Niagara Whirlpool: Memories and a novel

Panorama of the Niagara Whirlpool 2023 -courtesy of The Becka. Google Maps aerial view below.

 

I drove from Niagara-on-the-Lake to Niagara Falls last week for the first time since the pandemic. I had a strong childhood fear of waterfalls and still don't like walking the sidewalk along the brink of the Canadian Falls. But the Niagara Parkway from Lake Ontario, up the escarpment to Queenston Heights and along the Niagara Gorge is a lovely drive. Grandma D. used to take us on a day trip to the Niagara region with her favourite spot being the area around Brock's monument on Queenston Heights. She would pack a picnic lunch of sandwiches, vegetable sticks, lemon cake or butter tarts and orange Fanta for me, my older brothers and cousins. Grandma felt the town of Niagara Falls was "trashy" and we never visited the souvenir shops and museums on the main drag. She would stop briefly in the angle parking by the falls so we could see them before going home. I have never been on the Maid of the Mist nor have I walked behind the falls, and that is just fine with me!

Grandma grew up in the era of Niagara Daredevils. People have gone over the falls in a variety of containers trying to survive the drop for notoriety. There were no laws against these dangerous stunts until 1951. The Falls have a macabre history that has drawn curious gawkers for generations.

Canadian author Jane Urquhart's first novel is called The Whirlpool. It is set in Niagara in the summer of 1889, just before Grandma was born in 1896. Each summer the undertaker prepared extra coffins for the bodies of people who would die in the river while trying stunts or underestimating the power of the rapids and whirlpool. The book is lyrical and the lives of the four main characters move in a circular and sometimes intersecting manner just like the water in the river. Fleda, a woman who spends the summer in a tent by the whirlpool, studies the poems of Robert Browning jotting down thoughts in her notebook. She references this excerpt from Browning's poem, Amphibian.

But sometimes when the weather
Is blue and warm waves tempt
To free one's life from tether
And try a life exempt
From worldly noise and dust
In the sphere which overbrims
With passion and thought—why just
Unable to fly, one swims!
Emancipate through passion
And thought, with sea for sky
We substitute, in a fashion
For heaven—poetry.

I really enjoyed the book and wanted to stop by the whirlpool again to visualize the setting of the story. The Niagara River speeds through the rapids and gorge below the Falls and then makes an abrupt 90-degree turn. The turbulence and change of direction create a natural whirlpool. A cable car travels between two points of Canadian land but it crosses the USA border in the river twice in each direction across the whirlpool. 

I understood the obsession of another character who was determined to swim across the whirlpool basin while taking advantage of the swirling currents to assist him to the other side. (Did he succeed? The book will tell you.) The picture on the left shows Whirlpool Beach and the seemingly benign currents at the edges of the whirlpool as well as the gorgeous October colours.

I did a quick drive-by of the falls before going home. The town is still seedy with the same cheap souvenir shops and museums, with an option to waste your money in a casino. I doubt Grandma would feel differently about its character. But there is plenty to see in the area and perhaps I can attempt the trail that leads to Whirlpool Beach. It is rated only 2/5 in difficulty which is doable for me. You can be sure my feet will be staying on dry ground.