The First Time Elias Coulombe Leapt onto a Moving Train
The first time Elias Coulombe leapt onto a moving train was not during wartime or for a mission of political espionage—it was to stop a heist involving a stolen crate of cured maple bacon destined for the Canadian Culinary Archive.
Rain lashed the steel rooftops of Union Station while wind howled off the Rideau locks like the ghosts of Algonquin hunters. The year was 2091, and downtown Ottawa gleamed with chrome spires, neon-brushed clouds, and kiosks that sold genetically engineered poutine cubes in biodegradable cones. Elias, clad in a caramel-brown duster sewn from woven hemp and thermally regulated faux-beaver fur, adjusted his ochre scarf tighter around his neck, the fabric flickering briefly as its camouflage fibers synced with the shadows of the station. He was a hybrid of eras—a nod to fur traders, revolutionaries, and a future that dressed its rebels in artisanal nostalgia. Black boots whispered against the concrete—soft, silent. He moved like a man with secrets to carry.
“He’s beneath the cargo hold,” whispered a voice in his earpiece. “Ten seconds until departure.”
Elias nodded out of habit. Agent Nadine consulted no one but herself—and maybe folklore. As leader of "La Cuillère Fantôme," a covert Canadian agency tasked with protecting culinary history from extremists and revisionists, Elias had faced enough hijacked food trucks and sabotage-prone vegan militias to write his own Cookbook of the Damned. But tonight’s mission was personal.
They were after the Archivist.
He vaulted onto the train’s service ladder as it screeched away from the platform. The chill in the air wasn’t just the pending November snow—it was familiarity. The man behind the theft, the rogue chef who defected to the Phantom Confederation, was once Elias’s culinary mentor and foster father: Frédéric "Le Miel Noir" Tremblay.
“Open your mouth,” Frédéric had once said, smeared in duck fat and rosemary during a storm-wrecked night in Le Vieux-Hull. He was a mountain of a man, wrapped in a bloodied apron patterned with acorns and antlers. Elias, a scrawny 12-year-old pickpocket from Gatineau, hadn’t eaten in a week.
Frédéric fed him poutine—curds still squeaky, gravy brewed over a larch flame. “This is more than food,” he whispered. “This is resistance. Each bite, a retort to the idea we’re flavorless, bland, lost.”
Years later, Frédéric's version of resistance had mutated. He rejected Canadian unity, culinary fusion, global respect for Indigenous dishes. He now stole recipes from centuries-old archives and rewrote them with synthetic ingredients and dystopian ideology—erasing memories written in taste.
Elias landed silently on the freight car roof, his gloved hands prying open the hatch as the train arced along the Gatineau River. Inside, smoke billowed from antique ice boxes powered illegally by fermented cedar sap. Tools glinted in ritual formation. In the center, beneath a glowing ancestral tapestry of a sugaring-off party, stood Frédéric, his silhouette grand, eyes coal-bright.
“Eli,” he grinned, arms out. “Come to reclaim salted nostalgia?”
“You stole the original bannock scrolls. The maple bacon log from Treaty Archives. Even the forged Ladle of Louis-Riel,” Elias said, stepping down. “This train is your coffin.”
Frédéric barked a laugh. “No. It’s a food truck barreling toward rebirth.”
The fight erupted in seconds—pans clanging, sauce flasks exploding like acidic grenades. Frédéric launched a cedar-smoked jar of chili ash that scorched the wall; Elias ducked, grappled with a sharpened cheese cutter. The floor pitched as the train hit the Vanier pass, eddying through fog. Spices mingled with blood and sweat. The past became taste became warfare.
Finally, Elias slammed his mentor into the vintage butternut syrup keg. Foam and tradition spilled. That scent—burned sweetness, earthy regret. It ached like childhood.
Whispering into his wrist comm, Elias said, “Cargo secure. The recipe lives.”
Later, in a quiet booth at Taverne Souterraine, a secret restaurant beneath Parliament built inside an abandoned Prohibition tunnel, Elias sipped a thick-rooted spruce tea. Across from him, Nadine set down a plate: bannock crusted tourtière, hand-ground Jurassic pork layered with time-preserved peas and aioli smoke.
“Is this…?” Elias asked.
“The Prime Minister’s grandmother’s recipe,” she winked. “Recovered. Restored. Next week it’ll be part of the National Taste Museum. You did it.”
Elias nodded. He wasn’t a chef. He wasn’t a spy. He was something older—something newer. He was a guardian of a nation defined not by boundaries, but by mouthfuls of memory. As he bit into the pie, flavors of rebellion and comfort burst inside him. Ottawa’s cuisine wasn’t a single dish.
It was every plate ever fought for in the name of flavor.
Genre: Dystopian Culinary Espionage / Magical Realism
The Source...check out the great article that inspired this amazing short story: What is the national food of Ottawa
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