The Heart Beats in Secret. Katie Munnik
She’ll be out along the St Lawrence Seaway in one of the new villages, living in her grandmother’s old house. When the province flooded the Long Sault Rapids ten years ago and the Seaway went through, whole villages were abandoned and people relocated, but some houses were moved instead. Margaret’s grandmother’s house was one of those – picked up and planted in a new village made from old homes. The Hydro Company promised the process would be gentle and everything would be safe. Even said they could leave the kitchen cupboards as they were, with all the plates and bowls still inside. It was that easy. The Hartshorne House Mover would arrive on the Thursday. All the family needed to do was pack a change of clothes and wait a day or two for their house to be delivered to New Town 2 where it would be built on a new foundation supplied by the Hydro Company. Safe and sound. Her grandmother worried – she hadn’t cradled the family china all the way from Ireland thirty years before to be smashed up by a machine now. But her grandfather took the company at their word. Even filled a teacup and left it on the kitchen table to see what would happen. That was Tuesday. But when the Hydro men came by on Wednesday and cut all the elms behind the house, he stood on the porch and cried. Margaret’s grandmother knew then that everything was changing.
Last winter, she passed away after eight years on her own. Margaret said that neither of them really felt settled after the move. They’d talked of moving to the city to be near their sons, but never got around to it. Margaret’s glad because it’s nice to have a family house to return to.
It would make me dizzy, I think. A house you know in a strange new place with different views out of the windows and a different piece of sky overhead. Margaret told me that when she was small, she used to help her grandmother dig potatoes in the garden behind the summer kitchen and they stored them for the winter in a dry root cellar with a red trapdoor. Now, the garden and the cellar are both under the river, but Margaret says she doesn’t mind. She told me she likes walking along the new shore. Everything still there, she says, but also washed away. You can see where the old highway runs right into the water. And Dad, it’s not far from your whales – only 10 miles or so. I suppose if there were more bones still buried, then the waters have covered them again. Margaret says where there used to be hills, now there are islands and if I go for a visit, she’ll take me out in a canoe to see. But that will have to wait until after the baby.
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