attention, or whether a subconscious part of me completed the piece. Did I switch to Leonore in my head? I park the car on a dirt road beside a thin stand of poplars. No one is around. Patches of snow have begun to melt into last year’s wild grasses beside the road. Along shore, jagged pieces of ice have been shoved up onto layered shale. I lock the car, zip my jacket and look out over an expanse of river that is both solid and free-flowing at the same time. It’s been a long winter and part of the river is still frozen, even this late in spring. Stray bits and pieces of ice are floating past on the current. Farther upstream, where the river is wider, the surface looks static, the dullest of greys. Close at hand, the smaller floes hold a tint of the palest blue. There must be cracks in the large sheet upstream. I know how fast the current can be. It’s a dark, continuous force, an unending murmur under ice, rushing towards open water.
I begin to walk in the direction of the current, downriver, towards an elevation of land. There’s an open stretch and I hear the roar of rapids in the distance. The river never freezes over white water there, no matter how cold the winter. Gulls wheel overhead. Basil, immensely pleased at being out of the car so soon, has found enough melting snow to roll in. His long back, his short legs and huge feet make me think of a hairy weight sinking through earth. He’ll follow when he’s ready, good hound that he is. We’ll take our chances on ice balls building up between his pads.
I walk for ten minutes under low cloud. Follow the path worn down centuries ago by Native Algonquins as they brought their furs to scattered trading posts. The portage was established long before the arrival of the
In the short time since I parked the car, the huge grey mass upriver has begun to rotate. After being so tightly lodged all winter, it has made a distinct but sluggish shift, as if the river itself is threatening to turn sideways. Freed at the edges, caught by the current and with nothing to impede it, this vast floe is already picking up speed. I consider running back to the car to get the camera or my sketch pad, one or the other. But if I do, I’ll miss the spectacle that’s about to unfold.
I scramble to lower ground and wait. The river is impossibly narrow here, too narrow. The approaching ice will not have enough space to manoeuvre and will have to grind itself against shore. As it approaches, the sound is one of a persistent, slurring mush. Basil has caught up and pauses beside me, alert. He hears it, too.
The sheet is wide, its farthest edges a blur. The ground shudders and ice crashes simultaneously through current and against shore, piling up layer after layer of harsh, metallic silt. What first appeared to be slush has become a chain of high, grating hills. Never again will I witness the purity of this shade of blue.
The immense portion of ice that remains in the water now flows swiftly by, but everything has happened so quickly I have difficulty separating detail. When I step back, I realize how cold I am, and pull up the hood of my jacket. I dig at a heap of newly stacked ice with the heel of my hiking boot and watch the mass explode into hundreds of candled segments, the result of days of sun preparing the melt over the river. Crystals scatter like spears from dismembered chandeliers. One form becomes another and another.
I know how impossible it would be to try to capture what has just taken place. A light rain is beginning—I can hear and feel the patter of drops on my hood. Gulls fly drunkenly into the wind. Some have begun to lift off the shore in groups of twos and threes, and are about to settle on chunks of ice that have broken away from the main floe and now trail in its wake. Each chunk is no more than a foot or two in breadth; each appears to be specially carved for riding out the waves with a bird on top. And this, before my eyes, is what the gulls now begin to do. They are hitching rides. They even seem to be selecting the best shapes. All for the purpose of partaking in some adolescent feathered rite.
Lena’s voice in my head again. Speaking French, as she was sometimes wont to do—having grown up in Montreal.
The chunks pick up speed, swirl and bob in the direction of the rapids. With split-second timing, the gulls lift to safety precisely as each piece of ice beneath their feet reaches white water and flips upside down. From there, they fly upstream and ride down again.
It’s the bird midway at the fair. They don’t seem to tire of these daredevil rides that tease danger. Faster and faster they travel under layers of descending cloud. And then, a last flat sheet of ice shifts and turns with a mild roar, dips to the whitecaps like a salute and is gone. Out of sight, beyond hearing. The river, still swollen, is dark but free.
I don’t know how long I’ve been standing here. I do know that this is breakup, what I have just seen.
At the car, I remove my wet jacket and open the trunk for Basil, who takes his time about climbing in. He’d run miles if I let him, even in the rain. Especially in the rain. I start the engine and turn up the heat, full blast. Glance out the side window. The gulls are circling aimlessly above the river, as if suddenly bereft.
Basil pokes his head over the back of the seat and rests the weight of his damp and hairy chin on my shoulder. A thick fug of warmth permeates the inside of the car and mixes with the odour of wet dog. I look out the window again at the gulls and imagine beginnings: the way I’ll shape angular chunks of ice, the overwhelming greyness, a flash of wing to hover over speeding darkness while the river discharges its winter debris. I think of the Fraser again, my childhood river, and a rush of images floods up so suddenly, I’m caught off balance.
It is when I feel the cold touch of Basil’s nose against my neck that I curse the fates, lower my head and weep.
CHAPTER 4
I’m on the road, seriously on the road, enjoying my hands on the wheel, the liberating sense of moving forward. “Travel does that,” Lena used to say. “It clips the fetters of routine.”
Every time we started out on a trip, the moment we pulled away from the curb in front of the house, she stretched her arms wide and kicked off her shoes. Until it was her turn in the driver’s seat—we switched every three or four hours. Our conversation changed, too; it became more contemplative, the two of us staring straight ahead. As I am now, with thoughts and memories tumbling unbidden, scrambling over one another to grab my attention. Inevitable, since I’m heading for the camp on the other side of the country. I look in the rear-view and swear that Basil is nodding. But he makes a smacking sound, ducks his head and settles behind me again. It’s going to be a long journey back.
FIFTY-FIVE YEARS AGO, my first journey began. It was early 1942, and despite my young age then, I can clearly recall some events from that time. Other events have been pieced together from a jumble of images, fragments of conversations overheard, body memories, sensations. Given the intervening years, it’s impossible to separate one way of remembering from another.
My brother and sister, Henry and Kay, who have lived in Alberta for decades, know more stories from the early years, simply because they were older at the time. Truth to tell, when the three of us are together, which is not often, we rarely discuss the war years or the 21,000 people of Japanese ancestry forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast and moved inland. A considerable feat on the part of the government and the RCMP, considering how many of us there were to round up. The numbers were greater in the U.S.—114,000 Japanese Americans having been interned at the same time. These were highly organized manoeuvres on the part of both countries, quick reactions to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941.
During my infrequent visits to Edmonton over the years, and while trying to pretend that we are still family, no one has ever really wanted to poke at the layers of shadow that have fallen behind us since that time. Except Lena. In the early years of our marriage, when she accompanied me to Alberta, she was forthright about aiming questions.
“They changed your names? That’s an outrage! How could such a thing be allowed? What are your real names, then? Do you have two names—one English, one Japanese?”
Yes, and yes.
