Awedacity

I spent most of the last 25 years living a couple of blocks from the ocean. Labour Day weekend marked the end of my first summer in Ontario. I have missed the sunsets on the beach, the slightly rank smell of low-tide, and the heads of seals swimming close enough to the shore that I often mistook them for the dogs that paddle out in search of sticks. I have even missed the hordes of drunken youth who gather at some of the party beaches, dancing and copulating in the sand, intoxicated surfers of midnight waves who, miraculously, never drown.

The waters here are different; less friendly. Killers, even. All summer, the Monday newspaper has carried brief little paragraphs about weekend drownings. A dog falls into one of the three rivers that trisects the city; the owner goes after it and drowns (the dogs in these stories always makes it back to shore under their own power). Someone else goes jet skiing and fails to make a dinner date. They never will. A woman floats out on an inflatable raft and drowns herself and the man who tries to rescue her when she falls off. Three men who cannot swim ignore the “water closed” sign and wade into a local lake, unaware of the sudden drop-off. The man who goes over the edge into darkness pulls the foolish, brave friends who try to rescue to him down into the depths, too.

In Lotusland, it is rare to hear of a drowning death, even though millions live only a short walk from the shore. Maybe it is the simple fact that it is an ocean that engenders a more respectful attitude. Only the strong swimmers immerse themselves and, aware that the ocean will always be stronger than mere flesh, they do not stray too far. Perhaps, if I am being fanciful, it is simply that the ocean has a surfeit of death and is kinder to its swimmers.

But here, the saltless water takes its toll of grief. Every week the obituary pages carry the announcements of untimely death—sad tributes from parents, wives, husbands, and children who wished that they had gone to a movie, stayed home and painted the garage, hit the mall, or any other number of activities that seemed less appealing than a day by the water. The rivers and lakes are wantonly malicious. Beneath the inviting waters any number of corpses lie, awaiting the moment when bacterial bloat will bring them to the surface to be noted in the reeds or against a beaver dam by some jogger or bird watcher.

More realistically, I suspect it is the fact that these rivers are so narrow and seemingly placid and that the lakes are so small and calm that lulls the heedless to their deaths. We are so unused to physical exertion within nature that we forget it is not tame. We forget to respect its force. And is in that exact moment that a man who cannot swim decides that wearing a flotation device looks uncool and steps lightly into the water that will kill him.

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