The Canadian border has never been more than two
hundred fifty miles away most of my life. So unlike most Americans who—Margaret
Atwood claims—think
of Canada only as the place where the weather comes from, its existence goes
beyond meteorology for me. I have had my fun on Highway 61, which keeps going
after leaving the US. Been over the border here and there, summer and winter, time
after time, but not for some years. Tennessee
Williams noted that the longest distance between two places is time. It’s the
reason there’s no time like the present and the reason I’m going back to
Canada on a journey through the past.
Pierre Elliott Trudeau walked out of parliament in
Ottawa, ten feet away, unguarded, red boutonniere in his lapel, waving to a
gaggle of camera-toting women—why in crowds just
a trace of my face could seem so pleasin'—before climbing into a
nondescript Ford sedan, his driver wheeling away from the curb, off to lunch.
Driving up to Sioux Lookout—if not in the middle,
on the edge of what everybody knows is nowhere—the fish tales were
incredible. Lunkers just jumped into the boat. They wanted to be caught so
badly, you had to fight them off with oars. Our party of eight sat in boats on
Lac Seul for a week in pouring rain. In the lake’s defense, it is large, like a
hundred and fifty miles long, plenty of places for the fish to be without being
within attacking distance of your bait. The total catch for the entire party
was a single walleye, weighing in at about one ounce, smaller than my hand,
about the size of a fish called “Wanda.”
A Sunday night in Banff we were drinking in a
hotel—a round for the bright red devil who keeps me in this tourist town.
Like most large hotels, the building was located at an intersection. Aside from
the main entrance, there were two additional entrances for imbibers. On one
street was an entrance for men. On the intersecting street was an entrance for
ladies and escorts. Both entrances led to the same basement where rows of wooden
picnic tables filled the room. A yellow line was painted across the floor. You
had to stay on your side of the line. You also had to order two beers at a time
from the male waitstaff to ease their burden. Then at 12:01 am Monday morning
they started dancing. I fell in love with Jane Carlson from Edmonton—I’ll
look for you if I’m ever back this way. I guessed you didn’t dance on
Sunday in Banff. A year later I learned it was against the law for a woman to
sit at a bar in Seattle, so the West was probably not the best. A few years
after that I learned you couldn’t get a drink in Tulsa unless you were a member
of the Petroleum Club, operating a vehicle with an internal combustion engine
didn’t qualify you for membership.
Once only a single hotel stood on shore of Lake
Louise. Waiters delivered meals in covered chafing dishes by bicycle at Jasper.
The biggest thing in Calgary was the stampede. With the oil tar sands, I don’t
expect to be Alberta bound again, even if the red pines will bow their heads and
the rivers and the watersheds will carry us along.
I got my first view of a post-apocalyptic world in
Sudbury. The nickel mining and smelting business had turned the landscape into
something from a nightmare. They took all the trees and put ’em in a tree
museum, leaving behind plump stumps several feet high, jagged crowns
evidence they had not been cut but poisoned.
Cruising the Trans-Canada Highway between Ottawa
and Montreal or maybe between Montreal and Quebec, there was a band playing
in my head and I felt like getting high. All the bakeries in all the towns
along the way sold cognac-filled chocolate bars. What a great country. I
could drink a case of you, darling.
The waitress in a hotel dining room in Montreal
brought me an English-language newspaper. And apologized. I blame the woman I
was with. She spoke a lot with her hands, perhaps expecting to fly, on
the edge of her feather anyway. If only I could pass for French in Paris.
I was disappointed when I drove up to the park from
Quebec City, a long drive that went nowhere else. Laurentian or Laurentide, it
was called back then. It was a destination on that particular trip. A single
cop car blocked the entrance. It was, after all, the day after Labor Day, but
it was only castles burning. Hanging out in Bar Harbor for a week,
eating lobster everyday, mitigated some of the regret, but consumed enough
capital I couldn’t afford the ferry to Yarmouth.
Our timing was bad the first time my buddy and I
headed up Highway 61 to Thunder Bay to ski. “Thunder Bay” was new to me at the
time. I knew it to be two towns, Fort William and Port Arthur. The timing was
bad because the ski resorts operated diesel-powered lifts and because they were
expensive to run, the resorts were only open on weekends. Of course, it was not
the weekend. We asked around and heard about a new resort, Little Norway, which
had electric lifts. My buddy and I had the slopes to ourselves and the sky—green,
yellow and red the North Lights swept in bars. The owner allowed us to camp
out in the chalet. I had only skied once. It was at the end of the previous
season, but I’d thought hard about it, and watched Redford’s Downhill Racer.
Some say you find zen at the top of the mountain. Others say you have to bring
your own zen to the mountain. I did find it or it found me. In two days it all
came together, as simple as riding a bicycle
The Mounties always get their man. I don’t know if
that’s true, but they did get me. Another buddy and I headed for Thunder Bay in
a dune buggy I built from a shortened VW-bug chassis. It was emerald green metallic
with chrome wheels and big tires. Cold at night with no top, we got hold of a
couple sheepskin-lined, leather aviator caps with the requisite goggles. Looked
Errol Flynn studly. Rolled into Thunder Bay the next day. I pulled up at the
first stoplight. Had to quickly shut off the engine because moving parts were
exposed to the gaggle of girls that climbed aboard, left, right, and rear.
Cartwheels
turn to car wheels thru the town, but the girls wanted the wind
in their faces and hair. I headed for the highway. Great ride. Great breeze. Big
birds flying across the sky, throwing shadows on our eyes. Then red lights
flashed in my rearview mirror and a siren screamed. The Royal Canadian Mounted
Police stole our girls and kicked me out of Canada. Who the fuck could ever imagine
mudguards on a dune buggy?
No comments:
Post a Comment