4 - Sunday, July 17 1988 - North Shore News

1 “KNEW” Georgian Bay about as well as any place in
Canada, I thought, even though I had never been there.

It is, after all, the title of one of
Tom Thomson’s finest paintings,
showing a wind-hunched Jack pine
on the edge of a churned-up lake,
with storm clouds rolling pon-
derously, everything in splendid
primal tumult.

it is maybe the quintessential
““Canadian”’ artwork.

If there is, in fact, a Canadian
consciousness, it would peer out at
the land through Tom Thomson’s
eyes.

bly hypocritical aura of patriotism,
as though | was somehow checking
out my Canadian identity instead
of just getting away and laying
back. I mean, Georgian Bay! Hey!

Thus....

We came to be on 2 Tarmac-vast
freeway heading west at 7 a.m.,
zooming along one of 18 lanes
through canyons of stone and
under Saturnian rings of grey ce-
ment, amid the mighty rigs and
Greyhounds, a tiny made-in-Japan
capsule of plastic sheltering four

L, crosses my mind how crazy this is,
bringing my precious children and Angel-
Essence Herself out into the midst of this
bowling alley of mass-produced megadoom,
a stampede of steel and rubber behemoths,
with us spurting along like a mechanical
rabbit in a shooting gallery.’’

I think he did more to create a
Canadian national psyche —
again, assuming there is a valid
one — than any other artist. He
has a lot to do with what
subliminal feelings of Cana-
dianness I manage to experience.

So when an invitation came to
stay with « friend at his parents’
cottage on legendary Georgian
Bay itself, I seized the offer
hungrily.

Having survived four months in
Toronto, the Swiss Family Hunter,
as we call ourselves, were starved
for a bit of nature, to say nothing
of Cap’n Bob panting for a glimp-
se of open water.

Four months was the longest
stretch I’d gone in decades, by the
way, without touching my salty
feet upon a salty deck.

When my host added that we
would have to travel by boat to an
island to get to his folks’ cabin, my
soggy soul was set a-gigging.
Water, water./.

The fact that it was the Canada
Day long weekend added a proba-

highly-fragile sentient beings,
Cap’n Bob grimly at the whecl.

It crosses my mind how crazy
this is, bringing my precious
children and Angel-Essence
Herself out into the midst of this
bowling alley of mass-produced
megadoom, a stampede of steel
and rubber behemoths, with us
spurting along like a mechanical
rabbit in a shooting gallery.

In the midst of this hurtling,
nerve-wracking madness,
Sweetness-Pie, a chronic back-seat
driver, can’t resist the urge to yell
that | am missing the turnoff for
the 400 and that I'd better change
lanes i.amediately.

Can you imagine?

This confuses me, because I
think for a moment she's right,
and I change lanes madly, and the
next thing I know we are off the
freeway and on to a ramp leading
us down to a parking lot around a
shopping mall, lost in darkest East
York.

Needless to say, Eternal Love-
Juice 2nd I scream at each other

like animals. I'm very jumpy about
being given a bum steer off the
freeway by a woman who can’t
keep her bloody yap shut, etc.

The children cringe in horror,
the four-year-old admonishing us
that we’ll have to go to our rooms,
and the nine-year-old wishing we
would act like, cults.

ft sereech 19 a stuy, bang the
door oper, and climb out, shriek-
ing at her: “You drive! I quit!”’

What a classic start to a con-
temporary Canuck pilgrimage to
Tom Thomson land!

The rest of the voyage is driven
in a seething miasma of silence,
even though Soul-Flower finally
apologizes. This is not quite
enough to quench the rightcous
wrath of the aggrieved driver until
hours later.

We rendezvous with our host at
the McDonald’s next to the
Petro-Can station just outside of
Barrie.

Georgian Bay? Tom who?

lam starting to get worried.
This national roots journey is go-
ing awry. Family travel is a risky
thing where mood is concerned. To
get this stretched-out so early ....
A very bad sign.

[ride from the McDonaid’s on-
ward with my host, his kid and
their dog, leaving the Ever-Beloved
One to drive along behind with our
kids, everybody happy to see old
Dorkbrain gone.

Soon we are off the highway and
on to a narrow winding road
through broadleaf forest. I can
identify Birch, Maple, maybe Elm
—— that’s about all.

We pass through an Indian
reserve and pull up in an ap-
propriately rustic dockside town
where probably a hundred cars are
parked. Here we are. The shore of
actual Georgian Bay, a tremendous
inlet on the edge of a natural res-
ervoir containing one-fifth of the
world’s fresh water supply.

As we transfer our gear from the
cars to the dockside, waiting for
our boat to arrive, 1 notice the
water of Georgian Bay is clear.

Very, very clear.

Ominously clear.

So clear, in fact, that | know
right away that something is ter-
ribly wrong.

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