Assured she would be swallowed up completely if the capital were set to close again to the power centers of New York and the now defunct but still feared Washington, a desperate plan was put into effect. Provincial leaders and what remained of their governments and political parties trekked however they could to the site of the chosen capital, which was as far north as they could make it, thinking that would insure the success of their plans.
The heyday of the Dominion was now a fading memory. Sophisticated enough to flaunt public nudity in Montreal and Ottawa, championing gay rights, same-sex marriage, and rights of trees and animals over logging interests, pressing all the weight of an enlightened, progressive law against “animal-oppressing” groups and “institutional violence,” most Canadians thought they stood in the forefront of an advanced humanity. But all that former glory now palled on those who inherited the shattered hulk that savage and uncontrollable glaciation had made of a giant of the north.
“What is this place called Flin Flon?” those who knew the capital’s name had to wonder as they headed north by dog team, private snowmobile, sleigh, and airplane. Regular transcontinental air service was discontinued, but those who still had private means enough flew in by chartered aircraft, sparing themselves the almost endless miles across the virtually uninhabited ice fields of Manitoba.
Though few people had found urgent cause to wonder about the place, it had achieved a certain notoriety with the publication of the book, The Sunless City, by J.E. Preston-Muddock. Except for the book, the thousand or so people inhabiting Flin Flon would have been the only Canadians to ever know it once existed.
Yet, despite such obscurity, a once well-known American philospher by the name of Al Capp had donated a statue to grace the city—-the city’s paterfamilias and namesake, Professor Josiah Flintabbatey Flonatin (the "l" in his middle name lost, however, in the brass inscription). The statue stood on the edge of the city since the early 20th century, and except for the base being gnawed by polar bears and wolves when they found nothing better to do, it had withstood the ravages of time and could still be pointed out to the new arrivals.
That accomplished, nothing was ever heard from the government again—a terrible blizzard struck and did not relent, and the capital and fledgling nation of Nova Canada literally vanished, cruelly struck down in its tender infancy.
