POSTING # 34

Summer Delights in Virgil; the Luther Marsh; Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

Summer Delights in Virgil

This week our neighbours, the Walkers, who have a market on the Niagara Parkway (see Posting #25, June 21, 2009) shared some corn that they had been asked to test by the farmer who grows their corn. The corn is of the Peaches and Cream type but a newly-developed variety that at the moment has no name, just a test number. If the variety meets with customer approval, the advertising people will be turned loose to come up with a name.

The kernels were a little smaller than the usual Peaches and Cream cobs but the corn was tender, sweet and delicious. We gave it a ‘two thumbs up, ‘way up’ rating.

Corn is one of the vegetables that I think has improved since my childhood. The Seneca and Golden Bantam varieties I grew up with were good but if the time between picking and cooking was too long the corn became starchy.

Pierre Berton argued that you couldn’t pick corn in the garden and take it to the kitchen without the starchiness occurring. His solution was to build a fire in his garden near the rows of corn---this was before pesky air pollution laws---and hang a kettle full of water over it. Once the water was boiling, his many kids would race among the rows, picking, husking and popping the cobs into the kettle. The whole operation took just a minute or two.

Berton claimed that this was the only way to have truly great corn on the cob.

Sure, a bit obsessive.

But in those days it was a very good way to have sweet, non-starchy corn.

The plant scientists who developed Peaches and Cream have obviously found a way to delay that sugar-to-starch conversion---and made our life a little easier and more pleasant.

One vegetable that hasn’t improved is the pepper squash. In my days in Arthur and even at university in the 1950s, I loved the dark yellow, dense, full-of-flavour flesh of pepper squashes. They were wonderful, baked in the oven with lots of butter, and a little salt and pepper.

While we were in England in the 1960s something seems to have happened to pepper squashes. When we came back to Canada, I remember my mother pointing out that the flesh of pepper squashes was now light yellow, watery and tasteless, almost like a summer squash. She blamed greedy farmers who were over-watering the squash so that they would grow faster and weigh more on the grocer’s scale.

She may have been right.

Or perhaps the food scientists had developed a new variety that was more profitable to grow, thus driving all the decent pepper squashes off the market.

If I could find some seeds for the old-style pepper squash, I would be tempted to dig up part of our back yard and put in some beds of squash. I could also plant some heritage beefsteak tomatoes.

Yum, yum!

The Luther Marsh

Last week, Pat and I went to Guelph to see some friends and at one point we crossed the Grand River. That started me thinking about the Luther Marsh, the source of the Grand River.

Growing up in Arthur, Ontario, the Luther Marsh was in our backyard, so to speak--- about 10 miles north-east of town.

The general view, which I am sure I shared, was that the Marsh was a great waste of land. You couldn’t farm it, or take timber off it. It was a great shame that about 6000 hectares of land (roughly 15,000 acres for dummies like yours truly) just sat there, without earning its keep by producing wheat or oats or timber. Given that the average farm when I was growing up was 100 acres in size, one could have had 150 farms out of the area occupied by the Marsh.

Today, of course, we are a little wiser. Even if we couldn’t explain to a Martian what an eco-system is, we sense that swamps, marshes and wetlands have their place, and need to be protected.

Now, we have the Luther Marsh Wildlife Management Area and a council that from all reports does a good job in overseeing the health of the marsh.

Apart from being seen as a waste of land the Marsh was also seen, especially by the young, as a spooky and dangerous place. Our parents told us that you could get lost and no one would ever find you. And if you didn’t watch where you stepped you could sink without trace.

It was a sinister place.

Here are a few stories about the Marsh.

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One story concerns how the marsh got its name. The folklore in Arthur was that the surveyor who was commissioned to survey the townships that contained the marsh was a Roman Catholic. After fighting his way through the swamps, bogs and ponds he is supposed to have declared that it was the worst marsh he had ever seen, and since Martin Luther was the worst person who had ever lived, it was only appropriate that the marsh should be known as the Luther Marsh.

I have told this story many times in many different places and people seem to enjoy it.

The other day, I thought I should really try to find out if the story is true.

A Nature Guide to Ontario (By Winifred Cairns Wake, Federation of Ontario Naturalists, P.198) reveals that the surveyor’s name was Lewis Burwell. In a report dated September 1, 1831, Burwell stated that there could be no settlement in the area because it was “…one continual swamp…”. He complained about the problems caused by fallen trees and a thick undergrowth of cedars and alders. He also remarked about “…the swamps being deep and mirey at the same time.” (Isn’t ‘mirey’ a fine word!)

The book does not refer to his religion or whether he was the one who named the marsh.

My search for the truth carries on.

Perhaps a reader can help me.

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Despite Burwell’s belief that there could be no settlements in the Luther Marsh area, migrants from the British Isles, mainly Protestants from Northern Ireland (who might have found the name ‘Luther’ a good omen) were settled there starting in 1853.

Farming was difficult and in the mid-1860s the government brought in experienced lumbermen from Quebec to harvest white pine in order to give the farmers some extra income. (One wonders how the Protestant Northern Irish settlers got along with the French Catholic lumbermen) The logs were floated down the Grand River to Galt and then shipped to Toronto.

The trees and their roots that held water in the Marsh were under attack. Farmers cut down less valuable trees for firewood and drained portions of the Marsh to create hay fields. Then a forest fire killed more trees.

All of these activities reduced the capacity of the Marsh to regulate the water entering the Grand River system. In wet periods, floods occurred in the many towns along the Grand between the Marsh and Lake Erie. In dry times, there would not be enough water in the Grand to meet the needs of municipal water systems.

It was decided to build dams to control the flow of water.

In 1952 as part of this effort a dam was built across Black Creek in the Marsh. As the water rose behind the dam, the traces of a century of settlement were lost as water buried farm houses and barns and roads.

Now, the reader may be wondering what’s going on here, with all this history and ecology stuff.

A good question.

The Letter from Virgil is supposed to entertain, not educate.

Well, it took some time to set up a story that had a dramatic effect on me and on the other students in our high school at the time.

Here, finally, is the story.

A classmate at the Arthur District High School was driving his dad’s small, two-door car, carrying four friends home from a dance. He wasn’t used to the area around the Marsh and got lost. His friends started complaining that they would catch ‘heck’ from their parents if they didn’t get home soon.

As we sometimes do when we get lost, he speeded up.

He flew over a hill and suddenly saw, as the headlights focused down, that the road disappeared into water. He braked hard but the car hurtled into the water. He and the front seat passenger opened their doors and jumped out. The three people who were crowded into the back seat fought to get over the front seat and out. Finally, they were all safely out of the car, standing in water up to their waists.

Meanwhile, the car was floating out into the middle of the new Luther Lake.

They watched as the car---lights still on---floated away, settling lower and lower into the water until the lights went out and the car disappeared.

They had a long walk until they reached a farm house.

The next day at school, the driver and the passengers were still suffering from shock. One moment they would laugh about the sight of the car drifting into the lake with the lights still shining. And then they would grow sober as they realized how close they had come to being victims of the Marsh.

The episode had a chilling effect on all of us.

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Next week, another story about the Luther Marsh.


Short Stuff (Mini-Stories about Kids and Pets)

While in Kuala Lumpur in 1991, I went to visit the Batu Caves and the Hindu shrines built within the caves. There are some 272 steps up to the Caves and since it was a hot, sticky day I decided I should carry some liquid with me to ward off dehydration.

A man in a stall at the bottom of the steps was cutting open coconuts and pouring the milk into fresh plastic bags. At that time one worried about the safety of drinks sold at local stalls in Malaysia, but fresh coconut milk looked safe. I bought a bag.

I started trudging up the steps, making sure that I hung on well to my camera because I had been warned that bands of monkeys loved to run off with small bags, cameras and even ice cream cones being enjoyed by children.

The monkeys possess a kind of protected status at the Caves because it is a religious shrine. As a result they have become both numerous and bold.

I saw a band coming toward me and I tightened my grip on the camera with one hand while clutching the bag of coconut milk in the other.

I tried to gently shoo them away but one little fellow came in close and with his sharp claws slashed my bag of coconut milk. The milk poured down the steps, and monkeys came from everywhere to lick it up.

The slasher stopped drinking long enough to look up at me. He pulled back his lips and I swear he grinned.

I trudged up and up, getting more and more parched.

But what can you do?

Our cousins, the monkeys get dehydrated as well. And surely it is good to be charitable---even unintentionally---at a religious shrine.
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See you next Sunday for Posting #35 with more stories from our family’s universe! If you have comments or suggestions, please leave a comment at the bottom of this posting, or email me at johnpathunter@cs.com.