The Day the Falls Stood Still (30 page)
Read The Day the Falls Stood Still Online
Authors: Cathy Marie Buchanan
Tags: #Rich people, #Domestic fiction, #World War; 1914-1918, #Hydroelectric power plants, #Niagara Falls (Ont.)
I have imagined asking Kit if the fate of the choker is a secret between just the two of us, now that Edward is gone. I even parted my lips once to speak the words. But in the end, I pressed them shut.
The day when I will finally be ready to ask sometimes seems hazy and far off, though there are moments when it feels but a hairbreadth away. They come more and more, brief stretches when the answer holds little sway, usually when I am out canvassing, with Jesse quoting figures from Tom’s notebook, and Francis marching along with his Save Niagara Falls button pinned to his coat, and one or two of the others from the Friends of Niagara Women’s Auxiliary chatting away. For now I am content to wait, until I have grown unshakable in what I have come to know. To ask any sooner might be to snuff out the flickering sliver of light that says Isabel has been with us all along, that Tom is with us still.
William “Red” Hill (right)
Niagara Falls (Ontario) Public Library.
BORN AND BRED IN NIAGARA FALLS, ONTARIO, I GREW UP
awash in the lore of William “Red” Hill, Niagara’s most famous riverman. I’d see the rusted-out hull of the old scow still lodged in the upper rapids of the river and be reminded of him rescuing the men marooned there in 1918. I’d see the plaque commemorating the ice bridge tragedy of 1912 and know he’d risked his life to save a teenage boy named Ignatius Roth. I’d open the newspaper and read a story about his son Wes carrying on the Hill tradition and rescuing a stranded stunter.
When I set out to write a novel capturing the wonder I feel while standing at the brink of the falls, Red Hill’s life was a natural place to find inspiration. Like my character Tom Cole, Red Hill was born with a caul and had an uncanny knowledge of the river, a knowledge he would pass on to his sons. It was said he could predict the weather simply by listening to the roar of the falls, also that he would wake in the night knowing he would find a body tossing in the river the following day. In his lifetime (1888–1942) he hauled 177 bodies from the river, rescued 29 people and hundreds of animals and birds, and assisted a handful of stunters. He was the only man alive to have been awarded four lifesaving medals—the first, at the age of seven, for saving his aunt from a flame-engulfed house; another for rescuing the whistling swans that were swept over the falls each winter onto the ice below; and two more for the ice bridge and scow rescues, both of which are retold in
The Day the Falls Stood Still.
The ten turbines of the Queenston powerhouse all became operational in Red Hill’s lifetime. Perhaps he saw the Niagara as diminished and, like Tom Cole, in some way mourned the river as it once was. Both men were spared the 1950 Niagara Diversion Treaty still in use today. With the drastically more lenient diversion limits set out in that treaty, the water plummeting over the Horseshoe and American falls now amounts to about 50 percent of the natural flow during the daylight hours of the tourist season and 25 percent otherwise.
There were aspects of Red Hill I did not incorporate into Tom Cole. Red Hill shot the lower rapids in a barrel three times, in one instance becoming trapped in the whirlpool. The oldest of his sons, Red Junior, lashed a rope around his waist and plunged into the water, eventually hauling his father’s barrel to shore. According to local lore, Red Junior was paraded about on his father’s shoulders, a hero. My riverman would not have lauded the daring. The Niagara was not a river to be mocked.
Red Junior and his brother Major both shot the rapids. Both attempted “the big drop.” Major’s trip was cut short when his barrel was tossed ashore in the upper rapids. Red Junior was not so lucky. In 1951 he plunged to his death in a barrel constructed of inflated rubber tubes, canvas, and fishnets. Corky, another of the Hill brothers, died in an accident while working in a hydroelectric diversion tunnel.
Red Hill’s wife, Beatrice, was quoted as saying that she hated the river, that she was afraid of it. Perhaps rightly so.
A BIG, HEARTFELT THANK-YOU TO THE FOLLOWING:
my agent, Dorian Karchmar, for believing in me, for pushing me, for astounding me with her extraordinary combination of editorial and business smarts; my U.S. publisher, Ellen Archer, and acquiring editor, Pamela Dorman, for saying yes; my editors, Kate Elton, Sarah Landis, Vanessa Neuling, and Iris Tupholme, for wielding hatchets or microscopes as necessary, always with generosity; my copyeditor, Susan M. S. Brown, for reading with diligence and skill; my first reader, Ania Szado (whose tears thrilled me), and early readers Brian Francis, Lesley Krueger, and my writers’ group, for encouragement and helpful suggestions; my boys, Jack, Charlie, and William Cobb, for their unflagging curiosity, particularly when it comes to cork suits, lifeline guns, and severed, tattooed limbs; my husband, Larry Cobb, for food, water, shelter, and love, and for telling me all those years ago it was all right to depart the workforce to write fiction and then never once suggesting my “two-year” leave was long ago used up; my parents, Ruth and Al Buchanan, for everything that brought me to this, including their choice of Niagara Falls as a hometown; and the rest of the Buchanans and Cobbs, my big, boisterous, loving family.
I would like to express my gratitude for the generous assistance provided by Dr. Norman R. Ball, author of
The Canadian Niagara Power Company Story;
Sister Caroline Dawson, Loretto Niagara, IBVM; Sister Juliana Dusel, archivist, Loretto Archives, IBVM; Cathy Simpson, local history librarian, Niagara Falls (Ontario) Public Library; and Scott Tuf-ford, author of numerous Niagara histories including one on Glenview.
Many books were helpful in researching this novel, particularly, on the topic of faith, Karen Armstrong,
The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness,
Vintage Canada, 2005; C. S. Lewis,
Surprised by Joy,
Fount, 1998; and Armand M. Nicholi,
The Question of God: C. S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life,
The Free Press, 2002; on the topic of grief, Joan Didion,
The Year of Magical Thinking,
Alfred A. Knopf, 2006; and C. S. Lewis,
A Grief Observed,
HarperCollins, 2000; on the topic of cooking, Isabella Beeton, Mrs.
Beeton’s All-About Cookery,
Ward, Lock & Co., 1915; and on the topic of Niagara Falls, Pierre Berton,
Niagara: A History of the Falls,
McClelland & Stewart, 1992; Andy O’Brien,
Daredevils of Niagara,
The Ryerson Press, 1964; Patrick McGreevy,
Imagining Niagara: The Meaning and Making of Niagara Falls,
University of Massachusetts Press, 1994; George A. Seibel,
Ontario’s Niagara Parks: 100 Years,
The Niagara Parks Commission, 1985; Sherman Zavitz,
It Happened at Niagara: First Series,
The Lundy’s Lane Historical Society, 1996; Sherman Zavitz,
It Happened at Niagara: Second Series,
The Lundy’s Lane Historical Society, 1999; Sherman Zavitz,
It Happened at Niagara: Third Series,
The Lundy’s Lane Historical Society, 2003; City of Niagara Falls Centennial Book Committee,
Images of a Century: The City of Niagara Falls,
Canada, 1904–2004, The City of Niagara Falls, Canada, 2005; and
Niagara Falls, Canada: A History of the City and the World Famous Beauty Spot,
edited by William J. Holt, The Kiwanis Club of Stamford, Ontario, Inc., 1967.
The newspaper account of Fergus’s rescue of the workmen stranded on Ellet’s bridge is taken nearly verbatim from a news report recounted in
Niagara Falls, Canada,
edited by William J. Holt. Grateful acknowledgment is made to The Kiwanis Club of Stamford, Ontario, Inc. for permission to reprint the account.
The description of the brink of the falls as “that thin line that separates eternity from time” comes from James K. Liston,
Niagara Falls: A Poem in Three Cantos,
printed and published for the author, 1843. Exact ownership of copyright is unknown.
An earlier version of chapter 5 appeared in
Descant
138 (Fall 2007).
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Toronto Arts Council for their award of a writers’ grant.
THE DAY THE FALLS STOOD STILL
: A Novel. Copyright © 2009 2167549 Ontario Inc. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Hyperion e-books.
Adobe Digital Edition July 2009 ISBN 978-1-4013-9475-2
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1