the fence
Toronto
to Kingston Aboard Lavalle LRC VIA train - January 1985
I am stretching
my Canadian dollar, twenty-four of them, between Toronto and Kingston.
"Have your tickets ready! Billets, s'il vous plait."
Lake Ontario
repulses me, coldness coming alive in throbbing chilly waves battering
ice-piled shores somewhere near Scarborough.
The 401 is closed
between London and Woodstock. Still, the Greyhound operator insisted
that all arrivals and departures from Toronto were on schedule.
My love, my fiance is promised entry into snowbound London.
South of the
border - so distantly close - Buffalo is particularly hard hit,
snow bound, denying entry or exit. Literally frozen at 42 degrees
Fahrenheit. Funny how I still have to qualify degrees. Buffalo is
closer than I think.
I'm in car 6203,
fumee section, which I notice is shrinking to only a fraction of
the available seating. Looking out, through my own smoke, I see
the cryptic numbers, figures of a westbound train. We have stopped
to let it by. Capacity. Gross wt. Lt. Wt. Retaining valve.
It feels like
we're moving, but really the train is moving the other way, surging
past. I have a sudden awareness of the train's tradition, surviving
power, worth. It's Canadianness. I move backwards, like my perception
of this car's movement.
We are zipping
along again. I'm conscious of the geography's presence. I am moving
through it. It is land locked and there are particularly inspiring
scenes with which I wish I could share a few moments landlocked
in unison. But the train wings on.
Past coniferous
forests, ice covered fields, drifted ditches, snowmobile tracks
showing in the strips of land less susceptible to the gusting winds.
I order another hot coffee from the trainman.
The snow whips
up around the car, blocking out the scenery - whole vistas - the
large barn and warm kitchen, hydro towers, elevators of some sort,
cold warehouses ( I intuit their emptiness)...
A fence.
A fence seems
to follow the train, changing height, shape form and composition,
but pursuing undaunted nonetheless.
Antiquated farming
gear stranded in a field. A huddle of homes. A pile of junk, grass
growing out around it. Monotone grey and white dominant in and through
another spiralling gust.
A barn with
more holes than boards. A hayloft screaming wind. An apple orchard,
trees bending back to earth for cover. Traffic waiting for me to
pass. Rolled hay or straw bundles, useless in their senility, snowbound.
More whipping snow.
I prepare my
coffee. I turn to inner visions. Why do I admire the straight lines
of power coursing through the geography, defying snow, wind, cold
and ice? That same power courses through me. Why do all of the seats
in the train face backwards? Why do I feel smug and secure with
my Globe and Star in the seat beside me?
Al Purdy's Piling
Blood is beneath my sheet of lined paper, giving my pen a better
surface on which to write. The man to my left is drinking Molson's
Golden, smooth like single bar lines. He ordered another. Is the
sun over the yard arm?
Yes, it is pretty
high in the sky, pushing aside the grey in a small orb. I'm awed
by all of the straight lines in this wilderness. That fence is relentless,
now torpedoing into a drift. It breaks only for roadways, any perpendiculars.
Is there a pecking order to this geometry?
The traffic
is scared by the distant warnings of this rocking horse. I see the
cars huddle back, shivering; the drivers hunch down and peer through
small clear portholes in their windshields.
I am complacent
in this seat. Is that it?
I am hypnotised
by the dancing regularities of the fence following me. Even where
the snow buries the fence I feel it there following me like some
sinister submarine. I see the occasional poles of weathered wood
peek out in rhythm.
Again. The lake.
It scares me. It really does. Making towards me, throwing its white
chilled claws out at me. Death surely, were I to be flung into it.
Just passed
Eldorado - Port Hope. Some manufacturer. Some coloured squares and
brick, a dog leashed up in a back yard. A footbridge crossed over
me. A pipeline followed the fence, suddenly veering into a putrid
blue shack, giving up the sprint.
I'm on a level
with the lake, the white waves very close. Explosions along the
elevated shore, water escaping. A dense coniferous forest, yellow
weeds bending on a huge uncomfortable bed of snow. Hydro lines follow
the fence, uninterrupted.
Where on earth
is there room for architecture in this small town? In the straight
lines following me? Structures flowing under me, over me, in instants.
Beautiful plum red CP cars wait on another track. Full of something,
I am sure.
Cobourg, laying
low, spitting out puffs of smoke at this winter day. So much of
the same now, over and over. Repetitive fields.
Ah, only fifty
feet from the rolling Lake!
Oh good, more
trees to hide behind. A crippled forest, too many diagonals. The
unbroken fence. We have slowed. A drainage ditch, marked 1912. Small
glass insulators looking like melted down diet Coke bottles controlling
those lines of power.
Another track,
as straight as this one. Trainless, however. Two uniform scars,
a train's breadth away.
I come inside.
The trainman has borrowed my papers. I notice the Queen on a quarter.
Who is this queen on the back of a quarter? She'd freeze in every
one of these fields. They should have a posthole digger on the quarter.
This queen would look stupid and pitiful in this particular field
in some kind of orange dress and hat. She's armless on the quarter
and sleeveless in the snow.
Bracken. Heather.
Weeds and taller weeds - trees really. Sudden elevated banks, then
troughs. The fence gives in to these elevation changes and relents.
It'll be back.
It has returned.
There are very few gates in this fence. All closed up, like Buffalo.
I think that
these hydro lines must be puppeteer's strings controlling the reflexes
of Kingston. They dance and interflow
with these long
distance movements.
"ETA 1:10"
says the trainman in a Canadian accent, or near enough.
Roadblocks follow
me, denying entry, lights flashing. From the other side, four wheel
drive Broncos watch me pass, impatient.
Blemished barns
again. Ranked apple orchards, at ease? I shiver as we pass over
water, a small river, ice covered but for a small slivery artery
of chilly movement. A small horse stable, the horses huddles together.
Blankets, quilted
all in one white fabric, with hasty seams of hemp and trees, dirty
hems of sanded roads, irregular corduroy rags interspersed, corn
or wheat fields. Then a rare gem of cloth, coloured in the subtle
dyes of rooftops, jewelled in people, stitched-in guardrails and
that super fence. I'm suddenly in a racing, roaring, shuffling sewing
machine.
Purely random
trees now, stripped of all and everything straight.
Not even curves,
desolate and broken.
Running twenty-five
minutes late, near Belleview. An opportunity to sleep, before I
gather the strength to jump the fence in Kingston.
Adrian
Hoad-Reddick