We packed a yellow school bus with camping gear and three week’s of supplies, a couple dozen high school students, a few dedicated teachers and monumentally tolerant chaperons, and headed for Montreal. Destination: EXPO 67.

First stop, Sault St. Marie; we crossed the border into Canada, my first incursion onto foreign soil. As the bus chugged along the countryside, I didn’t feel as if I crossed a real border; it looked too similar to Michigan. Oaks, maples and pine trees encircled sparkling inland lakes. Warm summer air wafted through the bus as we drove passed farms, villages and forests; the promise of three weeks of adventure around every turn of the road.

In the midst of the Ontarian countryside, we camped at an extraordinarily large lake, large enough that sailboats dotted the horizon. I took immediate notice. A sailboat spelled adventure, much more than a school bus. After camp was made, a couple of friends and I headed straight for the marina, intent on checking out the boats, infatuated already by the prospect of a sail.

One of the small craft was occupied, the companionway hatch slid back. Feeling emboldened we moseyed out onto the finger pier and shouted “hullo!” A young man popped his head up from below and in the friendly way of Canadians greeted our small band of explorers. Minutes later, we were invited aboard. There a young woman (probably twice our age), who seemed to us to be angelic, dark straight hair, porcelain cheeks, clear blue eyes, greeted us. She tended her galley, preparing dinner, smiling brightly, and casting glimpses toward her mate, knowing, perhaps, that we were smitten by the romance of it all. A handsome couple, in love, sailing aboard a beautiful yacht, a remote Canadian lake, full of mysterious islands, channels—the image remains in my mind to this day, the wellspring of romantic notions surrounding boats and water.

Camp broke the following morning. EXPO 67 lay a day ahead and our school bus bumped and bounced, harshly jolting me back from the idyllic vision of the couple and their yacht. I was fifteen and far in advance of living the idyllic dream of those mysterious lovers, aboard their sailing yacht. Certainly, I would not forget and a lifelong goal was affirmed.

Ottawa, next on our fleeting agenda, hinted at the underpinning of British influence in Eastern Canada. We caught glimpses of government buildings but mostly flirted precociously at a downtown café, being very American in a foreign land. It wasn’t until arriving in Quebec Province and Montreal, where traffic signs were bi-lingual and grocery clerks spoke French, that we were fully cognizant that we were not in Michigan, or the United States for that matter, any longer. We truly were in a foreign country.

Quebec Province was foreign in ways we didn’t realize. Transparent to us, hidden from view, particularly from visiting Americans, was a loathing for English speaking Canadians; an invisible contempt, manifest in the Quebecoise mind, acted out by dangerous French separatists. This insidious aspect of Canada remained hidden by the blinders of our excitement. I have postulated since that a tacit agreement, struck between English and French speaking Canadians to remain covert, to welcome visitors to the great exposition, concealing their festering condition was at work – but not for long!

Years later, I sat inattentively watching the evening news. A confrontation, splayed across the screen hadn’t drawn my full attention, though I noticed the agitators were westerners. Northern Ireland, I remember thinking. A riot had broken out; troops, tear gas, and crowds dispersed against their will. Protest banners in French and English thrust above an angry mob finally caught my full attention; the image was erratic, the cameraman obviously jostled about. Above all else, the thing that shocked me was that the scene was not Northern Island, East Berlin, or Cuba or any other hotspot of civil disorder that pocked foreign countries in the early seventies – it was Canada, Montreal and Quebec, places infused for me with romantic sailing, intriguing architecture and fond memories.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing! These images, the rioting, crowds surging, police attacking, they were incontrovertible, unimaginable. I have never forgotten them. They catalyzed my curiosity and fueled burning questions: Why do people, so apparently similar on the surface, so veiled in their animosities and hatreds, behave so despicably? How can they maim and murder with insidious fervor? How can they do it, how do they justify it? Is one side right, the other wrong? Is it that simple? Are their empires evil, as Ronald Reagan so fervently extolled? Is it belief, is it loyalty, or is it passion gone awry? These are the questions that became fixed in my mind and the questions Carter Phillips explores in “The Figurehead.”

Ten years later, I enrolled as a graduate student in architecture at the University of Notre Dame. There my curiosity was piqued once again by culture and conflict. Patrick Horsbrugh, my professor and British architect, engaged our class of eight, mostly Americans, two Iranians and a Taiwanese, in lessons of worldly proportion. Broadly experienced, stately in demeanor and very British, Professor Horsbrugh introduced perspectives and possibilities from far beyond our classroom in South Bend.

My fixation on conflict, insensible and unexplainable conflict, gnawed and chewed in the background during the years at Notre Dame. It was something about Professor Horsbrugh, who he was, his broadness of vision, his origins and ideas, that kept prompting my curiosity. One small note in particular, something Professor told me, re-ignited my curiosity. While decidedly British, Professor Horsbrugh told me he was from Belfast. Everyone is from somewhere, but after reading “Riddle of the Sands,” by Erskine Childers, I began to understand that Belfast and the surrounding six counties comprising Northern Ireland were in the center of a conflict similar to French Canada. There were many parallels. It was then I began a measured and lengthy study of the Irish “Troubles” and that study was the seed of “The Figurehead.” That seed has now grown mature, blossomed, and bore fruit.

In closing, I wish to point out that “The Figurehead,” is the outcome of unremitting curiosity and a celebration of peacemaking combined. It is a fictionalized celebration of the Irish peace process that in 1998 resulted in the signing of the historic Belfast Agreement, also known as the Good Friday Agreement. It is a story about social justice and how people from both sides of the “pond” engaged in a Herculean effort to do everything possible to discover the things that make us a peaceful society, rather than a fractured and brutal collection of misfits.

The basis of diplomatic achievement, like the Belfast Agreement, comes when our viewpoint is broad and the context of our relationships is understood. I believe these two principles—viewpoint and context—are what led to this agreement and are the soundest underpinnings of diplomacy. Thus, the Belfast Agreement, and the process followed to accomplish it, is a model—a model we should all strive to understand and emulate when we ultimately face the great settling of our ideological and geopolitical differences around the world.

Jeanette Morris was first mate on this cruise, editing and offering invaluable suggestions. Her insight and experience certainly enabled this passage. Judy Coker, sister, teacher, and adventurer offered continual support from Kyoto, Japan. Kathy Gervasi, sailor, boat restorer, and great friend read the story and sometimes found herself at the tiller. Artist and naval architect, Chris Guyette, perfectly captures the feel of Marblehead in his exceptional illustrations, having sailed and lived aboard in precisely the locations described in the story. The real “Bones,” Bones Lehmann, drew the “Figurehead” in 1937. A copy of the drawing was mounted in and sailed aboard the Old Bird, a 37 ft. Atkin ketch that Kathy Gervasi and I restored in 1980 while graduate students at the University of Notre Dame. Finally, credit for the design of the front and back cover goes to Jessica Hamilton of JEM Design in Atascadero, California. Thank you all!

Although this is a work of fiction, those on board this passage are both composites and interpretations of people I have sailed with—including the mysterious, secretive, and irascible! Of those many people, Patrick Horsbrugh, architect, landscape architect, artist and professor at the University of Notre Dame, is perhaps the most memorable and inspirational. A mere two years of interaction with Professor Horsbrugh during graduate school resulted in a lifetime of contemplation and curiosity.