Monday Memories—visiting Niagara Falls

Photo from FlyoverCulture.com

After attending my brother’s wedding in 1963 in Kalamazoo, Michigan we continued on east and visited Niagara Falls from the American side, and New York City.

Then about 40 years later we travelled with friends on a tour bus to do a Frank Lloyd Wright tour of Buffalo, New York, and we again saw the Falls, but from the Canadian side.  So many new buildings had been built (hotels and casinos) that they have blocked the winds that cleared the mist.  We couldn’t see much. Apparently Ontario has no zoning authority on lands owned by the Indian tribes that have the hotels and casinos.  And here we thought Indians were all OK with saving the environment.  Even taller buildings (40 stories, maybe) were being proposed. I blogged about this trip in 2009.

Friday Family Photo--Niagara Falls 1963

Yesterday there was a review in USAToday of a debut historical novel by a Canadian that's had some good reviews, The Day the Falls Stood Still by Cathy Marie Buchanan, although what interested this reviewer the least, the historical and scientific aspects of the Falls, would probably interest me the most.

The other day while looking through some photos to use as painting references, I came across a fat envelope of black and whites that had never been put in an album, nor identified. I remember the trip well. First we drove from Champaign Urbana to Kalamazoo to my brother's wedding, then on to Detroit, to Niagara Falls then into Canada, down through New York state, and to our final destination, New York City. It's a huge stack of photos from my husband's Boy Scout box camera mostly of the weird 1960s contemporary architecture and canyons of streets and the skyline of New York (without the twin towers of WTC which opened a decade later). I don't think there were any photos of the wedding, although those might be in an album, because I do have some of baby brother and beautiful bride. If I wrench the camera out of his hot hands, we might get a photo or two of people, but usually, we have mounds of photos of buildings--with many left over as unusable that are never thrown away. If there are photos of us together, someone has probably sent us a photo. But I did find two--this one of me standing in front of the Falls (I probably just stepped up) and one of me in a canopied I.M. Pei building in Detroit.

This trip was miserable for me. Our only child Stanley had died a few months before, I think I was crying every night in strange motel rooms and was not impressed with the scenery, the buildings, or the history. That's not a hump on my back--I'd lost so much weight that my clothes didn't fit. I couldn't wait to get home. It may sound odd, but seeing new sights and places is even more a reminder of the loss than being around the familiar ("I say, "There is no memory of him here!"/ And so stand stricken, so remembering him!" St. Vincent Millay). I probably sulked most of the trip and wasn't a good companion for my wonderful tour guide. And it's still hard to get people in his photographs 46 years later.

We visited Niagara Falls again in 2004 on a group tour with other architecture devotees (we do Frank Lloyd Wright and anyone or thing else interesting along the way). There have been so many tall buildings (casinos and hotels, I think) built along the river that it has changed air currents, and the Falls seems to be in a perpetual fog that doesn't lift. It was terribly commercial in 1963, and even more so in 2004. But still magnificent and impressive.