The Cliff, the Lake, and the Book

Dear readers,

For the past number of years, I have been researching and writing the story of the Toronto waterfront through the lens of four waterfront districts in the city that retain a direct and immediate connection to Lake Ontario and the natural world. All this work has resulted in the completion of four manuscripts, which are to be published by ECW Press in the spring of 2013 in a single volume entitled Along the Shore.

My plan is to share with you some of the insights I have gained through the long and fascinating process of researching and writing these manuscripts, and to connect you to the rich history, interesting people, and substantial beauty that still exists along our shoreline.

But first, I thought you might be curious about how a former Toronto criminal lawyer got drawn into a project of writing about the Toronto waterfront in the first place. The seeds of that story are not to be found in the hallowed halls of academia, nor in the courts of justice, but in a somewhat less auspicious, yet thoroughly challenging field ― that of motherhood.

Like so many of my generation, I delayed having children in favour of establishing a career. When the “motherhood” moment finally came in my mid-thirties, I decided to take at least a year off to raise the first two of our children, the twins, out of infancy.

Included in my ambitious and remarkably naïve “year off” plan was to “do some writing” (a lifelong passion), and actually read that copy of Ulysses that had languished on my bedside table for the last couple of years. After a steady diet of criminal law, which had included participation in multiple murder trials and involvement in the day-to-day triumphs and tragedies of the desperate and downtrodden at Old City Hall, how hard could staying home with a couple of infants actually be?

Four months in, and with my life partner Mark climbing the ladder in a busy law practice on Bay Street, I was really taxed. By six months, I was flattened. This motherhood thing was perhaps a little more challenging than I had initially anticipated. It was clear that I needed to recalibrate my initial strategy.

Help arrived at our doorstep for the first time when Sylvia, recently arrived from Bulgaria, landed on our doorstep at the appointed hour. A few visits later, on Friday the 13th, I announced that I was going for a jog.

“You crazy woman? I wouldn’t do dat, it’s Friday de dirteend,” warned the ultra-efficient and ever-practical Sylvia in her thick Bulgarian accent.

I assured Sylvia that I would be perfectly fine, and that she really needed to consider dropping those Old World superstitions ― after all, she was in Canada now!

As I recall, the day was clear and cold, with just a light dusting of snow. It felt fantastic to be finally running again, taking in the bracing air. As I entered the top meadow at Bluffers Park and rounded the first bend, there was the Lake, spread out before me like an endless canvas of icy blue. Below me was the first step down to the Lake, an extremely steep incline known locally as Killer Hill.  Below the hill was the bottom meadow, where at the edge of the field the Scarborough Bluffs plunge to the water, some two hundred and fifty feet below.

I never saw the black ice on the hill until it was too late.

Come to think of it, I never even heard the characteristic “snap” as the bottom of my leg bones violently broke away from both sides of my ankle. I had no pain that I could clearly identify, yet lying prone on the hillside, I knew something was terribly wrong. I could see the impression of my broken bones pointing up under my skin, near the ankle.

Walking back up that hill was definitely not an option, so I tried to get a grip on the ice, pulling myself up with my hands, using my knees for support. After making a little progress, I tired of this procedure and turned my attention to the Lake.

Below me the ice fog was swirling across the surface of the water, which had turned from navy blue to grim and gray. The wind had kicked up and breakers were crashing into shore. It started to snow. I yelled and no one came. The impossibility of my situation was almost laughable had it not been so real. What if no one came?

It was as if I had been transported into a bad Can-lit nightmare from 1975. Me against nature ― Earl Birney’s David out on the ledge. Yet something stirred in me in the moments and seeming hours before help arrived. Although I had lived along the water for many years, this was a Lake I had never known. Where was I?

∫

“I see you! I’m coming, dear!”

I saw the figure of an older man, coming across the meadow below me.

“Just stay there, I’ll get some help.”

The man appeared, a short time later, with seventy-five-plus-year-old Mr. Harvey, who lived in the neighbourhood adjacent to the park.

Their initial plan was to have me hop out of the park. I seem to recall an anecdote about a broken ankle one of them had suffered during World War Two, while at the front, and the advice, “You just have to put it out of your mind and keep going,” or some such thing. But I was getting woozy, and by this time the pain in my leg was making childbirth look like a cakewalk.

In time, the twosome abandoned my rather feckless attempts at self-propulsion in favour of a plastic wading pool that Mr. Harvey scrounged from a neighbour. With my two champions, to whom I shall forever be grateful, I was inelegantly towed out of the park.

Mr. Harvey and his lovely wife Mary took me up to the hospital, but not before we dropped by to update the stalwart Sylvia on my running progress.

“No worries, Sylvia. They’ll have me in a cast in no time and you’ll be out of here by five.”

“Huh,” said Sylvia, with arms crossed. “We’re gonna see about dat.”

Four days later, after undergoing orthopedic surgery by the marvelous Dr. Ted English, I emerged from the hospital. Remarkably, Sylvia, despite her closely held suspicion that she may be dealing with a full-blown lunatic, stayed on.

After my leg fully healed, the question first posed on the hill stayed with me. It had inspired in me a deep connection to place that remains with me to this day.

After that, I spent most of my “down time” away from the kids, becoming intimately acquainted with the Baldwin Room at the Toronto Reference Library, the Ontario Archives, and the multitude of wonderful local history collections and extraordinary people who inhabit each of the waterfront districts outlined in the manuscripts. I was hooked. I would spend the next number of years researching and writing the story of the Toronto shore.

Sylvia eventually moved on to New York City, where she married an artist. Mr. Harvey, now almost ninety, still lives at the edge of the park overlooking the water. Our kids, all teenagers, are busy developing their own lives, and the book, an idea first inspired by my experience on the edge of the cliff, is now completed.

I look forward to sharing it with you.

Jane Fairburn
From Doire Naomh
Scarborough Bluffs
2012

Tagged as: Along the Shore