Klondike Hotel by Glenn Bridenbaker

                                            Warning: nudity, drug, and alcohol use

klondike
The Klondike Hotel, 1974.
Image courtesy of the Niagara Falls Public Library, Petrie Collection

                               

The small railway hotel and tavern near the Rainbow Bridge of Niagara Falls, Ontario at Bridge St. and Erie St. was named seven times during its 125-year history.

For decades, the hotel was known for basic rooms, meals, stabling horses, and postal delivery.

Since its inception, the building had been called the Suspension Bridge (1853), the Waverly (1880s-90s), the Arlington (mid-1890s), the New Arlington (mid-1930s) the Erie Hotel and the Avon House (1950s), and, finally, the hotel was named the Klondike Hotel in 1960.

On the rough side of town, it became well known that, for regular, law-abiding folk, just going there was risky.       

Over the years, there were constant law enforcement interventions about alcohol, drug, health, solicitation, strip club, and vice regulations.

There were continuous police citations for a myriad of recidivist by-law and civil infractions and criminal code violations.

Lawlessness prevailed, and the characters around the scene acted with impunity;

The Klondike had become a well-known bane to the civilized community.

One day, while I was researching the interesting landowner lineage of the plot at Sam’s Montrose Hotel/Motel at Montrose and Lyons Creek roads in Niagara Falls (my research paper found at Niagara Falls Museum in the Thompson/Thomson files collection),

I was in a public telephone booth calling the hotel for deed information, and I became a part of a peculiar telephone call misconnection.  

I was confusedly speaking with a confused woman who was also telephoning Sam’s Montrose. I asked her name. She said her name was Cinnamon. Dare I say that I don’t know how she spelled her name.

Curious, I asked her where she was calling from. She replied, “the Klondike.” She added that she was working there. Intrigued, I felt a song coming on. I asked if I could meet her at the Klondike to talk person-to-person for ten to fifteen minutes, so I could take some notes. Honestly, that was my aim.

I went down to the Klondike to chat with this muse. As I walked through the door, facing me — three feet in front of me, on a raised runway stage — there was a full-frontal nude exotic dancer called Bambi.  She was gyrating to Stevie Wonder’s major hit “Sir Duke.” As I stood before her, she opened her arms wide and shimmied. I heard the blasting lyrics, “You can feel it all over, you can feel it all over, you can feel it all over.” Believe me, I could feel it all over. The small lobby’s barroom was overcrowded, and marijuana and drunkenness were apparent. Bedlam reigned everywhere.

I briefly spoke with Cinnamon; she was so completely unimpressive that I took no notes. There was no song arising from this occasion. I quickly left, sensing the high tension in the thick, smoky air.

Everything about the Klondike festered until the hotel met its final fate.

Thank goodness no one was injured, but the building sustained a dynamite explosion in 1978.

One wonders why, over time, the police investigator

Never caught the perpetrator. 

Rumors were that police facilitated the deed. The person(s) involved — never found.                                                      

Finally, in 1980, the officially condemned, unsafe building was demolished to the ground.                                                                                                       

The land where The Klondike once stood is presently part of the Niagara Falls Ontario Bus Terminal site.

Today, word on the street is that, in the shadow of the Klondike area’s history, it’s not a neighborhood to walk through in the dim light of night.       

Source: The author, 2026

Author’s note:

The poem “Klondike Hotel,” a Niagara Falls atypical rhyming piece is one of five   ̶   what I call ‘rambling poems’   ̶    comprising the unpublished work Rambling Reminiscences.

Glenn Bridenbaker:
Happily married to beautiful and wise muse wife Cheryl since 1967. Two brilliant sons, a gorgeous daughter. Two glorious granddaughters, an excellent grandson. Ontario residences: Toronto, Manitoulin Island, Wikwemikong Unceded Indigenous Reserve, Niagara Falls, and Ridgeway. Bibliophile. Musician. Nonprofessional writer. Amateur oil and watercolor painting. Novice Oriental Brush Painting. Art collector. Musical instruments and recorded music collector. Numismatist and philatelist. Dog and cat owner. Home vegetable, flower, and landscape gardener. Birdwatcher. Astronomy and space aficionado. Meaningful values include: know thyself, family, health, common sense, truth, logic, integrity, sharing, creativity, curiosity, quality, arts appreciation, and humor. Two years graduate student of Marshall McLuhan at the Centre for Culture and Technology.

Read more about the Klondike Hotel

Fury or Beauty by Ken Gierke

ken
The attached photo shows three generations (my grandfather, my father, and me), taken on Luna Island at Niagara Falls, in 1953.  I made countless visits to the falls as a child and continued to do so as an adult. Now living in Missouri, a visit to see the falls (both sides) is a part of every trip back to New York.

Understanding of both
Power and majesty
Seeds planted early
In the arms of grandparents
Held close by parents
Three generations
Photos as testament
In black and white
Niagara’s precipice, water churning
Roiling, yet beautiful
Mere feet from such splendor
This infant’s first opportunity
Witness to the glory of these falls
Repeated again and again
Through childhood and beyond
Hundreds of times, never once
Disappointed, always in awe
Even over seven decades
Often, camera in hand
Endeavoring to capture
Beauty first encountered
As an infant

Source: The author, 2026. Also published on Ken Gierke’s website 

Watch Ken Gierke perform Fury or Beauty

This is my response to Day Two (of National / Global Poetry Writing Month 2026), the prompt at NaPoWriMo.net in which we’re asked to write “your own poem in which you recount a childhood memory. Try to incorporate a sense of how that experience indicated to you, even then, something about the person you’d grow up to be.”

Ken Gierke was born and raised in Western New York and, since moving to Missouri in 2012, has
missed Niagara Falls the most. He was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has been featured
online and in numerous print anthologies. His four poetry collections from Spartan Press, Glass Awash
(1922), Heron Spirit (2024), Random Riffs (2025), and The Long Haul (2026), are available on
Amazon. More of his poetry can be found at https://rivrvlogr.com/.

Gorgeous by Ken Gierke

gierke
Great Blue Heron in the Niagara Glen
Photo by Ken Gierke

Consider the river that cares not
what man thinks of it, churning
over obstacles that will not impede it
in a gorgeous canyon, miles from
a roaring cataract yet filled with the sound
of a rapid staccato best heard at the water’s edge,
that edge approached with peril for it cares not
what safety one desires when near, its own safety
never at stake, raging as it does at the disservice
served upon it, the waters it carries never truly clean,
yet powerless, despite its power, to change that course.

Now walk the trails that lie beside it, trails
that care not whether they are trod by soled feet
or the pads of wildlife content to share
with those who understand the fragile nature
of their home, this pocket of green. Marvel
at the escarpment that once was the falls
as the river wore at its limestone foundation
in its inexorable march to the current home
of those falls. Move briefly through shadow
between boulders larger than a house,
cleaved from the side of the wall towering
above you, as you wind your way to the river.

Watch a heron pull a fish from the water as you sit
on the rocks at the river’s edge, then gaze
at the roiling water beside you, sun glinting
from the foam of the rapids. Follow that light
to see the sun approach the crest of the gorge,
all the while taking in the green that surrounds you,
green that would not be had it not been preserved
by those who understand its fragile nature.

Source: The author, 2026. First published 2021 at Earthweal

This poem was inspired by walks in the gorge at Niagara Glen. The attached photo of a great blue
heron was taken there.

Watch Ken Gierke perform Gorgeous

Ken Gierke was born and raised in Western New York and, since moving to Missouri in 2012, has
missed Niagara Falls the most. He was twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize and has been featured
online and in numerous print anthologies. His four poetry collections from Spartan Press, Glass Awash
(1922), Heron Spirit (2024), Random Riffs (2025), and The Long Haul (2026), are available on
Amazon. More of his poetry can be found at https://rivrvlogr.com/.

About Gorgeous:

This poem is my response to earthweal weekly challenge: Sanctuary, a challenge now closed, so I’m sharing it with earthweal open link weekend #71.

The Niagara River, the strait of water between Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, carries all of the water of the upper Great Lakes. Much of the thirty-six mile length of the river was lined with industry, including within the gorge below Niagara Falls. The majority of that industry is gone, with the few remaining on the US side in the stretch north of Buffalo. While stricter regulations and ambitious cleanup campaigns, from the late twentieth century onward, reversed much of the degradation of the lakes during the industrial era, toxic sediments still exist and agricultural runoff remains a serious problem. The Canadian side of the Niagara River is a true parkway, maintained by Niagara Parks of Ontario. Beyond the falls, from the whirlpool to the end of the gorge is Niagara Glen, where a stairway descends the gorge wall to join four miles of trails that lead to the river’s edge as they wind through a Carolinian forest. When I lived in New York, I often crossed into Canada at Niagara Falls, just to walk those trails. The rapids within the gorge range from Class III to Class V.

The Music of Niagara in 1881 as Described by Eugene Thayer in Scribner’s Monthly by Kimiko Hahn

 

Listen to Kimiko Hahn perform  The Music of Niagara in 1881 as Described by Eugene Thayer in Scribner’s Monthly

 

What did I hear? The roar of Niagara Falls?
Niagara Gives a tone and not a roar!
Under the Horseshoe, in its misty halls—
What did I hear? Not the roar of Niagara Falls!
The sound is neither noise nor squall—
one’s organs are an organ; the shower, the chords.
What a choir under Niagara Falls!
Niagara waters sing! Only a beast roars!

Source: Kimiko Hahnthayer

Kimiko Hahn, New York State Poet Laureate, wrote and performed this poem for the Niagara Falls Poetry Project’s 25th Anniversary, where it was featured at the April 9, 2026 event launching the Poetry Contest. Click here for information about the contest and the event.

About Kimiko Hahn

 

Read the article The Music of Niagara by Eugene Thayer on Hathi Trust

 

On Preservation by Kimiko Hahn

Listen to Kimiko Hahn perform On Preservation

 

Four hundred million years ago, a shallow sea
languished across the northern continent
and pressured layers of mud, silt, and marine shells
into varying layers of varying resistance until
the shale entertained a miles-thick ice sheet
that scoured the land into great basins. Meltwater
and glacial debris were ushered over the face.
Undercutting and collapsing yielded the gorge,
the falls, the whirlpools. Then man harnessed the flow,
and the inevitable retreat slowed thus preserving
a home for honeymoon and poetry.
                                                                     Not preserved
is the origin of the name Niagara–possibly adopted
from the Iroquois, Huron or Seneca languages
of which, today, only a few people can still speak.

Source: Kimiko Hahn, 2026kimiko

Kimiko Hahn, New York State Poet Laureate, wrote and performed this poem for the Niagara Falls Poetry Project’s 25th Anniversary, where it was featured at the April 9, 2026 event launching the Poetry Contest. Click here for information about the contest and the event.

About Kimiko Hahn