Time Travel on the St. Lawrence River / Jini Reddy
Image by Jini Reddy
I am back at last, and a kind of dream state has descended upon me. The first time I arrived in Canada I was seven. My Indian parents had fled the pain of Apartheid rule in South Africa for London, where I was born. When my father was offered a better job, we uprooted—a first for me, yet another new beginning for them—and moved to the Quebec countryside before finding our way to Montreal, the island city.
We settled in a pretty, tranquil, suburban neighbourhood, the reward for my parents’ determination and courage. The houses on the wide, tree-lined streets where nothing much happened had well-tended gardens front and back. Best of all, at the end of my street was the St. Lawrence River. It’s part of the St. Lawrence Seaway—a system of locks, channels, and canals that link the Atlantic Ocean, the St. Lawrence River, and the Great Lakes. I didn’t know all of this at the time. All I knew or cared about was that my stretch of the river was big and wide—a whole a kilometre wide in some places. It was energetic and noisy with its rapids. And I could jog or cycle along it.
I adored that river. Everything that ever happened to me in my formative years was dissected, cried over, analysed, re-lived, and poured into that stretch of water. But my connection to it was liveliest in the spring thaw and summer and early autumn months.
I don’t recall it ever freezing over, even through the brutal winters, which maybe explains why I have no memories of anyone skating on its surface. I remember running in the snowdrifts alongside the St. Lawrence, icicles forming on my eyelashes. In spring, there’d still be a bite in the air, and slush to wade through— Canadian winters are long and drawn out—but on fine days, the melting snow would burble quietly, the river glint in the sunlight and it would feel as though the world was reborn. The promise of a long, steaming summer lay ahead, and when the heat came, so did the mosquitoes, but swatting them away was a rite of passage. The river would loom invitingly then, a cool, dark refuge, but with the current, a dip was out of the question.
After university and when I eventually settled back in the UK, the St. Lawrence—specifically the bit that ‘began’ at the end of my street—is what I remembered and what I hungered for. To breathe it in. To feel the spray of the waves on my face. To say hello. To travel back in time to the me I once was. To unlock the seam of memory that harboured my childhood hopes, angsts, and sky-wide dreams: first loves and everyday rhythms of life, delicious and trivial. To recover a vital, buried part of myself.
I returned to Montreal a few times for work. At this point I was a journalist and travelled quite regularly: I’d seen far wilder landscapes, and yet the keening for ‘my’ river never left me. Occasionally I was able to return to Montreal, under guise of an assignment. But my trips were always fleeting, squeezed-in affairs.
This time is different. I’ve booked an AirBnB in my old neighbourhood and to my astonishment, I discover it is on the same street I grew up on. In fact, it is literally six doors down from my old house. I cannot believe my luck.
After the flurry of arrival, I dump my bags and stroll down the street, every step potent and heightened. By now it is early evening, one of those lazy, lush summer delights. The heat is honeyed and golden and slowing everyone down.
I pause in front of my old house, a heart-stopping moment, and am seized with a longing to spirit myself back. Just for an hour, five minutes even. Instead I stare hungrily at the front door, willing the owners to emerge. I peer over the gate at the backyard I can’t now enter. It was once home to a garden full of vegetables, a garden for summer barbecues. The sound of my parents digging, the meandering chat about runner beans and potatoes and squashes drifting up on the breeze and into my bedroom window was the most beautiful sound of my childhood. When harmony reigned between the grown-ups and, therefore, in my heart.
I turn my gaze to the front garden again and frown when I see a tree that wasn’t there before: it’s a stranger to me, an interloper.
There’s no sign of anyone in the house and I’m not brave enough to climb the porch steps and ring the bell. So I carry on walking, cross the road, and ta-dah, I’m on the riverfront. River flowing into rapids, river so wide, river framed by trees. There is nowhere else in the world I’d rather be right now. Every cell in my body is alive, vibrating. I exhale with my entire body.
I spot a sign: this is called the ‘Parc des Rapides’ now. There never used to be a sign. For a moment, it jolts me, makes me feel out of place, a visitor, no longer someone from here. But a worm of a thought intrudes: was I ever truly ‘from here’? Is that possible when you’re an immigrant and the child of immigrants? And yet the river had always drawn me closer, beckoned me in, as kin.
I dig out some almonds and an apple from my rucksack. I walk down, down, along the path. I pass a mother goose and her goslings taking a stroll on the grass, casual as anything. I carry on walking down to Heron Island, passing couples holding hands, cyclists, friends gossiping. The good life.
When I was growing up, Heron Island was just a spit of land. Now information panels tell me it’s a protected nature reserve and a sanctuary for the blue heron. When I return the next morning to investigate properly, I spot one, still and silent as a Zen master perched on a rock in calm waters away from the rapids. There are little foot bridges, picnic areas, and benches. It’s all so civilised: my hazy childhood memories, in contrast, are of wild overgrowth, and a single rock-strewn dirt track petering out in a drop of rocks, then swift, hurling waters. How did one dirt track down to the rapids morph into this vast piece of land? I can’t figure it out.
I return again and again in the week, and notice little flashes of wild: mauve and yellow flowers I can’t identify, cheery red-winged blackbirds. Lots of them. Trees swaying en-masse in the breeze, the sun on the water, the heat, the vault-like sky. I’m confused because it all seems bigger than I remember. But on another information panel, I read that neighbouring Goat Island—I didn’t know it even had a name—has merged with this one, following the erosion of a dam from an old hydro-electric power station. That explains it, I think.
Enough reading. I want the river to know that I’m here, I want to show my gratitude for its singular beauty, for the intense pleasure coming back has brought to me, the clouds of memories that have been stirred up, even the dilemma of belonging and not belonging. A vital part of me has been brought back into the light, that part entwined with and inseparable from the river. I carry the current within me.
I leave Heron Island one last time, retrace my steps, walk back past the rapids and parallel to them along the riverfront, and then on a whim make my way down a random groove, half-hidden in the tall grass, to the water’s edge. Here I pluck some wild flowers, fashion them into an offering, and silently fling them into the rushing waters.