All Gone to Look for America

by Peter Millar

  In theory that ought not to be such a tall order, especially as I have planned what I want to do. This is not my first visit to Niagara. I came here once before, admittedly some time ago, at the age of 12 in a family group, all packed into my American uncle’s enormous 1960s Lincoln Continental car which was like the one JFK had been assassinated in, had reverse opening ‘suicide doors’ and seemed to me as far removed from my father’s Hillman Imp as the Starship Enterprise did from the Boeing 707 we had crossed the Atlantic on. We did, of course, what the clever Canadians had programmed us all to do, and went to see the ‘better’ view of the falls from the Canadian side. There was only one problem: I nearly didn’t come back. I was travelling on my father’s passport at the time and, being a rather small child for my age, the US immigration official hadn’t spotted me on the way out – and anyway what did he care, we were leaving the country – but his colleague was not quite so accommodating on our return only a few hours later.

  He refused to allow me back into the United States on the grounds that I hadn’t properly cleared customs formalities when leaving. This was undoubtedly true but a bit of a poser both logically and logistically: first of all, it was perverse to refuse me entry to the United States on the grounds that purely legalistically I had never left and was therefore still there. It was also obviously not the easiest solution to simply abandon a 12-year-old boy in Canada. Common sense – and perhaps the fact that at the time my uncle was a serving colonel in the US Army – won the day, or no doubt I would have a completely different accent today and last night’s conversation in the wine bar would never have happened.

  This time around, although the chances of anything even remotely resembling a repeat performance were unlikely, I reckoned that in these days of heightened border sensitivity, just in case, I would content myself with doing all my sightseeing from the American side. I have also realised that although we ‘did the falls’, in that visit more than three decades ago, by staying on the Canadian side, in fact missed some of the best aspects. With unexpected time on my hands due to the hotel receptionist’s misinformation, I walked around the State Park which basically constitutes the American side of the falls and is mostly on Goat Island, the small piece of rocky parkland that sits in the middle of the Niagara River and is responsible for splitting the great cataract into the American Falls on its near side and the U-shaped Horseshoe Falls which, as the border lies mid-river, beyond the island, are wholly in Canada.

  Goat Island got its name, a sign helpfully tells me, because in the eighteenth century English settler John Steadman kept his goat here to stop the wolves getting at it, though it begs the question of how he got to it himself; this is not the sort of river you want to be paddling across regularly. The view from the bridge is daunting in its own right and affords an aspect of the falls that people who come to look at the cataracts themselves, usually from below, often miss. Behind me, upstream, is a churning torrent as the water rushes over its uneven rocky bed; ahead, downstream, it seems to become faster and more turbulent still, only to disappear all of a sudden in a fine cloud of mist. Only the persistent roaring sound testifies to the fact that this vast flood of water is actually dropping a sheer 100 feet onto the rocks below. From here it appears to be a vast river suddenly evaporating into space.

  Time for a closer look. Although the Canadian side offers the possibility of getting close to the bottom of the Horseshoe Falls it does so in a very civilised, safe and secure fashion, via a set of lifts and tunnels. The US side’s equivalent is the Cave of the Winds, and it is an altogether less health-and-safety friendly setup. And a lot more exciting as a result. Nowadays there is a lift, which is where I am standing along with two Asian-American women, all three of us clad in see-through yellow capes with hoods, trousers rolled up to the knees, socks and shoes in a carrier bag and feet in a pair of disposable plastic sandals, all provided as part of the entrance fee. At five minutes past opening time, the lift supervisor in his green national park uniform arrives and ushers us in, telling us how originally there was just a wooden tower built against the side of the cliff. If that seems a bit scary it is nothing compared to the structure that still exists.

  The term ‘Cave of the Winds’ is a bit of a misnomer, it turns out; the cave itself – discovered in 1834 and named with the classical flair of those days after Aeolus, Greek god of the winds – was wiped out in a rock fall in 1954 leaving only a dangerous overhang which had to be dynamited to make access even remotely safe. This is a stark reminder that if nature were left to itself, Niagara’s falls would eventually be nowhere near the twin towns named after them: natural erosion of the cliff face behind them is slowly causing them to retreat to the extent that in a few thousand years they ought to reach all the way back to Lake Erie itself and drain it. American and Canadian engineers have for decades now been working to delay this by shoring up the cliffs, but as we are not yet 300 years into their recorded history, nobody can be sure how successful their efforts really are. Having been close up, I reckon they’re probably wasting their time.

  Mark, the ranger who takes over the tour from the bottom of the lift shaft, is telling us this and reams of other mind-boggling statistics as he hops gleefully over wooden decking down across the rocks. The cave may no longer exist but the tourists come anyway, primarily because the access built to get to it is still there and offers one of the most ridiculously hair-raising possibilities of getting up close and personal to a waterfall that at its peak can create conditions akin to a hurricane. When I say the access is still there, I mean it is for the moment: Mark and his mates will be taking it down in about six weeks’ time, near the end of November and re-erecting it next spring. This is largely because in mid-winter it gets so cold up here the falls can freeze, crushing anything in their way and forcing themselves over the edge in time-freeze slow motion, like a fast-moving glacier, with maybe no movement for several days, then a few hairline cracks and moments of spectacular violence when huge chunks of ice topple over the precipice. I make a mental note to try to come back and see that some time.

  Right now I am more concerned with keeping my footing on soaking wooden decking amidst a whirlwind flurry of spray from the nearest falls, known as the Bridal Veil, which is really a tiny offshoot of the American Falls cut off from the rest by a rock in the river. I now know why I’m wearing plastic sandals with my jeans rolled up to the knees. I may look like DP Gumby in a rain hood but at least most of me is dry. On the other hand, I’m a bit concerned about how long that will last. I’ve been looking at the wooden supports for the decking and can’t see how they’re fixed to the rocks. I ask Mark, who gives one of those big American ‘Hey guy’ laughs, and says, ‘They aren’t!’ He goes on to tell me, beaming broadly all the time, that the decking supports are simply wedged into crevices in the rock, and have been done that way ever since the whole trestle edifice – which must be at least 200 feet long, up and down the rocks and in a series of raised platforms perilously close to the face of the falls – was first set up in the 1860s. The plan of exactly how to do it is passed on from team leader to team leader, relearned and adjusted each time they put it up and take it down. He seems to think this should be totally reassuring, but I’m left staring at the struts of wood wedged into gaps in the rock beneath me in ashen astonishment and wondering just how quickly a British health and safety department would take to condemn the whole structure. The terrible truth is I know deep down that they would do so without even looking at it, which is one more tragic example of how cosseted we’ve become and how much our lives have been taken over by a nanny state. This is one of those big differences between our two countries: we’re brought up to have an instinctive respect for nanny; here they’d probably shoot her.

  I’m still glancing at the supports apprehensively as we get ever closer to the falls, the noise grows and the spray from the onrushing torrent is like pointing a showerhead straight into my face. That’s when Mark points up at the highest platform, almost within touching d
istance of the face of the Bridal Veil, its wooden railings dripping with windblown strings of green moss and with a sign proclaiming HURRICANE DECK, and more amusingly next to it, no smoking. This latter has to be a joke. ‘Smoking impossible’ would be more accurate. Mark is gesturing towards it but making no move in that direction himself. ‘It’s perfectly safe,’ he assures me, roaring at the top of his voice to be heard over the thunder of the falls, ‘but I do this trip maybe 20 times a day, and I’d have pneumonia if I went up there every time. Suit yourself.’ I look at it apprehensively. The two little Asian-American women have very obviously bottled out, and are taking photographs of one another a couple of decks below. But, I tell myself, I paid money to do this.

  The hurricane deck lives up to its name. I have never, ever experienced such raw power up close. Not for one nanosecond did it occur to me to try and stand up there without as firm a grip as possible on the slippery handrails. It was like standing in a rainstorm in the slipstream of a jumbo jet: deafening, drenching and physically challenging. And a hell of a lot of fun. I came back down with a huge grin on my face, dripping Niagara water and adrenaline in equal quantities.

  Mark the ranger may only fancy one soaking a day at most, but I’m a sucker for punishment. Back at the top of the cliff I keep the socks and shoes in their plastic bag and canter off, yellow rain cape flapping in the breeze, to catch the Maid of the Mist. The Maid is by far the most famous way of getting up close to the Horseshoe Falls and has been operating since 1846 when it was actually a ferry service from the US to Canada. It was only when they built the first bridge a couple of years later and the ferry traffic began to dry up that they realised they could make more money not actually taking the tourists anywhere but as close as they could to the falls. The service collapsed during the American Civil War but a savvy Montreal firm snapped up the company and relaunched it in the 1890s, with new boats running from both the American and Canadian sides. The boats they run today look alarmingly like they might be the same ones.

  The main way to get down to the jetty is by another lift, back on the main shore, and when I get to the bottom I find a large number of people in blue capes, looking disconcertingly like a middle-aged Superman fan convention. It’s worrying because I only have an hour and a half left before I need to get a cab back to the train station, the boats only leave every half hour and it doesn’t look to me as if that lot will all fit on a single boat.

  I needn’t have worried, though. They do. And with room to spare, chiefly because they pack ’em in, and with most of them pensioners, they are content to cram onto the lower deck rather than face the elements in the open up top. That, however, seems to me to be the only point in doing the thing at all, and so here I am, yellow cape exchanged for blue – I didn’t want to spoil the colour scheme – up by the front railing on a rickety glorified tug boat that looks a hundred years old – it was actually built in 1976 – heading out onto the choppy waters aiming for the roiling heart of the Horseshoe Falls.

  It’s a fairly ridiculous journey, not least because absolutely everybody is taking pictures of everybody else, taking turns to swap spots by the railings. Except that I’m not giving up mine. There’s only one of me and I can’t take turns and selfish as it might seem I want to be up front when we head into the maelstrom. For that is exactly what we seem intent on doing, as the captain is now confirming with a set of fairly obvious safety instructions – no hanging over the side, keep hold of your camera etc. – repeated in a language which I am by now already programmed by the new American reality to assume is Spanish, but suddenly realise to my immense surprise is French. Obviously, of course, given that this is a Canadian vessel, even though from a brief survey of the passengers the only language that anyone might understand other than English is possibly Gujurati.

  To my left I can see the wooden platforms, decking and staircases of the Cave of the Winds, and have to say that it all looks even more precarious from here, a child’s matchstick construction up against an elemental force. But however impressive the American Falls might be, and from the boat I can appreciate the sheer width of the span, there is something still more daunting about the virtually perfect ‘U’ of the Horseshoe particularly now that we have gone beyond the ends of the two arms, the air around us is a swirling drizzle and the boat is bucking like an Olympic swimmer trying to breast a tsunami. I can only imagine the helmsman down below forcing the craft to keep straight against the force of millions of gallons of water churning towards us from all directions. The Indians believed that there was a ‘thunder being’ called Heno who lived behind the Horseshoe Falls and right now it’s easy to see why. There is a lot of squealing and giggling going on. No theme park water ride I’ve ever experienced has come anywhere near close. And then all of a sudden the boat tilts ever so slightly to one side, causing a moment of near panic, but it’s only the helmsman swinging us away from the vertical and the onrushing water turns us around and we chug out of the maelstrom, with a collective ‘Wow!’ Anyone who thinks Niagara is a passive spectacle couldn’t be further from the mark. The whole experience is pure white water-white knuckle.

  And that’s just the basics. Further downriver, I learn from a teenage passenger as we plough back towards the jetty, you can take a jet boat up the lower levels of the St Lawrence. It requires wearing a full wetsuit and signing away all rights of redress before fighting up through the appropriately named Devil’s Hole Rapids. ‘It was awesome,’ says this kid, beaming from beneath the hood of his still dripping blue cape. ‘Makes this seem kinda tame.’ Privately I think it’s lucky my train schedule doesn’t allow me the time to try it. I’ve had just about enough awe for one day. Adding ‘shock’ might not be advisable.

  Back at the dock we file off and begin shedding our blue outfits, the Superman convention disassembling into its component parts. I can’t help noticing that most of the pensioners are wearing hats that look like baseball caps just slightly more squared off than normal and all of them say ‘Hank’. I am aware that this is a fairly common American name but it does seem just a bit improbable that it is shared by all of them. Unless of course this is the national ‘Hank’ association day out, a sort of annual bus tour for people with the same name, which at least would spare the need for all those silly badges. But when I venture to ask one old boy who doesn’t look quite as gaga as some of them, he looks at me with mild surprise and says with a smile that might or might not be ironic, ‘You mean you never heard of the USS Hank?’ Hank, it seems is not a bloke but a battleship, or to be more accurate, a destroyer. Hank the Destroyer, like Conan the Barbarian. Only different.

  This should have dawned on me earlier but Hank is just not the sort of name you expect a warship to have, even an American one. It’s rather like a British warship being called the HMS Dave instead of Warspite or Ark Royal. It seems Hank has long since joined most of his former shipmates in retirement having seen active service in the Second World War and subsequently in Korea, which makes me realise just why these chaps look as grizzled as they do – they are seriously old. They seem none too sure about what happened to old Hank though: one couple seems to think it became a training ship in the late 1960s, another certain it was sold to Argentina, while one ‘half empty glass’ pessimist bravely ventures that it had ‘probably been broken up’ by now. That with just the hint of a tear in his eye. I can’t help but admire them though, these old buffers and their other halves, turning up year after year for a reunion of former shipmates. It’s the sort of esprit de corps old British county regiments were famous for before the bureaucrats broke them up in the name of ‘restructuring’. The sort of thing that keeps Captain Kirk and Spock turning up in successive Star Trek films: Hank, the Next Generation.

  But it’s time for me to get my life back on the rails, literally, with a quick cab ride out through the nondescript suburbs of Niagara, past diners and tyre stores and low-rise streets of wooden houses to the same siding we arrived at the night before. In the daylight the freight yard looks
even more enormous, more than a dozen lines at least, enormous trains each with 40 or 50 wagons – ‘cars’ – stretching out behind them, dwarfing the five-coach Amtrak train stood there like a little silver slug beside so many long, dangerous snakes.

  With 25 minutes to go before departure, the train is not yet ready for boarding so I join the motley couple of dozen passengers sitting around in the drab little waiting room. There is a map on one wall of the rail network that reveals how much track there still is around here, and how much of it – maybe 90 per cent – is dedicated to freight. The train has come in from Toronto on its way via Buffalo to New York City. But it takes two hours between arriving at Niagara Falls, Ontario, and leaving Niagara Falls, New York. There are two US immigration men in the waiting room but they have questions for only two passengers, who turn out, interestingly enough, to be one Russian and one Mexican. They take their passports and examine them in some detail, though quite why, or how they picked them out, I have no idea. There is not even any obvious indication that the two have crossed the border. But after the better part of 10 minutes they hand their paperwork back. I’m probably the only other ‘alien’ in the room. But it doesn’t occur to them to trouble me. And I’m not complaining.