Back to the Milky

Hunker down in the dark? With the light leaving that could be the temptation. But being the tough Canucks that we are, we always find other ways to get through our temporary light lessening world. The Santa Claus parade helps. Shiny floats, laughing children, smiley faces. And now neighbourhoods are beginning to glow with the extra string of lights over the door.

  

   The other day it was calm and I was sitting on some boulders by the shore. I happened to see a white flash amongst the huge round rocks. I sat still and sure enough the flash re-appeared a couple of times. It was a very healthy, pure white weasel with a solid black tip on its tail. If it had been summer I probably would not have noticed its brown shape amongst the grey and red granite but its white gave it away. Another creature adapts with the same cloaking device.
     The trip to Windsor was a wonderful experience. Unlike that unflattering rant of Stephen Colbert’s, I say that Windsor sings a sweet song of history and romance. The city is similar to Sault Ste Marie. It’s a border town, has a strong ethnic community and a river runs by it. We were visiting for a celebration at the University of Windsor.
     The Alumni Association was inducting individuals and teams into their Sports Hall of Fame. Ward’s basketball team from 1971 to 1973, which had won the Ontario championship three years in a row, was among the honourees. Our star though was his coach, Paul “Doc” Thomas. He was our host and in his senior years, is boundless with his energy. Doc still coaches basketball at a private high school, plays jazz on the piano and vibes plus he cooks up a mean breakfast. He also drove us around Windsor and showed us some amazing sights. Thanks Doc.
     Among the sites was a 4000 square foot English cottage style home built in 1928 by a rum runner named Harry Low. Low called his place Devonshire Lodge and the sight of it brought the Hobbits to my mind. The architecture boasts a unique roof that looks thatched and rolls over the copper eaves trough. Low asked the architect to make the roof “look like the waves of the sea”. And it does.
     Another stunning sight was a memorial close to the city’s riverfront boardwalk. There, a 2.4 m high slab of black granite honours the sacrifices made at Dieppe during World War 11. One can read the words “Essex Scottish Regiment”, “August19, 1942” and “Red Beach” carved into the stone. And a hole, at an angle, is cut right through it. But it is what the monument DOES that startled me so. At one pm, on August 19, if the sun is shining, sunlight flows through the hole and illuminates a stainless steel maple leaf embedded in concrete on the ground. One pm, on August 19, 1942 is the exact moment when a call to surrender ended the Dieppe raid. The Windsor monument was erected in 2010 and is an exact duplicate of the one placed four years earlier, in 2006, at Red Beach, Dieppe. That was the landing site where so many young men lost their lives.
     A young woman from Windsor designed the memorial. Rory O’Connor was abudding art student when an idea lit up her imagination. She was putting in the long hours of a lengthy road trip. When she saw sunshine on the dashboard it  occurred to her that it would be a great idea to incorporate sunshine into the story of the Dieppe raid. The sunshine idea is one that we can all use. As the November sun slants low in the sky we can rejoice in its golden glow. That shortest day is closer than you think. Each hour that passes brings us back to the light.
   

Bottom of the Ocean

     The bottom of the ocean is a long way down.  Not something that’s easy to picture. However, the world has been challenged with just such a thing, and much more.
     The past while has been rather chaotic.  If anyone wanted to pump up Halloween scariness, there was no need for a Queen Street zombie walk.  All it took was the weather channel. And to think that when the popular TV site started out people thought it was a joke.
     But Sandy was no laughing matter, as we all found out.  I got a hint of what was to come by the cloud action the day before the waters let loose in Wawa.
     That Thursday there was a sky show the likes of which I hadn’t seen since the night the Edmund Fitzgerald went down.  Low slung blue-black tubulars were having a full blown race due north. The entire sky was one mass of heavy darkness as wave after wave of water-loaded clouds steamed ahead as fast as they could.
     And it was warm, way too warm for October. That evening I grew concerned for my sister Noella Depew whom I figured would be getting the full brunt of it where she lived in Michipicoten Harbour. Sure enough, creeks rose, beaver dams gave way and an onslaught of water let loose in the middle of the night. Noella’s home was safe, but it was very close to the deep thundering rush of water. Her neighbours, Jim and Debbie Saunders, lost their house to the Brient Creek. The Ford dealership west of Wawa on Highway 17 lost vehicles to a gaping washout. Owners of the Northern Lights Motel lost their business and travellers lost a way west. Everyone was devastated.
     It takes a while for the seriousness of such a situation to settle in.  One very startling thing to absorb was the fact that raging creek waters pushed the Saunders’ vehicles out into Lake Superior! The photo of waves sloshing over the roof of their red truck was a sharp reminder of what had happened.
     The cleanup will take ages. That monstrous hole in the highway was a huge open mouth hungry for fill. And feed it they did. While truckload after truckload of gravel filled up the washout, the  highway north remain closed. We've had many highway closures, but never one this long, this time of year. I walked out to the road and was amazed. The silence was a calm contrast to the regular hum of traffic including the echoing buzz from vehicles as they cross the rumble strip on the Montreal River hill.
     The lake, being quiet too, accentuated the silence. I wondered if the animals felt the same way. Did they wander to the side of the highway too? Or maybe the coyotes ventured to places where the steady stream of trucks sometimes discouraged access. Like our yard, where wild/tame bunnies live?
The quiet days were awesome. We took a drive up to Lake Superior Park and hiked a sand beach. The campground at Agawa was a hush. Summertime campers who sling derogatives at traffic noise would have been in heaven.  The silence ended in a few days. The highway south of Wawa reopened and cold north winds charged due south. Then, on October 29, just before Halloween, devastation hit another shore.
     Hurricane Sandy punched the east coast of the United States and knocked out one of my favourites – the Bounty! I became enthralled with the wonderful tall ship, built in wonderful Lunenburg, when it docked at the marina in Sault Ste Marie before heading up on a circumnavigation of Lake Superior. Just when the bizarre nature of the Wawa floods was beginning to subside, I heard that the well-loved ship, had sunk in the Atlantic Ocean.
     The burnt bones of the original Bounty lie in the bottom of Bounty Bay in Pitcairn Island. Now the rebuilt Bounty lies on the bottom of the ocean some 90 miles south east of Cape Hatteras,
North Carolina. Fourteen of her crew are well and safe; Captain Robin Walbridge, who in an August interview laughed about chasing hurricanes, and another crew person, Claudene Christian,(some reports say she was a direct descendent of the original Bounty’s Fletcher Christian) perished in the storm. Sandy took them, as well as many, many others who lost lives and homes in the wind and waves. With so much devastation and hardship people are looking for solace and answers. This is when the human spirit surfaces.
     The outpouring of help to everyone affected by the Wawa floods is proof of that. The folks at Michipicoten First Nation opened up their homes and their hearts to help Noella. So, just as trucks and workers and ingenuity must raise Jim and Debbie’s vehicles out of the waters of Michipicoten
Bay, maybe craftsmen can build another Bounty. There’s always hope to sail again another day.