Chapter 2
Of Home and the River
Music:
Theme from the movie St. Elmo's Fire
Performed by John Parr
The song was originally written by David Foster for Canadian athlete Rick Hansen
and his Man In Motion world tour by wheelchair for spinal cord research.
May 10, 1986,
6:00 a.m. – my wristwatch alarm beeped. I
awoke and in a flash knew, This is it! I leapt off the cot, jumped over the lumps and into
Dad’s kitchen. I devoured a peanut butter
sandwich and a glass of milk at the table where Mom use to say, “Tommy, finish your
dinner first,” when I wanted to rush out to play.
After a quick clean up in the bathroom, I threw myself into packing up the piles of
supplies from the floor – clothes for all seasons, camping gear, toiletries, medical
needs, camera equipment, books, a journal, a walkman, a cassette recorder, tools,
important papers and my diplomatic stuff.
I was
fumbling. I realized I had not experimented
– what to put where. What to do?
I’ll figure it out as I go.
Dad was also
up with the dawn. He stood by in his
bathrobe, sleeveless undershirt, pants and slippers, holding the familiar mug of steaming
coffee.
“How is
it coming?” he said. He saw my efforts,
smiled and left me to it, retreating to the living room, to his worn easy chair to read
his newspapers.
“Okay
Dad.” I called out half an hour later.
“Holy
Doodle!” he said, looking at the load that was now tied every-which-way to Melawend.
“What can
I say?” I said. “It’s all
on.”
He smiled,
shook his head and opened the French doors. I
pushed Melawend off her kickstand. She was
top-heavy and leaned hard away from me. We
began to back her out, down the two steps to the patio.
The front wheel suddenly jack-knifed. I
lost my grip. Melawend fell to the concrete
with a muffled thud.
“Shit!” I said. I
was not easily given to profanity, especially in front of my father. Then I almost said aloud, “What the hell am I doing?”
Dad
wasn’t fazed. He helped me get Melawend
and the loosened load upright and off the patio and onto the lawn.
“Give me
a shout when you’re ready,” he said, patting me on the back.
Fifteen
minutes later he walked beside me as I sat on Melawend and motored her up the driveway to
the sidewalk along Ridge Road. He took some
pictures.
“All set?” he said. He smiled but I saw concern in his deep brown eyes. Dad looked a bit like Sean Connery – the real
man: balding, graying, with similar eyes, moustache and jaw-line, and with the same look
of confident authority that also belied inner compassion.
“Yeah,
I’m ready,” I said. No, I’m not ready Dad.
“Take
good care of yourself, son,” he said.
“You too,
Dad,” I said. “Watch your
mailbox.”
We hugged each
other. I still wasn’t use to doing that
with Dad, but he had changed dramatically since he and Mom divorced several years earlier,
a year before my own marriage ended. I was
concerned about him because he had said earlier that if something happened to him for me
to continue the journey.
(Photo: Marvin Clinton Smith - my Dad - in the early days
of his real estate business. I lost my Dad on July 25, 2006 to a combination of
killer aliments that had tried several times to take him. He beat the odds and made
it to 78 years of age. He left school after grade 10, but created successful real
estate sales, appraisal and development businesses that thrived for more than three
decades. He earned the respect and loyalty of a large client base that included many
Americans. He created residential subdivisions that helped shape my hometown, the
village of Ridgeway (part of Greater Fort Erie), Ontario, Canada, where Dad lived his
entire life. Dad was a proud and loving man with a strong, independent spirit.
I have some of his desk items on my desk. I am proud to have helped Dad build his
dream cottage at Gooseneck Lake, Ontario. That is where he rests. I miss
him.
Thank you
for listening. There is also a message here: DON'T SMOKE,or give it up now if you
do.)
I slowly
throttled up. I felt a tug at my feet as
Melawend’s centrifugal clutch began to engage. My
feet lifted from the sidewalk where Dad had once pushed me on a new bicycle that was much
too big for me. I guided Melawend onto the
road, going slowly south the fifty yards to the stoplights at Dominion Road. My light was red.
Feet down. I looked to the four
corners – right, to the Royal Bank of Canada where I had an account; then
counterclockwise to Newman’s Shoe Store where kindly slim Mrs. Newman had fitted me
with loafers for elementary school; left again to the United Church with its landmark
green spire; and left once more to the Johnson’s old house (the Johnson’s had
died some time ago).
Part of me
wanted to turn right and go west on Dominion the four blocks to Gorham Road and then ride
the quarter mile north so I could pass my former home.
It was large old house that was made from locally cut timbers that included white
oak. (Time had hardened them so that spikes would now bend when you tried to hammer them
into the thick hand-hewn beams). Many of the
windows had the original ripply glass. I had
found that the walls were covered with plaster that was reinforced with horsehair. The
house was built before America’s Civil War and had been used, I was told, in the
Underground Railway as a refuge for runaway slaves. But
it was my home no more. My marriage had ended
there. I had sold the house four years later
and had not had a home of my own since.
Then I would
keep going north on Gorham Road the eight miles to the QEW (Queen Elizabeth Way) and ride
all the fast open highways all the 1,600 or so miles to Halifax, Nova Scotia, board a ship
and sail to England to truly begin this journey.
But what was
my hurry? Besides, I had an uneasy feeling
that I might perish in some remote land and I wanted to carry with me a last look at the
area I knew as home – so I decided to turn left.
I looked back to Dad and we waved to each other.
Green light. A tense moment.
Throttle up, feet up, I turned left. Melawend
wobbled. Throttle up a little more. The wobble increased.
Tension up a lot. Melawend tottered
along like an enfeebled old person. What the hell?
I realized that I had not ridden the scooter when it bore such a load. Under the combined weight of me and over 100 pounds
of gear – (this will not be a book on how to
travel light) – Melawend was lower, unsteady and hard to control.
Something is definitely wrong here. The front
end?
I felt flushed
and weak and cold. I looked around the
scooter as best I could. Nothing was visibly
wrong.
What to do? Go
back? No.
Get hold of yourself, Tom. Head and eyes
up. Up! Throttle
up!
It worked! As we gained speed, the wobble faded away. Melawend surged forward powerfully, confidently,
serenely – Jonathan gliding on the wind. The
First Breakthrough!
Alright!
In the rush of
air, I now shivered from head to toe, but I didn’t care. In my mind, I played John Williams’ theme to
the movie, Superman. I felt invincible and full of good purpose. I felt a gentle massage as Melawend thrust me
through the still air. The air passing around
my Arai helmet became a sweet low roar, drowning out the sound of the little engine below
(a sound you can imitate by blowing while trying to keep your lips lightly closed, letting
them vibrate). I was flying! With no one else on the road, I pushed down ever so
slightly on each handlebar, letting Melawend weave as I naughtily enjoyed the G-forces. Then I let her run straight, and throttled her up a
little beyond the speed limit. We shot
eastward into a glorious sunrise, heading toward Fort Erie, on our way around the world!
My reverie was
short-lived. By the time we reached the
reduced-speed zone that led into Crescent Park, sober-faced commuters began to appear out
of this bedroom community. A white-haired
woman in a tracksuit walked briskly with a little gray dog that clipped along proudly
beside her. A few young boys in baseball caps
were riding bicycles on a cross street. A man
was unloading bread from a delivery truck at a general store… It occurred to me that this was just another day
beginning for these people. I was leaving
routine behind for distant wonders and exotic adventure (though I did not consider myself
an adventurer). There came a feeling of slowly
tearing myself away from this routine, leaving me to feel self-conscious, alienated and
uncertain of what I was getting myself into. I
was scarcely five miles from Dad’s place.
Melawend and I
were soon scootering along the last stretch of Dominion Road where it meets the Niagara
River by the old fort. We had just come
through much of the Town of Greater Fort Erie, a ten-square-mile amalgamation that
corralled the villages of Stevensville, Crystal Beach, and my lifelong home, Ridgeway, as
well as the old town of Fort Erie. This was
home, the place I would be promoting around the world.
We numbered around 23,000 residents and billed our town as “The Gateway to
Canada”, having the busiest vehicular crossing with the United States of America.
Fort Erie had
its attractions – Crystal Beach with its 100-year-old amusement park that featured
the Comet roller coaster, the world’s largest when it was built in 1946. We had our historical museum in the old township
hall across from Dad’s place. We had the
Ridgeway Battlefield Park from which, in 1866, a band of pesky Irish American raiders
– the Fenians – retreated after a skirmish with Canadian troops and hightailed
it across the U.S. border where they were promptly arrested.
In the old town, we had the Mildred Mahoney Silver Jubilee Dolls’ House
Gallery, and a restored steam locomotive called “The Pride of Fort Erie”
displayed on a few feet of track near the Centennial Library. And we had something that often snarled locals in
the traffic it generated – the Fort Erie Racetrack, home of the Prince of Wales
Stakes, “second gem” in Canada’s Triple Crown of horseracing. The gridlock reminded me of the old joke that
suggested that horses were smarter than humans – "Have you ever known a horse to
bet on people?" And I remembered reading
in an old copy of Ripley’s Believe It Or Not!
that Ridgeway was distinguished as the only community in the world with a cemetery that
had a water tower in it. But it didn’t
strike me that the grass was any greener there.
The theme of
my journey was Life, and nothing gave it more urgency than premature death – as in
war. Melawend and I were now at the stop sign
beside Old Fort Erie. I had always taken the
place for granted – the manicured lawns and ramparts where I had once played, the
place where you heard cannon fired for tourists and tours were conducted by guards that
were dressed in the bright red and white uniforms of the British 8th Foot
Regiment of the War of 1812. I had had no
experience of war and this place had been a corny curiosity to me. I had never truly appreciated that it had been the
last site of armed hostilities between my country and the United States and that it
therefore stood as a monument to 172 years of peace.
For most of
its years, the place had been a shambles. Between
May 1813 and November 1814, the fort had been burned and blown up four times as control of
it volleyed between British and American forces. Young
lives ended here. In some history class, I
probably learned about its bloodiest battle but not until this journey had I appreciated
its impact. It happened on August 15, 1814. (I probably
forgot the date then just as I’ve had to look it up to write this. Who of impatient youth really cared what happened
exactly when – all those damned dates to memorize!)
British troops attacked the American occupiers, gaining a foothold within
the fort by seizing an artillery position. Glorious
victory must have seemed imminent to those young men.
Perhaps they were unaware of what lay in a pit beneath their feet, under a
gun platform – a cache of gunpowder and ammunition.
In the fury of the battle, it was ignited and 300 men were blown to
Eternity. The rest of the British retreated to
the perimeter and began what would become a futile, month-long siege. Afterwards, they retreated to Niagara Falls and the
Americans stayed on another month and a half. Finally,
they abandoned the fort, blowing up the bastions and torching the buildings before they
shuffled off to Buffalo.
For 123 years,
the old fort lay in ruins, degraded further by weather and vandalism. The best of the rear bastion’s stones were
carted off and used in the building of the Anglican Church up the river road. In 1905, a 30-foot-high granite monument was
planted on the site but it wasn’t until 1937 that the restorers arrived, employed in
a Depression-era project. What might those
workers have felt when their excavations exposed the shattered remains of three American
and 150 British soldiers? All of them were put
to their final rest in a stone vault and the monument of 1905 was transplanted on top of
them, lest we forget.
(In a peculiar twist of fate, there would be another
amazing discovery and follow-up immediately upon my return.)
From the stop
sign beside the Old Fort, I saw the sun rising high over Buffalo, New York, “The
Queen City”, across the mouth of the Niagara River.
The city, with its one million “talking proud” Buffalonians, was a place
so often seen on the news as one of incessant domestic violence, arson, robberies, rapes,
murders and political capers. Rebuilt after
the British razed it to the ground in 1812, Buffalo hosted the lavish Pan American
Exposition in 1901. America’s 25th
president, William McKinley, was assassinated during the fair. Millard Fillmore, America’s 13th
president, was born there. Newly-wed Mark
Twain, once editor and part owner of the Express
(now the Courier-Express), left Buffalo in part
because of the cold reserve of his neighbors. He
once said that the only time he met one was when he felt he must: “Pardon me, sir,
for being so bold as to speak to you without an introduction, but your house is on
fire.”
Before I began
my travels, Buffalo had been one of my main barometers of human character – it was
here that I encountered the friendliest and the rudest of people. Buffalo had incredible urban blight but it also had
beauty as in Delaware Park and the exquisite Albright-Knox Art Gallery. Buffalo was home to America’s longest-running
TV news team (Irv Weinstein - news, Rick Azar – sports, and Tom Jolls –
weather). Buffalo was its bars, Buffalo Bills
football and Buffalo Sabers hockey. It was the
birthplace of “chicken wings”. I
found the first real love of my life in the heart of an exuberant Anglo-Italian Catholic
girl from the city’s West Side.
Buffalo was to
be the last foreign stop of my world odyssey. I
was going to try to be back next year for 1987’s Friendship Festival, to be held
between July 1st and July 4th. It
was a bilateral carnival to celebrate the long peace between our communities and our
nations. The thought of riding back into that auspicious celebration filled me with
determination as Melawend and I began our ride along the Niagara River Parkway.
Now in the
original town of Fort Erie, I detoured briefly onto four-lane Garrison Road, which was
already busy with traffic. I stopped at the
phone booth outside Tim Horton’s Donuts to let Dad know that Melawend and I were
okay. The parking lot was full of cars and
trucks and business vans. A man with dense
graying hair and thick-lens glasses came out to see me.
“That’sa
some load,” he said. He was from
Buffalo’s West Side. “Where are you
going?”
“Around
the world. I’m just starting out!”
“Mama!”
He scratched
his head and looked at Melawend. Then he
crossed his arms, smiled and shook his head from side to side. Could I blame him for having doubt? I wanted to say, We’ll make it.
He looked at
Melawend intensely, then grinned at me, shook my hand and said, “Good luck.”
Dad was glad
that we were okay.
I headed back to the
Parkway and stopped after just a few hundred yards. I
wanted to photograph something that lent symbolism to my journey – the Peace Bridge. (As part of my diplomatic giveaways, I also
carried postcards that had been made from one of my photographs of it.) The bridge spanned the Niagara River between Fort
Erie and Buffalo at the foot of the QEW. This
was that busiest crossing, which I referred to, and the volume of goods cleared by our
respective Customs here was the largest in the world.
Among other
remembrances, I knew it for the crossing where many people did not declare the goods they bought after a
day’s shopping in Buffalo – the wearing of three sweaters and two pairs of jeans
under the new coat, all tags removed. I knew
it as the favorite route of crossing for Ridgeway-Crystal Beach High School’s
bar-hoppers to get over to American bars (because they stayed open later than Canadian
bars).
The Peace Bridge - seen from the promenade along along the
Niargar River in Fort Erie, Ontario, Canada. It is the busiest crossing point
between Canada and the USA, carrying over 1 million commercial vehicles alone each year
and over $65 million worth of merchandise each day. This photo was used for a postcard
.Photo: copyright Thomas Martin Smith. All rights reserved.
After Melawend
and I rolled under its dull green span, I put Melawend on her kickstand by the curb. The Peace Bridge was a simple-looking structure
– 3,500 feet of steel in five arches that leap-frogged over concrete piers in the
fast-flowing waters of the Niagara River. A
Parker truss loomed over the Black Rock Ship Canal on the American side. There were three 12-foot-wide lanes and two
6-foot-wide sidewalks resting on the backs of the arches.
In August 7, 1927, the bridge was dedicated in grand fashion. The radio coverage of the event was the first
coast-to-coast and international broadcast. It
was heard around the world by an estimated 50 million people. The affair was presided over by none other than
Edward, Prince of Wales, heir to the throne of England.
This was the man who would abdicate that throne to marry American divorcee, Wallis
Simpson. As governor of the Bahamas, he would,
by design or ineptitude, help thwart the investigation into the murder of that old
reprobate Sir Harry Oakes. (We'll meet
Sir Harry a little further down the road.) At Edward’s side, at the Peace Bridge, was
his brother, Prince George, the man who would be king and father the now-reigning monarch,
Queen Elizabeth II.
Prince Edward,
"the Beau Brummell of the world of style”, dapper in his top hat, cutaway coat,
silk tie and gray-striped trousers, stood before 20,000 Buffalonians. His speech was ladled with endearing references:
“…this bridge commemorates the peace which has happily endured between the
British Empire and the United States for more than a century.”
(Canada’s Constitution was still cradled far away by the
country’s nanny, the parliament of Mother England.)
(PHOTO above: Buffalo, New York, in the upper portion;
Fort Erie, Ontario, in the foreground - with Mather Arch in lower right corner and Peace
Bridge Plaza to the left (now more extensively developed with the Peace Bridge Commercial
Centre, opened in 1995, and more to come. The Niagara River Parkway runs from lower
right, goes under the bridge and along the river to Niagara-on-the-Lake (once called
Newark, the capital of Upper Canada). Just out of sight to the right is the source
of the Niagara River - Lake Erie. Photos: taken in 1984 and 1985 respectively
- Copyright Thomas Martin Smith. All rights reserved.)
Prince Edward
enlarged his symbolism: “…may it serve also as a continual reminder to those who
will use it, and to all of us, that to seek peace and insure it is the first and highest
duty of both this generation and of those which are yet to come.”
Though history
would not bear him out – Viet Nam, for example – his further words at least left
a standard to meet: “I wish the path to international peace were as smooth and
straight as this broad highway, but unfortunately that is not the case. You of the New World have pointed the way and we of
the old may someday emulate your examples.”
Right.
I looked across the trim parkway lawn to the bridge that crossed
a river that was part of the longest undefended border in the world. For a moment, I thought of my own crossings,
indulging in those sentimental tugs. Then I
considered the symbolic hope I had given the bridge for my journey – that someday, peace
will bridge all nations. Camera in
hand, I stepped onto the road, composed a portrait of Melawend and the bridge. Click.
We’ll come back across that bridge together, Melawend.
(PHOTO: Melawend at the Peace Bridge, Fort Erie,
Ontario, Canada - looking across to Buffalo, New York, USA - the first day out: May 10,
1986.. Photo by Thomas Martin Smith. All rights reserved.)
As I rode
along the river, I wondered about the rum-running docks Dad had told me about. After the U.S. passed the 18th Amendment
to its constitution in 1920, the Volstead Act – Prohibition – and Canada aided
that futile measure by declaring it illegal to export liquor to the U.S. – the
fastest boats in the world docked here. With
booze cleared to be shipped to Cuba, rumrunners could be seen loading their coveted cargo
aboard those amazing craft. Strangely, they
would launch their boats only at night. The
boats would return in the dark, empty, only a few hours later, all the way from Cuba, mind
you. Dad mentioned the names of a few
now-prominent men who had been part of that fastest of freight-forwarding enterprises. “He’s an old boot-legger,” Dad would
say. And I would smile to myself whenever I
saw any of them.
Onward
Melawend and I scooted, past the edge of town, hugging the shore of the north-flowing
river. We rolled past big expensive homes with
their large landscaped front yards that bordered the Parkway. This famous drive along the Niagara River first
existed as a 66-foot strip along the riverbank reserved for military purposes
(much-utilized during the War of 1812). Tourism
widened and paved it. And many a virginity had
since been surrendered in its shadowy shoreline parking areas.
The sun was
now long-risen but I was still cold. My legs
shook violently and my shoulders ached. I
steered Melawend into one of the parking areas. I
put on extra layers of clothes topped with the too-big yellow rain suit that my
brother-in-law Bill Fessler (an American) had given to me.
Under my white Arai helmet, I was sure I looked like a wrinkled banana with a
marshmallow stuck on top. I didn’t care;
I was warm now. I took out my Realistic
cassette tape recorder and began the first of my odyssey recordings – the mishap at
Dad’s place, the man at Tim Horton’s Donuts…
Shadows of
trees fell over the Parkway and the gentle winding of the road made it seem intimate and
private like the long driveway of a huge estate. We
rolled along in such stately splendor. I
thought, What a perfect way to begin the odyssey.
Emerging from
that splendid drive, we came upon Chippawa and beheld the first glimpse one of the
world’s truly great natural wonders, reduced in the minds of many as an overblown
tourist trap and cliché – Niagara Falls. Historically,
it had been cherished for its sublime beauty and ravenously exploited for its hypnotic
attraction and awesome power. It was an
inspiration for artists, writers, filmmakers, industrialists, daredevils, hucksters,
tourists, conservationists, suicides and lovers. Here
at Chippawa, you saw it from its backside – the churning surface of the river where
it narrows and splits at the cataract with a cottony bloom of mist billowing up, sometimes
with a rainbow – just a hint of what you would soon behold.
What was
immediately striking here was the contrast between the Canadian and American visions of
the Falls. On the Canadian side, you saw your
first evidence of heady carnival on the green bluff that followed the line of the gorge
– relatively few honeycombs of hotels windows above the trees, the view towers, and
the white web of the world’s largest Ferris wheel (since sold, disassembled and
shipped off to Bangkok). On the other shore,
you saw industrial America – a low, flat shoreline encrusted with squat chemical
factories with mazes of pipes and power lines – actually quite beautiful to see at
night from the Canadian side: a bright ribbon of industrial lights reflected across the
river. Now the river itself was cleaner of
toxic pollutants thanks in large measure to the outrage of disease-ravaged Americans of
the Love Canal area and the courage of their advocate, housewife and
mother-turned-activist, Lois Gibbs. One reason
for the contrasting visions was geographical – you simply got the best views of the
Falls from the Canadian side.
A mile or so
further on, we crossed over the Dufferin Islands in an embayment in the river. On the far side, atop a bluff that overlooked the
islands and the river, and still visible through skeletal trees, were the stone walls of
an austere mansion. It was totally revamped in
the 1920’s by “the Richest Man in Canada” – uncouth, seed-spitting Sir
Harry Oakes (just Harry Oakes then). He had
seen a poster of the dream castle of Ludwig, the “mad king” of Bavaria, and that
is what Harry had wanted. The result was lost
on me. Oak Hall was not a comparison of
structures but a contrast of two extremely different men.
The fairytale lines of Ludwig’s lofty, fanciful creation (Disneyland’s
castle was far more closely modeled on Ludwig’s) revealed a man who personified
rampant extravagance. The cold, haunting,
baronial lines of Oak Hall told of a man of toughness, shrewdness and dogged perseverance
– qualities forged over many years in the finding and extracting of a fortune from
the earth.
The story of
Sir Harry reads like the best of fiction – the medical graduate from Bowdoin, Maine,
who bluntly told his stick-in-the-mud classmates he was going to become rich in gold; who
was hardened by a rigorous 14-year odyssey around the world grubbing for his fortune,
finally finding it at Canada’s Kirkland Lake; who was broke and pleaded for backers,
but was refused even credit; who was galvanized to go it alone, succeeded and brought in
the second-largest gold mine in North America; who found the love of his life in an
Australian woman 25-years his junior during a world cruise; who sought status and bought
his title: a man who fled his adopted country because he thought he was its most highly
taxed resident; who settled in the tax haven of the Bahamas where, in one of the most
controversial crimes of the century was murdered one story might – a case that
remains one of the most intriguing of unsolved mysteries.
This initial
leg of the odyssey was a sentimental diversion. Here,
motoring beneath Oak Hall, I was reminded of my late maternal grandfather, Thomas
Jefferson Darby (another transplanted American). As
a young lawyer in 1932, he had taken on a case many had refused – a breach of
contract suit against a very popular Harry Oakes when no one dared to oppose him. Harry had secured a reputation as one of Niagara
Falls’ greatest benefactors (his name lives on in areas he saved from commercial
development including Oakes Park Athletic Field and Oakes Garden Theatre). Grandpa won the case.
With his battery of lawyers, Harry appealed the case to higher and higher courts
until he finally took it to the Privy Council in England.
Grandpa went to England alone, steerage class, donned his powdered wig and, dare I
say it, cut the mighty Oakes down for the final time.
Grandpa went on to become a respected county court judge. Harry ended up in the Bahamas.
And where was I heading?
(PHOTO: Judge Thomas Jefferson Darby of St. Catharines, Ontario,
Canada - my maternal grandfather. On the left is a formal portrait taken near the
end of his career. On the right is Grandpa in London right after winning the case
against Sir Harry Oakes, again, this final time before the Privy Council of England.)
Chapter 3
Never Over the Falls
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Now for the
somewhat boring but fundamental part...
Copyright
Notice & Agreement
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and cannot do with this story, website, photos, etc.:
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Thomas Martin Smith. All rights are reserved.
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