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Prescott People - Lee McKnight - The St. Lawrence River, a Reflective Soliloquy

The St. Lawrence River, a Reflective Soliloquy

by Lee McKnight of Prescott, Ontario

Thus spoke the ancient water, the royal waterway:

"I gave you myself - one of the most beautiful rivers in the world. For heaven's sake, what have you done to me? It is enough to make me run backwards. I gave you crystal clear water to serve your thirst, a brew of sweet nectar to the gods. Why, oh why, so ungrateful? I gave your ships a royal highway to reach the centre of the continent, a fertile shoreline on two national borders so that your ancestors could survive and thrive. I gave you fresh water - not salt - and fresh fish to fry, and you polluted them with poisonous chemicals. I expected more from you! I gave you electricity by waterfalls, dams and swift currents to grind your grain, to run your machinery, to light and warm your homes and power your gadgets. I freed you from back-breaking slavery. I improved the quality of your life. Would that you had returned to compliment. I gave your ancestors strong currents to carry their long, long rafts, to make timber they exchanged for goods from foreign lands. I gave you a waterway to carry your golden grain to a starving world in peace and in war. I gave you a place to swim in, to skate on, to fish in, and to whirl and sail on. I gave campers a refreshing breeze on a hot July day. Yes, I gave you romance - even love - in a canoe. I told you to be careful, not to upset, to respect me and to treat me reverently. The ice I gave your ancestors in winter kept their food from spoiling in the summer. Ice houses were a part of my shore's life for decades. I have watched dwellers on both my banks go through stormy weather and turbulent waves, with courage. I went through a severe earthquake in 1663, but kept on running.

"I give you still changing scenic beauty, more varied than the Rhine with its castles. I change my moods accompanied by glorious colours meeting and matching the sky to lighten your spirits. Never dull, never drab, always moving with life. Always a grandstand performance passing in revue a cavalcade of charm and strength, pursuit and power. Dwellers on both my banks - you are a part of me, and I am a part of you. I join, never divide. Look at me daily, and I will keep your spirits afloat as I keep your boats afloat. See the sun rise out of my waters at dawn as a crescendo heralding the creation of a new day. I work in harmony with the sun, the moon, and the stars. You present me with pollution and acid rain, spoils of a society and disharmony.

"Have your poets, artists, musicians and composers ever done me justice? Could they not have caught the rivers of my water or the roar of my rapids worthy of a fifth symphony or such a stirring march as the Marseillaise? The Suwannee was only a creek until someone rhymed it into a song. The Seine became shared with the world because the French painter Monet captivated, captured the scenes of it's journey's end.

"One of the dwellers on my banks once made a journey around the world, his aeroplane sweeping low over the golden-roofed pagodas of Rangoon in Burma, saw nothing to surpass the harvest moon, spreading its golden path across the St. Lawrence from shore to shore, nature outshining man at your own door. This same traveller stood on the banks of the Jordan River, not far from Jerusalem, where John the Baptist baptized. The Jordan leads into the Dead Sea, the lowest place on earth, and a man could nearly jump across it. And yet this river is held sacred. He watched the natives of India splashing in their sacred river from which no one could drink, so holy and so polluted are its waters. He crossed the Rio Grande into Mexico in the dry season, not in a boat but drifting in a bus over planks laid on the floor of the river. He saw treacherous rivers in full flood sweeping away land, homes, and lives. On my shores no one has yet had to sing, 'River stay away from my door'. You will never see such vicious jaws rise from my waters to clamp the head of a poor mule taking a drink. There is nothing in the St. Lawrence to tear man or beast to pieces, and yet the White Nile and the Blue Nile, infested with crocodiles, are legendary.

"I can remember when the Indians had their canoe races in the amphitheatre between what is now Prescott, Ontario, and Ogdensburg, New York. There were bear years, when the bears came down to my shores to swim and to fish. In those days I was teeming with muskellunge - centuries- old creatures breaking the surface with the sheer joy of life. Don't blame the Indians or the bears for what has happened. Even the Laurentians, older than the Himalayas, when forging their way southward, nobly bowed low when they came to my shore and formed a jeweled necklace of sparkling green gems called the Thousand Islands. The count is even more.

"I have witnessed strange sights over the years. Some of those small boys I watched learning to swim, splash and play, grew up only to leave their arms, legs and lives in some foreign soil by some alien river. Man the destroyer never sleeps. Man the guardian, the civilized man, must always be awake to prevent disaster. "I have been robbed of my gifts to future generations by mud and deadly chemicals. A new reverence is needed. Keep pouring pollution into my waters - your waters - and throats will burn. Some day, my waters - your waters - could be Dante's 'Inferno', a ditch filled with acid-poisoned fish and choked with noxious weeds. You dwellers of two nations on both my banks - I miss your innocent enjoyment. I have coddled you, given you hope, lengthened your life span. I have given all of you along my shores a quality of life unsurpassed. You owe me. I am a royal river with deep feelings. I cry out sometimes - my tears as whitecaps on my waves of protest.

"My friends, I have given you myself- the most beautiful river in the world. Drink not only with thine eyes, but with your hearts and minds, and you will be baptized beyond belief.

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