Читать книгу Waking Nanabijou - Jim Poling Sr. - Страница 9

INTRODUCTION

The Northern Sun, opaque in the last wisps of morning mists, spills midday warmth directly onto Lake Superior, flattening and softening the whitecaps, and creating a deceitful tranquillity. The calm seduces even the most experienced lake traveller, smothering memories of the savagery with which this piece of water can kill.

Over the glassy horizon floats Nanabijou, the Sleeping Giant, an apparent mirage formed from the mists of great mysteries. But it is real, a rocky spine thrust out from the mainland to create the vast bay fronting Thunder Bay, Ontario, or Nimkii Wiiwedoong, an Ojibwe reference to the exploding thunder and lightning that rakes the bay when Nanabijou stirs. The Welcome Islands float below the Giant’s feet and beyond them the mesa-like formation of Pie Island. Far beyond that, and usually lost in the immensity of the world’s largest freshwater lake, is Isle Royale in the United States. The islands appear so delicate in the distance, and one wonders how the screaming tempests for which the lake is famous do not blow them off their rocky feet.

This panorama of natural beauty spreads below assorted lookouts on the hills that watch over Thunder Bay’s waterfront. You can view the scene from Hillcrest Park, not far from downtown, or from Lover’s Lane high above the Current River on the other side of town. The best lookout, from an emotional perspective, is just east of the downtown waterfront along the Terry Fox Courage Highway, the closest thing to a freeway in northern Ontario. Overlooking the highway and the lake is a three-metre bronze statue of the young runner frozen in mid-stride during his historic attempt to run across Canada on an artificial leg. The statue marks the spot where the twenty-one-year-old cancer patient abandoned his cross-country marathon after 5,373 punishing kilometres and 143 days after leaving St. John’s, Newfoundland. He had dreamed of running ocean to ocean to raise money for cancer programs, but the cancer caught up to him and he died instead.

I know that spot well. It was part of my trap line when I was kid. Just steps into the bush from the memorial, a tragic event occurred that shattered my family’s life when I was not much younger than Terry Fox.

Whenever I return to Thunder Bay, I go to the memorial and stare out over Superior’s vastness and think about how each life is a circle that intersects other circles. The life circles of Terry Fox, my mother, and me intersected one day in Thunder Bay. At the intersection of those circles, Terry Fox left a legacy, my mother left a secret, and I realized I had a story to tell.

My mother always warned me that people should not disturb Nanabijou. Awakened, he becomes angry and displays his displeasure, punishing the bay and its people with wind and rain and killing lightning and ear-splitting sounds. Writing a memoir is like waking a sleeping giant. Things long ago left to rest are stirred, sometimes with unhappy consequences. We all have breathed, however, the invigorating freshness of air cleared by a storm. In ignoring my mother’s warning, I hope any storms pass quickly and that tolerance and understanding spread in their wake.