of my etc.
    (4) John Dillinger, dashing gangster of my fancy, who despite sensing his doom and breaking into a run from the woman in red who had accompanied him, betrayed him, was gunned down coming out of a movie house by agents of the etc.
    (5) J.F.K., who lived in my mind the day he was etc.
    (6) Linus Pauling, the only man to win two whole Nobel etc.
    (7) Bobby Fischer, victor of Reykjavik, who though awkward, inarticulate and of uncertain intelligence, nonetheless had a wizardry about him that etc.
    (8) Yukio Mishima, who terminated his life in a most