August: T'es Capab'
La mois d'août 2019 :
Is this what we refer to as "good busy"? Welcome back to T'es Capab', where I try to figure just what the heck happened and tell myself: "it's ok, it's ok, shhhhh, it's ok." How are you doing? I feel thin, though I have gained weight. Like too little butter spread on too much bread. Like Bilbo Baggins addicted to his invisibility ring.
I just want to tell stories. Turns out, that is really hard.
August: it's just like December which is perfect because today is December (and this was all part of the plan, guys). August is like December because September is like January: slates are swept clean and resolutions are made. "This time will be different." So these months are the stepping-off point into the next... whatever.
My summer of libraries concluded with visits to Library and Archives Canada (a marble-walled fortress of fragile papers, maps, and media machinery) and to the archives of Dominion-Chalmers United Church (a basement full of cardboard boxes). At the former I found out more on Canadian National Railways and the Rideau Canal, and at the latter more about its pipe organ. I climbed into the forest of pipes that span seven storeys to report on the fact that it is a very big instrument.
You usually report more than you can write, and you have to watch out about getting lost in the details. But I wish I could have written out everything from my 8.5 rainy hours interviewing seven people on a pontoon boat. The story was about kids learning to dive in Lake Opinicon, but for me it was also about seeing the lakes where I grew up in a different light.
On a foggy morning, I drove to Chaffey's Lock and past it, to the Queen's University Biological Station. As described in Cruising the Rideau Waterway, published in 1965: "The Chaffeys Lock is single. The lift is only inches over 10 feet... The Chaffeys installation is small, almost dainty. There is no great flanking dam, no tremendous flight of hewn stone walls climbing upwards through a cliff face. There is a charm, an air, a subtle appeal that makes Chaffeys for many one of the best-loved stations on the waterway."
Later, coming at the lockstation from the water, "Jump in the Line" by Harry Belafonte is blasting from our pontoon boat. Nigel gently tells his students to keep it down, and tells me he's also teaching them how to be conscientious boaters.
Nigel likes Fisherman's Friend. "Oh, those are good..." he whispers when I offer him a lozenge. He has big, muscular hands. While he is overseeing his students note their descent times, tank pressures, and diving depths, he tells me a bit about his teaching style. Let them make the mistake first, then explain how they should have done it. Mistakes, in a less controlled environment, can cost their lives.
In the cordoned-off, west-facing bay of Eight Acre Island, the students dove with flashlights at night. Fish came inspecting the lights, the stars shone in the sky. Lobsang found a sunken boat: "No one else saw it so it almost feels like I dreamt about it."
For five days in August, I was house-sitting in Hintonburg and surrounded by papers and notes and VHS tapes. A writing retreat. More of a reading retreat. Just reading (and watching VHS tapes) about family. Turns out:
Eleven generations ago, a man named Jean Mathieu (mon arrière-arrière-arrière-arrière-arrière-arrière-arrière-arrière-grandpère) arrived to the continent on a very gross boat. The plague broke out on the Saint-André on its voyage from Old France to New France, and 12 people didn't complete the trip. The ship left La Rochelle, the capital of Charente-Maritime, a department of France, and landed in Montreal on Sept. 7, 1659. This is the macro: all I know is this Jean Mathieu was married 10 years later and had 12 kids.
Much later, on July 10, 1988, my grandfather Keith is filming his wife from the cottage's dock. It is a hot and windy day. "We got mermaids in the water," he says. Grandma was raking rocks away from the beach: "There's lady at work!"
"Keith, turn it off please?" she stands up, without glasses. "This is not my best bathing suit. In fact, this is my oldest bathing suit." The camera pans left. There's the cabin, sitting amongst the cedars at the water's edge. Pan further left, there's the green hammock, yellow-frilled in a green metal frame. Jean Mathieu (mon père) is sitting with his legs over the side looking at me, he brushes my blond hair out of my face.
"Joseph!" calls the cameraman. "Hey, Joseph!"
"'Garde Grandpa," says Jean, pointing. I am one. His hair is long, hanging in curly wet locks. My hair is stringy and blond, wispy even. We both have bellies, his is the belly of an active 32-year-old. Mine of a toddler. My mouth hangs open—non-stop drool.
"We'll have to get him on the board in a minute, Jean," says Keith. Jean nods. His face is expressionless. There is no emotion. But he has resting bitch face, and his hunched features seem swollen, like his eyes are darker when he looks at the camera.
That's the micro. Somewhere between those two views is the story.
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