Enjoy the view

[vaneramos]

Saturday: a bench on the pier at Port Dover


At the head of Port Dover pier stands a bronze memorial to all fishermen who have perished on the Great Lakes. The pier itself is lined with humbler, personal monuments: benches inscribed with names of the lost.

Couples. A mother and father remembered by their daughter. Entire families of men lost by their women. Two sons drowned in separate incidents. There must have been 40 or 50 benches.

One said: “Enjoy the view.” Overlooking peaceful Lake Erie on a breathless afternoon.

I grew up on the same shoreline, two hours west. We never knew anyone who drowned, but Harrow was a farming community. My cousin happened to miss a small plane flight that crashed on Pelee Island.

Another image of the weekend is seered in memory: driving home past fields rolling and simmering under the sun. There is a peculiar deciduous lushness about the sliver of Ontario south of the 44th Parallel: patches of Carolinian forest receding into sweat blue distance. I kept shifting my sunglasses off and on, squinting at polarities. A great roadside maple was freshly arrayed, afire. The vibrant land, passing in squares and coiled riverbeds, offered coded messages about life, but I didn’t hold the key.