Mack
Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com
Fabrique au
Canada
Those of a certain age – born when
giant hamsters roamed primeval swamps – will remember when Niagara Falls was a
cliché’ honeymoon spot. If in a
newfangled talkie film anyone mentioned Niagara Falls, that was code for a
wedding, and at the end of the movie, all conflicts resolved, Jimmy Stewart and
Myrna Loy drove Pa’s sputtering 1935 Ford roadster north to Canada.
Niagara Falls, Canada, is great fun, much like Disneyland, only
without Disney's understated elegance. The center of
jollification is Clifton
Hill, or, in French, Rue de la Moulson’s
et la barfe-on-les-sidewalks.
Okay, that’s not really French; I just
made that up, but I’ll bet you couldn’t tell.
The views of the Falls are better from
the Canadian side, but very expensive.
The free parking lots of only a few years ago are gone, and now the
amateur hydrologist must slosh $20 into the wet kitty (or la chat) in order to park his Ford and spend some quality time with
the water. Lots of water. Beautiful water.
The views from the American side are
also quite good, and parking that ’35 Ford is much cheaper, but you also get
the idea that you probably don’t need to be there after dark.
One New Yorker faulted the Canadian
side for being too commercial; his idea of the natural and free was reflected
in the broken glass of abandoned buildings on the American side.
Niagara Falls is a romantic fashion
again, but now folks want to be married when they get there, not before. A young couple of my acquaintance made the
pilgrimage to the Holy Land of Ontario, and their families and friends dusted
off their passports and their Christmas accounts in order to join them for the
happy occasion.
The couple were wedded one beautiful
autumn morning on a wet Maid-of-the-Mist boat wetly sloshing around at the wet foot
of the wet American Falls, the wet Horseshoe Falls, and wetly back to the wet
American Falls, thus adding to the occasion lots of hydrogen and oxygen molecules
in proper portions just in case not everyone aboard had been baptized.
One thought perhaps the boat captain
would perform the rites, but he was busy enough avoiding a low-budget Titanic finale to the wedding, and so a wet
rent-a-reverend-doctor (he also teaches t’a chi and is a motivational speaker
and a singer/songwriter) in a Roman collar and sporting a big, shiny Celtic
cross wetly said some things to the wet couple on the wet fantail.
The Very Impressive Clergyman must
have spoken the right things though mostly unheard among all the racket of
engines and water, for the happy (and wet) couple kissed, surrounded by several
hundred wet friends, most of whom were Japanese and Korean (and wet), along
with Kate and Lily, those adorable (and wet) little scene-stealers. Even now, in Seoul and Tokyo, folks are happily
passing around hundreds of photographs of the young American couple who made
their vacations in Canada, God’s second-favorite nation, even more enjoyable.
After docking, the wet couple and the
wet VIC sat at a (dry) table in a café’ and spent a half-hour signing and
witnessing lots of papers, and, finally, by the rules and regulations and
august majesty, and, like, stuff of the Province of Ontario and the Dominion of
Canada, not to mention the Maid of the Mist company, Frankie and Sarah were
well and truly united in the wet institution of marriage. When last seen they were catching a modern
Canadian train, not a 1935 Ford, to Montreal, where no one can speak Spanish
where no one will speak English.
But they’ll be fine. In Montreal and in other destinations,
geographic and spiritual, in the young couple’s lives, “all shall be well and
all shall be well and all manner of things shall be well” (St. Julian of
Norwich), for Frankie and Sarah will make them so.
Eh.
-30-
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