Welland Canal

Welland Ship Canal Lock #1

The phrase, “We lived to swim another day” was still echoing in my ears when some weeks later at the sand piles adjacent to lock one my friend Kurt, at least at times I thought he was my friend, dared me to jump into the lock.  I know it sounds dangerous, but let me clarify. It wasn’t the actual lock with gates that raises and lowers a ship, it was still the entrance to that same lock.  The idea was to dive into the wake of a lake freighter behind the propeller to see where the turbulence would take you.  Back then we really didn’t need drugs to have wild trips, we had the Welland Ship Canal.  I

After the rafting incident, my mother in all of her wisdom, enrolled me into swimming classes at the St Catharines YMCA.  I think she was of the belief that these lessons were not for recreation purposes, it was more in line with survival skills.  Skills I often seemed to lack.

I always thought those lessons were somewhat suspect as we recruits, about fifty boys, were required to swim in the nude.  We were told that the wool bathing suits of the day would clog the pool filters.  How bogus is that, but it could have been true. 

Each class began with about fifty dripping wet naked boys of all body types sitting on bleachers stretched along the length of the pool anxiously waiting to see if our instructor would also be naked.  We often secretly wondered, at least I did, if the girls also swam naked and hoped against hope that one day we would have co-ed classes. I had to wait another 10 years for the unofficial co-ed saunas at the University of Waterloo for such an answer to prayer.  I think it was divine intervention of some kind.

In addition to turning me into a mediocre swimmer I made certain discoveries for the very first time during my swimming lessons.  Penises, I soon discovered, came in many sizes and shapes and what with the incredible cold while waiting wet and naked I was developing a very poor self image at an early age. Some penises were circumcised and some were not, some boys had pubic hair, Bill Sparrow had a lot, and most did not.  Never have I seen such a bizarre spectacle until going to a Turkish steam bath in Istanbul, with my wife, some fifty years later. 

After lessons we had some free time, Ron Cambray loved to swing his arms ape like in such a way as to smack square in the balls any one standing next to him just before he leaped into the pool.  One of our favourite games was to hyperventilate and see if we could swim the length of the pool under water with one breath.  It was these skills and experiences that of being at least a mediocre swimmer, the ability to hyper ventilating and getting whacked in the testicles and enduring intense pain which allowed me to survive Kurt’s dare at Lock one.

Back then, referring to my childhood, I was stupid enough to accept the dare and dove in the water, a respectable distance behind a Panamanian freighter.  I guess I was a little close.  Under water sounds are magnified, so the rhythmic swirling of the gigantic propeller and the bass sounds of the engines made me feel that I was about to be rammed or swallowed whole by the ship, as it was I was only tossed around like a dead weight.  I could not tell up from down, visibility was just about nill, the churning water felt like Ron Cambray standing next to me pool side. Had I not been able to hold my breath for so long I wouldn’t have popped up thirty feet further back of the stern, in one piece and still breathing.  

The sand dunes, as we called them, were huge piles of sand dredged up from the entrance to the lock to allow the ships enough draft to enter the canal.  I remember the dunes to be hundreds of feet high, in reality I’m sure they were much less.  They were our Everest and our play ground.  We would slowly trudge to the peak and because the angle of repose for the damp sand was so steep we were able to launch ourselves after a running jump and free fall for at least twenty feet.  We got innovative and tried sand boganning with pieces of cardboard which proved very effective.

Once most of the energy was sucked out of us we would sit contentedly at the top of the dunes surveying the lake and track the next approaching freighter entering the lock.  As the ship pulled along side the dunes we would jump, roll, slide and finally run to the canal’s edge and yell for the sailors to throw us coins.  Some sailors actually did and with these treasures we would hop on our bikes and ride up from the entrance to lock one to the top of the lock a journey that would take the freighter over an hour to finish.  

At the top of the lock was a bridge with a huge semi circular counter weight to balance the weight of the roadway as it lifted up to the sky making way for the freighter leaving the lock en route to lock two.  We placed our foreign coins under the counter weight and thrilled to the theatrics of having  them flattened under 20 tons of pressure. For a kid life just didn’t get any better.  I was fortunate to have parents who allowed me enough freedom to have fun, but at the same time rescued me from my fates. As a parent I made sure my kids grew up far inland away from watery dangers.

We were reminded of our mortality several months later when I was with my friend Art when he got the news that his sister Martha had been struck by a car while delivering newspapers.  Martha died on the road we travelled on to get to our favourite places.