 The warm and fleeting feeling of love and gratitude spread through me when I stumbled on this video taken in 1949 from a boat in Toronto harbour. I was looking at the skyline through my grandfather’s eyes, and welled up. How many entries for Toronto are there in Harry’s blue logbook? I’m sure there were times at the end of a too long season when all he could see was another grain elevator. But he also would have arrived on a day when the waves glistened, and the sky was a hue between powder and azure blue. Looking at the city from a boat’s perspective has meaning for me. It’s a whole other world for people who work on the water. As chief engineer, Harry would not have been playing tourist on deck while docking. Or maybe he would with a good engine room crew. Later, smartly dressed and topped with a Ben Hogan or Fedora, he’d climb down the ladder and head off to meet us for a meal at Sai Woos or Shopsy’s on Spadina. Family was important to him, but the arrangements were unique and difficult. For the better part of every year he was a man beyond reach — a shadowy presence at home. In the early years communication was not easy. Mail boats would occasionally snug up against a laker to exchange letters and packages. He was home for six to eight weeks, and then gone. Harry missed an awful lot. Was he ever in the stands when my father played football for Notre Dame in Welland? I can still hear him holding back laughter — the living room on Lyons Avenue glowing with the late afternoon sun. The ice in his scotch clattering against the crystal as he neared the climax of a harrowing-comical Great Lakes tale. In a family of storytellers, Harry was high ranking. The photo of my grandparents below was taken before they were married maybe on the S.S. Easton in the 1930s. Theo, my grandmother, is peeking out the door. There was a lot of that life that suited them as a couple, including time apart. When the kids were grown they would babysit boats during the winter break. I imagine Theo boarding a train in Welland, and hours later coming up the stairs at Central Station in Montreal where Harry was waiting. There’s a photo of them dressed for winter, taken on the street in that city, and they both look happy — enjoying time as a couple. I loved being in the galley as a kid, but was forbidden to even think about working on the water. The threat was death and conveyed the potential for danger. *** I miss the internet. It has basically gone. It’s been put through the Silicon Valley razzle-dazzle machine. This interview with British nature writer, Robert Mcfarlane, was done in a spot I walk by several times a week. I’m aware of my proximity to a historic river and landscape that predates Canada by millennia. Stay and listen to the people who join him. What does it mean for a river to be ‘alive’? *** This is one of those rare covers that may surpass the original in brilliance. Listen for the size and depth of the band behind him, and the piano refrain in the opening. It’s verging on orchestral. Joe Cocker's voice was an amazing instrument. Ricky Stainton on the keyboard stirs my inner teenager. 1970Comments are closed.
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