a long-overdue response to the ecological disaster, not to mention the embarrassing publicity, forces from industry, government and the community had joined to arrest and repair the damage. The erection of the 1250 foot Superstack in 1972, aggressive liming and reseeding (“Rye on the Rocks”) and summer programs which hired students to plant thousands of trees had started coaxing the shell-shocked landscape back to life. It was a slow process, but by the nineties, black was becoming green again.
Stopping at a pressure ridge where the ice plates collided to form sinister hedges, Belle searched for a safe passage around the weak spots. No one was in danger of going through on such a massive lake, though. Most drownings occurred farther south when novices pressed the season’s start or finish, or on smaller lakes where springs ran all winter, even at 35 below. The year’s snowmobile death toll stood at forty in Ontario, most from crashes into fences, rockcuts, other machines and even trains. She passed one ice hut village and drove on to the next, where trucks and cars were gathered round, chimneys puffed out warmth and hardy children flew Canadian flag kites in the stiff breeze. Although a few lone huts parked over personal hot spots, most people preferred togetherness over privacy. Ice fishing was a social event complete with card games, meals and matching beverages. At the shack beside the customized Phazer reading “Rocket Man” on the hood, she cut her engine and knocked at the plywood door. Inside, his feet propped up near a small tin stove, sat Ed DesRosiers, warming half a tourtière on an aluminum pie plate. A freshly opened pack of Blue Light made her shake her head, but only one bottle had been opened.
“Ready to go?” Belle asked as she settled into a battered lawn chair next to one of the holes, jigging the bait and peering down a turquoise crystalline tunnel of ice to the waterworld below. Raising a polite eyebrow at Ed, she broke off a piece of the meat pie, sinking her teeth with satisfaction through the flaky lard pastry to the spicy filling seasoned with a touch of nutmeg, Hélène’s signature.
“Let me pack up and get my duds on. Got to run this brew back to the house so’s it don’t freeze. Fire’s nearly out,” he said.
Behind the carton of beer, a yellow-brown form with black mottling lay still on the floor, chin whiskers and tubular nostrils giving it a prehistoric look. Belle felt a small shudder. “Ugh. Talk about the Creature from the Black Lagoon. What in God’s name is that thing?”
Ed finished his bottle with a happy burp. “Cod’s name, you mean. Freshwater, otherwise known as ling. My grandpère used to call it burbot, mud fish. Lots of people throw them back on account they aren’t so pretty, but they’re tasty—white and flaky flesh. Smoked is even better.” He stroked his catch with affection and tucked it into his carrier. “No scales to speak of, but the skin is some tough.”
“Say it’s trout if you serve it to me. I don’t want to know.”
Shortly after, they gunned up the steep hill to the top of the Dunes, sand base exposed from the traffic. Accessible by an old logging road in the summer, the Dunes had served for decades as an unofficial park where locals planted their trailers Newfie-style to enjoy the beaches and the fishing. The proposed development would bring thousands of tourists from crowded Southern Ontario, as well as the United States, at a high cost to the environment. “Sad to see this wilderness disappear if that plan goes through,” Belle said as she flipped up her facemask. “We’ve had this bush to ourselves for so long. The casual camping is dangerous, though, especially because of the fires. That should have been stopped years ago. No manpower for patrols, I guess.”
“You can say that again,” Ed said. “I see them bonfires clear across the lake June to August. Let the wind come up and she could burn every hectare between here and North Bay, never mind how many water bombers they keep at the airport.”
“Last year, when that big one hit at Chapleau, you could smell the smoke across the province. And on a clear day a charred birch leaf dropped onto my lawn like a silent message,” Belle said, remembering the filigreed threads, a telegram of gray lace.
“Lotta money for somebody, though. Killarney’s full up all summer. Crazy fools in Toronto willing to drive three, four hours on weekends just to get out of the Big Smoke. The lodge owners will do a fancy business in boat rentals, not to mention food, booze and bait. The Beaverdam, Dan Brooks’ place on the lower east shore. That’s the nearest.”
“I wouldn’t care if the Beave closed up forever,” Belle said with a snarl. “Its traffic goes right by my house, one pee stop away. Two a.m. on weekends, I’ll bet ten or fifteen guys stop at my dish like a landmark, yelling to each other and roaring their motors so loud I need a second set of earplugs. Anyway, I heard Brooks was going under. His old dump hasn’t had a facelift since his father built it.”
“Funny,” Ed said, “because Paolo told me that his nephew was hired last summer to build new cabins. At least ten. Would have to mean a big septic system, too. That’ll cost.”
They gazed up the frozen North River, more inviting than a hilly trail, but too undependable for travel with its treacherous currents beneath the smooth snow. “Stumps show where the old bridge used to be,” Ed pointed. “Great place for pickerel. Those Belcourts who drowned were fishing there when the storm came up. One boat went to the shore; the other fool went straight across.”
“What happened? That was before my time.”
Ed shook his head as if he wondered how anyone could have been so stupid. “New motor was too big. That’s how they tipped. Then night hit and no one could go after them. Had to stay with the overturned boat, and you know how cold this bugger lake is. Only the two kids left by dawn. And the poor old aunt never come up.” A common rumour had it that the chill and depth of the water often kept corpses from surfacing.
The Drift Busters Club Bombardier groomer (“Your trail pass money at work”) chugged by. A tall tank with a heated cab, it inched along on huge treads. Sometimes Belle watched it creeping across the lake at night, a powerful beam reaching out like a cyclops eye. Now the trail to the lodge was level and wide, offering ample room for seeing around tricky corners. There was a speed limit, but how could a few volunteer marshalls enforce it on endless wilderness trails? And snowmobile horsepower had risen dramatically thanks to the competition for market share. Belle’s Bravo 250 was a baby; 650cc was common, and trade magazines reported that the new Thundercat 1000 was capable of over 180 km/h on a lake. The weekend before, two riders had collided on Lake Nipissing, sending up a fifty-foot flame on impact which had melted their expensive full-face helmets.
Once underway, the pair passed through the typical Boreal forest at a steady pace. Stretching across Canada, Russia and Scandinavia, this hardy microclimate consisted of deciduous aspen, balsam poplar and white birch as well as the conifers, white and black spruce, tamarack, balsam fir and lodgepole, and jack pine. Since Sudbury also skirted the southern forest, the spectacular hues of maple, oak and yellow birch hardwoods painted the fall like an artist’s palette.
Half an hour later, into the Mamaguchi territory, pines three feet thick towered over cathedrals of spruce and cedars bent by heavy snow. A chickadee flock rustled the birch bark for grubs and the pads of a lynx pair crossed the trail and exited in lengthening strides after the tell-tale triple prints of a rabbit. An arrow with a large happy face marked the turn for the Burians’ lodge.
Finally they reached a tiny clump of log buildings dwarfed by massive pines on the shore of a long, narrow lake. Ted, with a fat black Lab ambling around him, was unloading jerry cans of gas from a Bombardier hauler. The small lodge sold fuel to those too lazy to carry their own, but at a high premium. A dollar-sixty a litre, nearly eight dollars a Canadian gallon. The gas and provisions had to be lugged eighty kilometres from town, including the last twenty by sledge on a snowmobile trail. “How many last weekend at the poker run, Ted?” Ed asked, cutting his engine.
