Waiting for the Ships

I don't see one yet ... 

The St. Lawrence Seaway opened this week. Ursalla and I took a long snowy walk this morning to see if we could spot our first freighter. Having driven a long way down the seaway, all the way to Riviere de Loup, I'm liking this big bit of water even more. I've always wanted to hop on a freighter and go all the way from the Gulf all the way to the Lakehead.

No boats today, but I know they're down there somewhere. My sister Lori called me from the middle of the Ambassador Bridge yesterday to tell me she'd seen her first one. I'll just have to go for more walks.

The riverfront is one of the best things about being in Windsor. I used to have an apartment right across from Dieppe Park where the Hilton Hotel now stands. It was a really colourful place -- home not just to me, but also a whole bunch of drug dealers, hookers and cockroaches of many shapes and sizes. At 20, I wanted to live where life was really happening, you know, not in some comfortable suburban building where everything is so ordinary. I needed to gather material to be a real writer. I needed to get down there in the gutters of humanity and experience that life was more than watching the soybeans shrivel up and turn brown in the bucolic farmland of Essex County. Yes, there are many stories from my days in the Alvin Apartments.

Je digress .. my point was going to be that I had a fabulous view of the river in that apartment. Best view in the city for $115 a month (lots of onshore entertainment in the apartment building too for no extra charge).

Back to the boats -- focus on the main story, Vic.

The ships were so close you could read the names on the bow. Windsor is the only place I've lived where you get to see a steady parade of ships going somewhere. In Vancouver, they sat in the Harbour. In Hamilton, only a small percentage of the traffic even entered the harbour. I've always felt energized by going places. If I can't go, I still get a real kick out of watching trains, boats and places even if I'm not on them.

And back in those days, I could look at a Canada Steamship Lines boat (which is just about all of them these days) without going, yuck, Paul Martin. Whoops. I forgot. He sold them to his sons when he became Prime Minister. Blind trust and all that.

I'm getting a tad cynical here. Back to thinking about pure pleasure, about sitting on a blanket next to the river reading a book, and seeing if I can decipher what country the ship is from.

I'm probably shipping out from Windsor myself the beginning of June. So I'm hoping we'll have a sunny May and that the trees leaf out real fast. That's another nice thing about Windsor, it's summer down here before the leaves have barely budded in Ottawa.

I'm going to enjoy the last couple of months here.