My Grandmother Was a Waitress in Niagara Falls by FJ Doucet

My grandmother at forty woke up before dawn
to dress, put on make-up, and curl her hair.
She was divorced, a mother of five, and a waitress
at the Best Western hotel in Niagara Falls.

The job started at eight o’clock but, always,
she left her apartment on Main Street early. Turned
the key in the lock. The click in the lock
told her she had the freedom to claim the open,

silent walk. She was a waitress at the Best
Western hotel in Niagara Falls. The boss was waiting
at the job, but the shift started at eight o’clock,
and just after dawn my grandmother still found worlds

of time. Worlds enough to breathe the air and know
she was alive. In 1980, in Niagara Falls,
the air smelled of water and smoke and big car
engines. Morning leavings of tourist bacchanals

performed all night before. But she didn’t care
for any of that. She was a waitress at the Best
Western hotel, and when she walked down
the Fallsview Boulevard hill she knew—she was alive.

These days my grandmother’s legs are frail
as the stilts of dying birds, but four decades back
they were still strong enough to work all day—
work and wake again before the dawn, wake

to descend the last stretch of hill. Watch
the rising sun turn Niagara’s jagged trench
and torrent liquid gold. Now at eighty years,
my grandmother trains my gaze with misty eyes

and lifts a brittle claw. When I was forty,
she confides, I was a waitress at the Best Western
hotel. Every morning before work, I’d walk down
to Niagara Falls. Watched the water. Knew

I was alive. A smile snakes across her skull. You know,
I thought I was so old. My God, she whispers,
I’d give anything now to be forty. Walk
down the hill to the water. Alive.

Source: FJ Doucet, 2021

FJ Doucet’s work has been published in grey borders magazine, The Banister, Hamilton Arts and Letters, Red Bird Chapbook website, Ascent Aspirations, and The Lyric. She is the newest president of the Brooklin Poetry Society. Doucet was born and mostly raised in Niagara Falls, Ontario, and though she has since lived on three continents, Niagara continues to haunt her.

Click here to visit the website of FJ Doucet

Unheard Niagaras by A. Ethelwyn Wetherald

We live among unheard Niagaras.
The force that pushes up the meadow grass,
That swells to ampler roundness ripening fruit,
That lifts the brier rose, were it not mute,
Would thunder o’er the green earth’s sunlit tracts
More loudly than a myriad cataracts.

Source: Wetherald, A. Ethelwyn. Lyrics and Sonnets, Complete Edition. Toronto: Thomas Nelson & Sons, 1931

Read about Agnes Ethelwyn Wetherald on the Brock University Archives site. Wetherald lived her later years in Pelham, a few miles from Niagara Falls.

The Thing by Bill Hamilton

Rapids rage, in furrows to their end and fall,
Off the edge, as if dropping off the face of the earth
And thunder resonates, as foam and mist rise,
Into nature’s cauldron, that churns and abounds.

A family possessed with this mighty river,
Gain fame meeting its constant challenge
Traversing the worst of treacherous rapids
Yet needing to conquer the Cataracts alone.

Their barrels, carrying father and son,
Each defied those waters several times,
Passing through the swirling whirlpool,
Wallowing in the cheers of their success.

Immersed in steel barrels, over they rolled
The tumultuous waves bob them like cork
Captive prisoners’ to nature’s full wrath,
Death looms in those currents…beware!

Father dies and son now takes the torch,
Family honor means pay forward the promise.
The ultimate challenge of Niagara looms,
Over the falls is his next ride to glory.

His commitment made, one year hence
Work starts on his device to conquer.
Inner tubes netted securely with rope,
Named “The Thing”, standing beside it proud.

The August day comes, glory will now, be his.
His crew readies him for his timely journey.
One last wave he enters his creation.
Capped, the darkness opens his mind.

Visions of glory mask the fear he felt.
His vessel rides the rapids, weaving waves,
He rides the path, to the brink, of his desire.
Soon the deafening thunder; he knows he’s close!

A sudden surge and he vanishes in white
His stomach drops with a deadly plunge
And darkened silence brings the end,
To a promise, broken, by a son who dared.

A mother’s cry on the quiet shore of rock
“Where’s my boy what’s happened?”
Brothers scramble to find their daring sibling,
In the waters, churning cold, before them.

Remnants of rubber and frayed broken rope
Leave no doubt as the fate of Red Hill Jr.
Swallowed by a watery tomb, his nemesis.
A day later he is washed to familiar arms.

What tragic price this thing we call honor.
The need to challenge what nature creates.
A family possessed by a river so cruel
Close, but never fulfilling their ultimate goal.

Rapids rage in furrows to their end and fall,
Off the edge as if dropping off the face of the earth
And thunder resonates, as foam and mist rise,
Into nature’s cauldron, that churns and abounds.

A note from Bill Hamilton:

In 1951 Wm. Red Hill Jr. created a barrel-like vessel using large inner tubes surrounded by canvas and secured by netting. He named this contraption “The Thing”. His mission, honor a Hill family promise, to ride this device over Niagara Falls. On August 5^th he climbed into his creation and was released to his fate. Needless to say, his plight ended in tragedy. The loss of a son and brother to the Thunderous Cataracts of Niagara!

I own the Red Hill Estate including the 3 Hill daredevil barrels currently on display at the IMAX theatre.

Biography of Bill Hamilton:

My interest in writing started in University at Waterloo. Reactivated by the NOTL Writer’s Circle I have had several of my works published. Poetry is my main passion and my poem “Angel’s Ghost” hangs in Ontario’s oldest tavern the “Angel Inn” in Niagara on the Lake. I am currently working on an anthology of poetry for publication.

My poem “The Thing” was a topic of interest, as I own the Red Hill estate barrels on display at the IMAX Theatre here in Niagara. I grew up with stories of the many Daredevils of Niagara, which inspired this poem.

The Local Tourist by Amanda Leonard

Niagara. She is my favourite painter.

Because I taste limestone on my eyes’ parched lips and swim with carelessness in her urgency in constant motion

Because she is felt on the back of dawn
And not popping within of free fireworks, as she holds a much deeper secret

Her body, decaying with duplicitous effigies of her story, a story of erosion, of two bodies of water, meeting

A story lost without capture, lost outside the frame

Dipping my toes in such honeymoon
Of past loves
More luxurious than any fiberglass tub dripping with scarlet passion
And more than his thick hands on the steel beams hoistening up more divide, parking meters

She is beneath me, underneath those man-made islands
And searchingly, meandering to lower ground,

And its because her sound reverberates on the other side of the world

She sits still, in her royally crescent moon as time flowing through her like silk, changes her

Until, high beams flash in my rearview mirror
Telling me to move along
I have been staring at her for far too long

Source: Amanda Leonard, 2020

Amanda Leonard is an English/Visual Arts teacher who enjoys writing and sketching. She was born and raised in Niagara Falls, but has been nomadic for the last decade.
She is currently writing a novel that is set in modern day Niagara Falls.

Niagara, My Home Town by Stephanie Vigh Nielsen

In the town where I was born, we’d walk up Lundy’s Lane
And talk about the dreams we had.
Life was a glass of ginger ale and a juke box serenade,
And we never thought of growing old.
Yes, I know those days have come and gone
Still I think about my old home town.

At a place called the Rendezvous, we’d congregate at eight
And talk about the baseball game.
Lights flashing on the window pane, watching cars go up the lane,
We’d wait for friends and lovers.
Yes, I know those days have come and gone
Still I think about my old home town.

Lavender mist makes a foggy night haze
While the falls come crashing ahead.
And I lean on the rail feel the damp cooling spray
Watching the foam turn a luminous maze.

And as I drive towards the town, the neon signs flash on
And thoughts begin to fill my head.
Oh the happiness I found, in my family’s old home town
Where nothing seemed to ever change.
Life was very simple, way back then
And we thought that it would never end.

When our dreams of long ago were scattered on the way
And our childish hopes departed.
Life went on but not the same, we grew up, we’re not to blame,
And those magic times forgotten.
Life was very simple, way back then
And we thought that it would never end.

Source: Niagara Falls (Ontario). Coronation Centre Newsletter, 1974

Visit Stephanie Vigh Nielsen’s Niagara Proud website

Category: Niagara Poet

My Grandmother Was a Waitress in Niagara Falls by FJ Doucet

Like this:

Unheard Niagaras by A. Ethelwyn Wetherald

Like this:

The Thing by Bill Hamilton

Like this:

The Local Tourist by Amanda Leonard

Like this:

Niagara, My Home Town by Stephanie Vigh Nielsen

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this:

Share this:

Like this: