her voice tight with fear, asked from the bow. Her question would have been answered if she had simply turned her upper body and looked into the canoe wake. Such movement is not possible when one’s fingers are squeezing the grain out of the cedar gunwales and one’s elbows are tightly locked as if stricken with rigor mortis. Whatever the problem, my mother was not going to view the wake because she was convinced that even a wrinkle of the nose would spin the Undertaker like a top and drown us all. Nothing could loosen her death grip on the canoe until its nose touched the sandy shore on the other side of the lake and my father pried her fingers loose.
Why she so feared the water I do not know, probably because I didn’t ask her, just as I didn’t ask her other things that I should have. I had no fear of the water and proceeded to stand in the canoe to get a better view of the problem. I already knew what the problem was, of course, because I created it but wanted a full view of the action, and my effort to hoist myself by the gunwale set the Undertaker rocking and elicited another scream from the bow.
“Ray, for God’s sake, we’re tipping! Hail holy Queen, mother of Mercy and Light …”
My father’s hand let go of the paddle that was executing a fast right turn to push me to the canoe floor. Before it did, I got a pretty good look into the wake where a little brown paper bag made its final bob before its bottom gave way, creating a starburst of dazzling white crystals dissolving as they sank into the dark waters of Loon Lake. Our family cache of sugar, not replaceable under war rationing, was gone.
The remainder of the ride across the lake was jerky as my father interrupted his normally rhythmic paddling to tap my fingers while they tried to extricate another bag from the grocery box and continue this delightful new game. Far too soon, however, the bow of the canoe scrunched into the beach sand, my mother leaped to safety and pulled me from the clutches of the demon craft.
I have no recollection of what happened after that. I learned later that we had two or three days of golden autumn filled with walks across the forest floor newly matted with yellow brown birch and poplar leaves. At night there were quiet talks at campfires that flickered orange yellow and listened for a train whistle meant just for us. My parents talked and crooned the old songs like “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” and “Shine on Harvest Moon” and drank strong tea without sugar. They cut it with thick and sickly sweet Carnation evaporated milk, cans of which sat on the oilcloth tabletops of every cabin in the Canadian bush, wooden matchsticks sticking in their tops to keep the pouring holes from crusting over. No doubt John Barleycorn stopped by the fire to help shake off the chill.
I don’t remember the quiet talks by the campfire or the autumn walks, but I do remember dozens of later Loon Lake visits. We didn’t own a camp as they are called in the North (as opposed to “cottage” in the south), but there was always one to rent or borrow or visit. I learned to dog-paddle there because I couldn’t stand the oozing bottom of the lake between my toes. I got my first dog bite there, a full canine slash to the right thigh, and set off a hell of a commotion when someone who had obviously failed animal identification put up the alarm that a wolf had attacked me.
I came close to drowning there twice, nearly fulfilling my mother’s prophecy that water eventually would take all of us. Once I got in over my head and was pulled to safety by a friend. Another time I was riding in the bottom of the Undertaker, paddled by my dad, when his little brother Gerry stood in the bow and dumped us all into the lake. I remember floating near the bottom, my hand touching the light brown sand ribbed like snake’s tracks by the creek’s current and seeing little fishes darting into a patch of thin green reeds. It was quiet down there. Everything moved in slow motion, and I was sleepy and ready to dream until I saw my father’s contorted face appear, the wavy dark brown hair flattened back against his head, his open fingers stretching out to grab my long blond hair that had yet to see its first cut.
When I awoke onshore after my dad’s artificial respiration had produced a thankful gurgling, I heard another of his expressions, the one reserved for times of great anger when immediate danger had passed: “Jesus Mexican Murphy!”
Veronica was not present so was spared the agony of seeing the near drowning of her first born. However, when she learned about it, she shook her head and uttered a line reserved for the Polings and their wild bush ways: “You’re all crazy. Crazy as loons!”
After the sugarless outing in the autumn of 1944, I never again saw Veronica in a canoe or boat of any kind. She could not avoid the water, however. It was everywhere and in particular it was near our house, in the form of McVicar Creek.
McVicar Creek was no turgid urban trickle in those days. To the neighbourhood kids, it was an artery in the heart of Borneo. It entered the city from somewhere far off the northern edge of the city map and plunged through pieces of heavy bush, revealing itself to the backsides of a couple of middle-class neighbourhoods before crossing under River Street. There it made a sharp left turn in a grass and rock meadow before beginning the plunge down the steep hill to the Port Arthur waterfront, passing under Algoma, Court, and Cumberland Streets to achieve its true purpose: delivering itself to the vast inland sea of Lake Superior. It wasn’t so narrow a creek that you could jump it, but it slowed its pace in spots where you could ford it in times of low water. In the spring and times of heavy rain, it roared and threatened to be as big and bold as its nearby river cousins.
McVicar Creek was the jungle of our young lives. Above the River Street Bridge, there were pools for swimming and meeting places to discuss secret plans. Below the River Street bridge, we dangled worms to entice the last of the little speckled trout struggling against urbanization and trekked and hunted the strip of woods that clothed the creek’s path to downtown’s edge. This little forest was perfect for conducting war games and for hiding and spying on the people who walked the McVicar Creek path to Algoma or Court Street before veering right into downtown.
We lived in make-believe kiddie pueblos among the rocky outcroppings overlooking the creek behind the intersection of Dawson and Jean Streets. Smooth flat tabletop rocks provided our beds where we lay and stared into the summer skies and let the clouds stimulate our imaginations. The fluffy cloud shaped like a contorted cross definitely was an angel carrying a candle. Others were elephants and airplanes and other objects that sparked eye-of-the-beholder arguments. The smaller rocks were our tables and chairs where we feasted on the snacks our mothers gave us before letting us loose for days that started immediately after early breakfast and ended at the 9 p.m. city curfew with only meal breaks at home as interruptions. Sometimes we shared candies bought at the corner store with the pennies we got from the pop bottles our grandmothers gave us to return. Throughout the day, our playtime business took us down to the creek for exploration, swimming, war games, or searches for adventure.
We roamed as we wished, spending hours at a time out of parental sight. Surely there was evil about in those days, but it didn’t seem to manifest itself often. We knew from our parents’ warnings not to play south of the Cumberland Street bridge because bad men gathered there to drink cheap cologne and shoe polish mixed with pop, anything from which they could get a bit of alcohol. We also knew from our own experience not to play in the trash left on the north side of the creek at Algoma Street by the Port Arthur Brewery, which made beer with a picture of the Indian princess Green Mantle on the label. Rats — black, vicious rats with red eyes and sharp teeth — lived there and more than one kid had felt their bite.
Veronica spent much of her time as a young mother planning how to keep me away from the creek. Her strongest weapon was exaggeration. She laid on me tales of the evil men at the mouth of the creek and the dangers facing little boys who played by the creek. Who knows what lurks in the bushes? Any little boy who falls into the creek is swept away out into the lake and into the clutches of Nanabijou. You’ve heard him roaring, haven’t you, on those stormy days? Interesting, but I preferred the story of the ancestor shipwrecked and found by the Natives. I imagined myself being pulled from the water, nursed back to health, and becoming a member
