Pictures...
Top: Coast Guard Vessel, Sir Wilfred Grenfell, exiting The Narrows with Fort Amherst in the background.
Bottom: Looking into downtown St. John's. Along the skyline is the Basilica on the right and The Rooms on the left.
MONDAY…
--- Downtown with Christine for some shopping. Lunch there and a little walk at Mer Bleue. Ice cream to cool off and some TV time before supper. We eat on a patio of a new place near my house. The Barley Mow is pretty good and it was a nice night to eat outside.
TUESDAY…
--- Busy day with Christine. Dick’s Diner, Mountain Equipment Co-Op, the Museum of Civilization (with the I-Max on the Nile included) and supper in the market.
--- Monty Python’s Search of the Holy Grail on DVD to end the night… Christine may not be much of a Python fan… silly cousin.
WEDNESDAY…
--- See Leslie and Kiyomi for the first time in weeks. Good for a smile or two.
--- Work is somewhat busy. Two walks with Linda (another one I haven’t seen in a month) is good.
--- Come home to my smoke detector telling me it has a low battery. This means having to go straight out again to get a new battery. The detector is electrical with only a battery backup… so there’s no unplugging it for the night (it’s hard wired in). Bit of a pain but oh well.
THURSDAY…
--- Work is pretty normal for the summer vacation time (meaning a third of the people aren’t in the place). Lots of walks today. One at each break and an hour long one when I go home.
FRIDAY…
--- Computer issues at work annoy somewhat. Not a bad evening though. Just Dave, Louis, Casey and me in CNI.
SATURDAY…
--- Quiet day for most of the day. I do a movie with Karl in the evening. I like “Click”... funny with some meaning.
--- A beer and a good stroll back to Karl’s place after that and some pizza to end the night in front of his TV with an old Japanese movie on TV. “The War of the Gargantuans” is a classic cheesy dubbed monster movie complete with rubber suit guy wondering around a model city as the feared monster.
The Narrows
Two rocky hills and an inlet. An inlet that’s so narrow they named this place just that… The Narrows.
St. John’s harbour has more history than any other city harbour in North America. The Roman Catholic Basilica, with it’s two towers jutting up into the downtown sky has even been used by sailors to gain access to this harbour. For you see, with rocky crags ready to punch holes in those ships searching for a place to tie up, captains were trained to aim their ship right between the Basilica’s towers. Go towards the towers and you’ll avoid the rocks. This history is my main objection to the monstrosity that is The Rooms (a building that stands next to, and dwarfs, the Basilica).
But it’s the history of The Narrows that captured me a few weeks ago. Jim, Sam and I joined Christina (Jim’s sister) at her new downtown home. A three story house I’d take for my own in a second. For the third floor loft/bedroom has a balcony located just off of it. And from this balcony there is a perfect view of The Narrows.
The moment we stepped out onto her balcony was perfectly timed. A coast guard ship was entering the harbour. And even though I couldn’t see the Basilica at that moment, I knew where that ship was pointing.
I saw a modern day coast guard ship but my imagination took over and suddenly I saw ships of all sorts making this same run through this same passage. I saw fishing dories. I saw schooners with great masts and sails. I saw modern day cruise ships, taller than any local building, edge between the rocks.
I saw the Mathew drifting in from the night time fog as a vessel from a dream. I actually witnessed that one. Even though John Cabot’s “Mathew” sailed the seas some five hundred years ago, I was there when the replica entered St. John’s harbour on the five hundredth anniversary.
From Christina’s balcony I saw sealing ships returning from the stormy winter hunts with hundreds of family and friends waiting onshore to welcome their safe return. I also saw ships of all sizes and type… some with sails and others with the hum of a motor… taking a crew out to sea… never to be seen again.
War ships have patrolled the waters just outside The Narrows. There to protect North America from invasion. Remnants of a great chain can still be seen at the base of Signal Hill on the left and Fort Amherst on the right. This chain once held a metal net in the hopes of keeping the German U-Boats out of the harbour.
At Signal Hill, Marconi sent the first Trans Atlantic wireless message. Generations of children have run along these rocks, lofting kites into the wind. And criminals have been left here, tarred and hung… a warning to those within the city below.
The Narrows have stood for five hundred years as a welcome to those who have travelled long from the old world. Once a ship enters The Narrows, it is home… the stormy seas are left outside, only peace remains within the safety of the hills.
And the Narrows are there to say farewell. When sailors venture out to return to the lands where their ancestors have come from. Most make it but, for some, The Narrows mark the last time they would be within a stone’s throw of land.
Many a kook have left The Narrows trying to row from Canada to Ireland alone and in everything from a ten foot dory to what looks like little more than a giant beef bucket. Sometimes people stand onshore to see them off but it’s more with a feeling of “what an idiot” than “bless that man”. Most times the locals know better, don’t pay any attention to the rower, and chuckle at the paper two days later when they read of how the coast guard had to pick him up fifty kilometres off the coast.
But it’s all there. The good and the bad. The glorious and the tragic. The historical and the ordinary. Those two hills of rock and that narrow channel of ocean have been home to so much history… and my friend can walk through a doorway and peer out on it anytime she wants.
No comments:
Post a Comment