see.”
The waitress came back to the table. “All done? Can I get you folks
anything else?” She looked at Morgan’s plate. “Honey, you didn’t eat
very much. Not a big eater, eh? Would you like something else? Some
pancakes or something?”
“No, thank you,” she replied. “I wasn’t very hungry. I’m not much of
a morning person. But the food was great.”
“Just the bill please,” Christina said, reaching for her purse. “We
have to get on the road. We still have a long way to go.”
They took Highway 17 north along Lake Superior towards Montréal
River.
Christina drove steadily, her eyes on the road. After half an hour, the
silence in the car became oppressive and she turned on the radio, hoping
that music would, at the very least, act as some sort of mental bridge by
which the three of them could come out of their private thoughts and
meet each other halfway. The reception was terrible. She’d forgotten the
degree to which the igneous granite of the Precambrian Shield, covered
with the thinnest layer of soil, interfered with radio transmission in this
part of the country. She turned the radio off and pushed an America
eight-track into the deck, humming along to “Horse With No Name”
until Morgan asked her to stop so she could enjoy the music. Christina
smiled at that, but she stopped humming. At the very least, it meant that
Morgan’s mind was temporarily occupied by something other than how
much she missed her father, or her dread at the thought of starting a new
life in as alien a place as a teenager from Toronto could imagine.
Through the windows of the car, the landscape grew wilder. The
original Trans-Canada route had been Highway 11, called “The King’s
Highway” in a colonial forelock-tug to His Majesty King George V. The
unforgiving terrain of the two-billion-year-old Precambrian Shield had
been so resistant to taming when it was being built in 1923 that the
Algoma Central Railway, which had connected Sault Ste. Marie to various
northern Ontario mining towns, including Parr’s Landing, bypassed
the 165-mile gap between Sault Ste. Marie and the Agawa River. The “Big Gap,” as it was called, had been a treasure trove of virgin timber
surrounded by deep gorges and rivers bracketed by steep-walled granite
canyons. In 1960, the newly completed Highway 17 made the route
shorter and simpler, but no less dramatic than its antecedent highway,
along which Christina remembered driving with Jack—and with Morgan
slumbering in her womb—nearly sixteen years ago. Of course, sixteen
years ago they had been driving in the opposite direction, towards a new
life. Perversely, she reasoned that she was still driving towards a new life,
but in a completely different sense.
Ironic,
she thought.
Ugly, tragic, but ironic nonetheless.
On either side of the car, the highway rose and fell, bracketed here
and there by soaring granite cliffs of rose and grey stone. Forests of maple
and birch planed off from the highway into the distant badlands like
great wings of red and gold. Christina saw the edges of algae-encrusted
swamps laced with dead logs and slippery rock, and deep pine everywhere.
As they approached the town of Wawa, the maple and birch gave way to
a mélange of birch and various other deciduous trees, as well as conifers,
adding the blessed rigour of dark green to a palette from which Christina
felt nearly drunk with colour. Through the window, Morgan squealed
with delight and pointed to a moose standing back from the road beside
a tamarack swamp. As the car swept past, the moose ambled back into
the deeper brush, either cautious or indifferent to their passing.
In Wawa, Morgan made Christina stop the car so she could look at
the twenty-eight-foot tall metal statue of the Canada goose that had
been built twelve years before, in 1960, and dedicated to the town that
had taken its name from the Ojibwa word for “wild goose.” After Morgan
had
The waitress came back to the table. “All done? Can I get you folks
anything else?” She looked at Morgan’s plate. “Honey, you didn’t eat
very much. Not a big eater, eh? Would you like something else? Some
pancakes or something?”
“No, thank you,” she replied. “I wasn’t very hungry. I’m not much of
a morning person. But the food was great.”
“Just the bill please,” Christina said, reaching for her purse. “We
have to get on the road. We still have a long way to go.”
They took Highway 17 north along Lake Superior towards Montréal
River.
Christina drove steadily, her eyes on the road. After half an hour, the
silence in the car became oppressive and she turned on the radio, hoping
that music would, at the very least, act as some sort of mental bridge by
which the three of them could come out of their private thoughts and
meet each other halfway. The reception was terrible. She’d forgotten the
degree to which the igneous granite of the Precambrian Shield, covered
with the thinnest layer of soil, interfered with radio transmission in this
part of the country. She turned the radio off and pushed an America
eight-track into the deck, humming along to “Horse With No Name”
until Morgan asked her to stop so she could enjoy the music. Christina
smiled at that, but she stopped humming. At the very least, it meant that
Morgan’s mind was temporarily occupied by something other than how
much she missed her father, or her dread at the thought of starting a new
life in as alien a place as a teenager from Toronto could imagine.
Through the windows of the car, the landscape grew wilder. The
original Trans-Canada route had been Highway 11, called “The King’s
Highway” in a colonial forelock-tug to His Majesty King George V. The
unforgiving terrain of the two-billion-year-old Precambrian Shield had
been so resistant to taming when it was being built in 1923 that the
Algoma Central Railway, which had connected Sault Ste. Marie to various
northern Ontario mining towns, including Parr’s Landing, bypassed
the 165-mile gap between Sault Ste. Marie and the Agawa River. The “Big Gap,” as it was called, had been a treasure trove of virgin timber
surrounded by deep gorges and rivers bracketed by steep-walled granite
canyons. In 1960, the newly completed Highway 17 made the route
shorter and simpler, but no less dramatic than its antecedent highway,
along which Christina remembered driving with Jack—and with Morgan
slumbering in her womb—nearly sixteen years ago. Of course, sixteen
years ago they had been driving in the opposite direction, towards a new
life. Perversely, she reasoned that she was still driving towards a new life,
but in a completely different sense.
Ironic,
she thought.
Ugly, tragic, but ironic nonetheless.
On either side of the car, the highway rose and fell, bracketed here
and there by soaring granite cliffs of rose and grey stone. Forests of maple
and birch planed off from the highway into the distant badlands like
great wings of red and gold. Christina saw the edges of algae-encrusted
swamps laced with dead logs and slippery rock, and deep pine everywhere.
As they approached the town of Wawa, the maple and birch gave way to
a mélange of birch and various other deciduous trees, as well as conifers,
adding the blessed rigour of dark green to a palette from which Christina
felt nearly drunk with colour. Through the window, Morgan squealed
with delight and pointed to a moose standing back from the road beside
a tamarack swamp. As the car swept past, the moose ambled back into
the deeper brush, either cautious or indifferent to their passing.
In Wawa, Morgan made Christina stop the car so she could look at
the twenty-eight-foot tall metal statue of the Canada goose that had
been built twelve years before, in 1960, and dedicated to the town that
had taken its name from the Ojibwa word for “wild goose.” After Morgan
had
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