The Day the Falls Stood Still

by Cathy Marie Buchanan

  November 2, 1916

  My Dear Bess,

  My company has set up camp about seven miles back from the front. We’re mostly fixing up a heavily shelled road, easy work, so don’t worry about me.

  You have made me into a father and I just about split in two with happiness when I got the news. I only wish I were there to hold my son and you, too. I read your letter over and over, and when I shut my eyes I can picture you cradling our Jesse.

  I was born with a caul. Fergus, too. Did I ever tell you that? I bet by now someone has told you being born with a caul means Jesse will never drown. Sailors used to buy them for good luck, and sometimes bits of them were dried out and put in a locket around a child’s neck. When I told the others about Jesse, one of the boys, who’s always got his nose in a book, quoted Dickens. “I was born with a caul, which was advertised for sale, in the newspapers, at the low price of fifteen guineas.” He said it’s from David Copperfield, but I’ll bet you already knew that. I remember asking Sadie about cauls and why mine wasn’t saved. She said amulets were a lot of bunk. She said the stripping of the amniotic sac from a child in birth was like a snake going through a tight spot to scrap off its old skin. For her their only use was in figuring out the health of the child. A firm caul and the child was well, a limp one and the child was not. But you have told me that Jesse is pink and fat, that he nurses well.

  I guess by the time I meet our son he’ll be old enough to learn all about the river. Until then, daydreams will have to do.

  Thank Mrs. Andrews for me. It makes me feel a whole lot better to know she is watching over you and Jesse.

  I miss you every day, and now I will miss Jesse, too.

  All my love to both of you,

  Tom

  After I folded the letter, I sat for a while, as I usually did, with it held in my hands. I wondered if he was still out of the trenches, which since he was an infantryman of the Third Division were his fate. He was still alive. I would feel it if he were not. For a moment I questioned whether I ought to have kept a bit of the caul and sent it to him; a talisman tucked into his pocket could bring no harm. But then Sadie’s snake analogy came to me. And its implication—that saving a caul at birth is akin to bringing into the world of the living the dead skin of a snake—made me glad it had disappeared along with the rest of the afterbirth.

  T his morning, after dressing, I compared my reflection in the mirror with the photograph of me on our wedding day. I wanted to know just how much the intervening years showed on my face, to see what Tom might. I suppose I am thinner, maybe not so fresh-faced as I was at eighteen or even as twenty-one-year-old girls used to be, before their beaus and husbands and fathers left, before they waited and grieved and picked up the slack at home. Still, the differences hardly show. There is no hint that I have given birth and become a wage earner and managed on my own; that the larder has never been empty, or the bank account, though Mrs. Andrews hardly charges Jesse and me full freight for room and board. It is not plain to see I can now cook a tasty meal with just a handful of potatoes and a few chicken bones, all the while a child balanced on my hip, or that I can copy any dress from a magazine, that when there is no picture, I draw one myself, often improving upon the design a woman has in her head. The wonderment that sometimes fills me as I watch our son is not obvious, or the ever-present ache called motherhood. I cannot find evidence of the wretched days that followed the news of Passchendaele, the most deadly of the battles in which Tom fought. The intervening years show only slightly, in the thinness of my cheeks, the jawline that is no longer round. Tom will not see the more sweeping changes. Or maybe I am entirely wrong and I have not changed at all. Maybe he knew I would make out all right before I knew it myself. Maybe he knew, even as he held my gaze from the window of his train departing for the war.

  The railway station is imposing: redbrick and stone with Gothic windows and massive wood-paneled doors, an expense the city’s forefathers insisted upon, a first impression for the tourists coming to Niagara Falls. Though the interior of the station is warm and spacious, Jesse and I quickly pass through to the wooden-plank platform out back. While the Spanish flu has let up since its arrival in earnest four months ago, it is still upon us. And with so many soldiers coming home from overseas, there is renewed fear: Might they bring with them more of the contagion that has caused so many to die? Surely it is best to wait in the frosty air beneath the wide, overhanging eaves. Mrs. Andrews said that if I had a scrap of sense I would stay home, that it would be entirely my fault if the household began hacking up blood, but I could not bear to let Tom arrive even a tiny bit hopeful and then not find us waiting. I could not postpone by even twenty minutes the moment when he would meet Jesse.

  The town has changed while Tom has been away. There is no doubt of that. If I were parachuted to Table Rock, at the brink of the falls, I would see within seconds that all was not as it once was. I would be nearly alone rather than surrounded by a gawking horde proclaiming the falls wondrous, a marvel, a sight well worth the trip. If anyone did happen to be close by, odds are it would be a woman, and more likely than not she would be striding purposefully toward some place of employment, some position that had until recently been considered unsuitable for the weaker sex, some position that she would in all likelihood have to give up with the men coming home. She might be wearing a gauze mask over her mouth and nose, as had just about everyone during October and November, when every day the newspaper reported yet another victim of the Spanish flu, when it was commonplace to hear stories of four women sitting down to a game of bridge in the evening only to be, all four, coughing up blood by midnight and then gulping their final breaths by dawn.

  The scarcity of tourists and men seems of little significance when considered alongside Sir Adam Beck’s mammoth undertaking here. Two years ago he had the possibility of a powerhouse at Queenston put to a vote and I agonized over how to mark my ballot, but not because what was best for Niagara Falls, or even all of Canada, was unclear in my mind. As things stand, we need more coal to heat our homes, to cook our meals, to light our rooms so that we might extend a December day beyond five o’clock in the afternoon, and there is a limited supply. To argue differently would be to claim ignorance of lit rooms inexplicably flickering to blackness, machinery suddenly grinding to a halt, windows frosting over when the coal wagon fails to make the rounds. And such occurrences have become regular events.

  One afternoon a while before the vote, I was walking through Queen Victoria Park, just opposite the falls. The mist was thick, raining down, and I was doing my best to keep myself dry. But then a moment later I was at the brink, standing there until I was soaked through. I remembered Tom saying if the power companies had their way, Niagara Falls would be reduced to a heap of spent coal. But as I stood there, it seemed he was entirely wrong. What I saw was water and more water, never-ending water tumbling over the brink. It was not a bit like coal. Coal clawed from the earth would never be replaced.

  I thought of Isabel, too, swept over the brink, hurled to the plunge pool far below. I knew from Tom it could have been worse: a bloated body trapped behind the falls for days or months, on occasion forevermore. Or worse still, a mangled corpse pummeled by careening water upon the rocks at the base of the falls. Plenty of folks said, “Best not gaze too long,” and there were tales of those who had not heeded the bit of advice and, unable to resist, waded into the treacherous current of the upper river. And for a long moment, I stood there at the brink, shivering and afraid, thinking a whole lot less water suited me just fine.

  And while the wartime shortage of men had meant nearly any fellow left behind could choose where he worked, I knew even as I cast my ballot that one day the munitions factories would close, some permanently, others for extended periods while they were retooled. Unemployment and the unrest that comes with it would skyrocket as ever more men were shipped home. It would be the same the country over, from Victoria to Halifax, unemployment everywhere, everywhere except Niagara Falls
. And while I knew the Hydro-Electric Power Commission would never be Tom’s first choice, it was comforting to think of employment there as a safety net of sorts.

  I wrote to Tom before the vote to say as gently as I could that it seemed to me the bounty of the river might be twofold. There was the beauty of it, also its usefulness. I carried the letter in my handbag for a week before mailing it, hesitating each time I passed the post office. Might the letter distract him? Might it cause him a sleepless night? In the end, I sent it. I could not stand that the post might find its way to his company at the front without a letter from me, and it seemed entirely wrong to substitute a different letter, one that did not mention the vote.

  His reply came back two weeks before the ballot.

  December 15, 1916

  My Dear Bess,

  I got your parcel with the sweater and heating coils yesterday, and then today your letter and the bits you clipped from the newspaper. The sweater fits perfectly and is just right to wear under my uniform. I can see that with the heating coils I’ll soon be the most popular fellow in the company.

  You should vote however you think you should, but here’s my opinion on what Beck’s proposed.

  Remember way back, the afternoon we spent riding the electric trolley in the gorge? We talked about the Boundary Waters Treaty. I’d done some calculations showing that with the powerhouses already on the river taking the water they were allowed, there wasn’t enough left even for the hundred thousand horsepower Beck was talking about back then. He spent the last ten years blowing the whistle every time one of the private companies took an ounce more water than it was allowed. But now that it suits him, he’s all set to chuck the treaty out the door.

  You said that the power companies have been told to ignore the limits in their charters, that they’ve been told to develop electricity to the max to help out with the war. It’s Beck’s doing. He’s wrapping himself in the flag, using the war as an excuse to take as much of the river as he wants.

  You wrote about blackouts as some sort of justification, but can’t you see that demand has been upped by the war, that it will drop once the war is done? It’s why Beck’s Hydro Circus makes the rounds. He knows that with his powerhouse he’ll be generating way more electricity than we can use, that he’s got to push up the demand.

  I have been to the whirlpool twice when there wasn’t a whirlpool at all. Both times the wind was unusual, from the east and strong, and there wasn’t much water flowing into the river from Lake Erie. At both shores of the falls the riverbed was dry. There wasn’t any mist. No thunder either. The water in the river was down, enough so that there weren’t any standing waves. The Niagara wasn’t all that different from any other river in the world, definitely not something that would cause a man walking by to stop, and maybe fill with wonder for a bit and be lifted up from the drudgery of his day. With Beck’s powerhouse, the river will be drained as never before, and those two times when there wasn’t a whirlpool at all, I saw what lies ahead with the river swallowed up by tunnels and canals.

  Again, I miss you every day. Last night I fell asleep thinking about some Christmas when I’d take you and Jesse out searching for a tree.

  The merriest Christmas possible to both of you.

  All my love,

  Tom

  I thought for a long while about the river and the falls and awestruck passersby, and a few days after reading the letter, I even said to Father, “What about the wonder so many feel at the brink?”

  “What about it?” he answered back. “We were given the river, also the ingenuity to harness it.”

  Despite Father’s dismissal, despite the many arguments in favor of the project, I agonized over the ballot; marking it as I knew I would seemed traitorous to Tom.

  The people of Ontario gave their approval, overwhelmingly, and just as Father had predicted, Beck’s initial concept of a powerhouse producing one hundred thousand horsepower had grown. He promised a scheme that would eclipse any hydroelectric powerhouse already built in Niagara Falls and be larger than any even contemplated elsewhere in the world.

  Construction began the spring of 1917, and ever since the landscape of Niagara Falls has been marred. It started with a narrow belt of cleared earth that was soon enough hollowed out to a partially dug canal lined on either side with excavated rock waiting to be hauled away. And then, with the summertime heat, came a new scar, a scar that now seems as permanent as the canal. Quickly and quietly, Beck’s Hydro-Electric Power Commission bought the Ontario Power Company and laid a third conduit from the intake gates at Dufferin Islands to the powerhouse. Left as it was in an open ditch, the conduit was an eyesore. Yet I was thankful for the slapdash construction. When I wrote to Tom, I was able to say it really did seem the Hydro-Electric Power Commission was being truthful in saying the new conduit was temporary, an emergency measure made necessary by wartime manufacturing. Slapdash or not, there was sorrow and anger in his reply.

  September 15, 1917

  My Dear Bess,

  There’s more misery over here, but I won’t write about it, not today. I got your letter just now, and the mailman is waiting for me to finish up with mine.

  I guess I shouldn’t have expected much better from Beck. The new conduit will be buried one day, but not until everyone has long forgotten he once promised it would be temporary. The water siphoned off from the river has never been cut. No one’s ever said, “Let’s just take what we need.” The power companies on the Canadian side are already making more than we can use. Ask your father. He’ll tell you we’re shipping the extra to the U.S.

  We are out of the trenches for a few days’ rest so expect a longer letter soon.

  Give Jesse a kiss for me.

  All my love to you both,

  Tom

  After reading the letter, I sat thinking about my last months at Glenview, the months after Hilde and Bride had been let go. There were hours lugging coal from the basement, loading it into the stove, coaxing it to the right heat. And then there was the soot, the ashes, the scorched biscuits, the hours in an endlessly heated kitchen on a summer’s day, all to be erased by the magic of a waterfall.

  M rs. Andrews and I had grown into a habit of reading each other bits from the newspaper. Not long after the armistice, it was a piece arguing Canada was changed forevermore by the war. I read, both of us nodding our agreement with the claim that our country had outgrown the nest of the British Empire and become a nation in its own right on the battlefields of Belgium and France. Our troops had proven themselves, fighting valiantly at the Somme, Vimy Ridge, and Passchendaele, and like everyone else at home, Mrs. Andrews and I had heard stories of the Allies leaking it to the Huns that they would be meeting up with the Canadians at such and such a battle, even when it was not true. “Puts the fear of God in them,” Tom had written, “the idea of coming face-to-face with a man who’d once spent his days chopping down the wilderness and wrestling grizzly bears to the ground.”

  When I got to the bit about the outrage the entire country felt when Canada was not offered a seat at the Paris Peace Conference at the end of the war, Mrs. Andrews said, “The Brits couldn’t bring themselves to cut the apron strings, even with Canada all grown up.” According to the essay, Prime Minister Borden saw his chance and pounced, arguing vehemently, playing his trump card—the fact that we had lost a far greater chunk of our population than the United States. In the end Britain relented. The United States finally gave in. And Canada sent a delegation to the talks.

  Finished with the essay, I set down the newspaper and began threading my sewing machine. “That’s it?” Mrs. Andrews said, flicking the newspaper hard enough to send it careering to the floor. “All this talk of nationhood, but what about French and English Canada hating each other like never before?”

  She had a point, and I nodded, my face growing hot as I remembered a comment I had made about French Canada not pulling its weight when it came to sending men overseas. I had used the term shirking Frenchie frogs,
and it had caused Mrs. Andrews to lift her foot from the treadle of her sewing machine. Enough days had passed since Vimy Ridge to lessen the odds of a dreaded telegram; still, I was agitated to the point of having bitten the inside of a cheek raw. “I suppose you’d march off to fight for some country your ancestors didn’t come from,” she said, “especially if that country spoke a language that wasn’t your own and you were told by the higher-ups they had no intention of setting up a company of men you could exchange a few words with. You’d be taking orders in a new language, too, the one all the officers spoke.”

  The sentiment seemed dangerous, a way of thinking that could undermine Borden’s efforts to steamroll ahead with an act allowing the conscription of men countrywide, and a new wave of men to replace those fallen at Vimy Ridge was the surest bet of Tom ever coming home. I shrugged, and she said, “Faut se mettre dans la peau de quelqu’un,” before returning her foot to the treadle.

  I remembered her maiden name then—Lambert—written on the backside of an old photograph, and I knew the correct pronunciation was lambair, rather than as I had assumed. Even so, I got up from my sewing machine and stood over her with my hands on my hips. “If you had someone over there, you wouldn’t think any differently than the rest of us.” Then I strode off, slamming the door as I went.

  I was facedown on my bed, weeping into a wet pillow, when Mrs. Andrews put her hand on my back. “He’s fine, Bess,” she said. “I know he is.” Her kindness made me bawl all the harder. I was tired and ashamed and sick to death of the war, wreaking havoc from four thousand miles away.

  Conscription became the issue on which Borden’s reelection hinged, and, never mind that French Canada teetered on the brink of mutiny, he was doing whatever he could to make sure it went his way. He gave the vote to the overseas soldiers, who could only see conscription as boosting their odds, and mandated that their votes could be scattered among the electoral districts as he saw fit. He abolished the notion that all women were unfit for the broils and excitements of a federal election and replaced it with legislation that gave those with husbands or sons or brothers fighting in the war the right to vote. As final assurance, conscientious objectors and immigrants from enemy countries were told they no longer had a say.