Niagara! What memories you evoke,
A mecca for all travel-folder folk;
The honeymooners’ lure, and lovers’ pride
Whose name is lauded o’er the countryside.
Here comes the tired and jaded business man
Hot from convention halls; now spick and span;
The busy housewife, proud of all her brood
And cheerful hubby, carrying their food,
The picnic lunch in famed Victoria Park,
Where they, as lovers, often sat at dark.
Now, staid and sober, middle-aged and fat,
They reminisce of other days, and that
First visit to the Falls, where all around
The matrimonial tendency they found.
The younger generation they now scan
And smile to see them follow the same plan.
There, tired old granny, taken for a ride;
Her face aglow with pleasure, like a bride,
Renews again her dreams of former days
When everything seemed rosy in a haze.
The rich, the poor, the famous from all lands
All gather round the work of nature’s hands
To view the famous cascade, glittering bright,
Which of itself provides the power for light.
The roaring torrent as it thunders o’er
And deafens nearby tourists with its roar
Casts a magnetic spell on all around
As thunderous rumbles shake the quivering ground.
But nature works her will remorselessly,
And changes in our time we all can see;
Yet still the cry goes up when pleasure palls,
That come what may, “We MUST go to the Falls.”
Source: Toronto Daily Star, March 31, 1939
According to a column by J.V. McAres in the Globe & Mail, April 14, 1951, McClure wrote more than a thousand poems published in various Canadian newspapers.
Obituary of William McClure, Welland Tribune, November 19, 1955
