All my songs are true... especially the aulde ones that involve the Humber River. When I was a young boy, my quest for adventure always led to that stream. Everything good was North for me. Space, freedom, animals, no adults, the opportunity to build things. Build our own civilization! Collect things and make fire. Feed yourself. It was 1979 and I was 12. Christopher was the only person I found in grade school who really wanted to do this. He became my best friend, and that was no trite thing for a kid. It started out of necessity. I needed to do this but I couldn't do it alone. The goal? NORTH.
ESSO gas station maps were the only guide and a lack of roads indicated areas of interest. I had a tiny brown ten-speed for girls that my father found in the garbage and fixed up, and Christopher had a banana seat thing that was very rock and roll at the time. My bike, though, had the down-curled handlebars that were very Olympic and serious.
Chris stayed over so we could get an early start. Up Islington towards the country. Every bit of green was exciting and felt like freedom. Steeles Ave. was the end of Toronto and it actually was countryside on the other side of the street. It was the first band of freedom to push through and believe me, with our bicycles, it hurt. They squeaked and came unchained and after hours and hours every sidewalk curb felt like a cliff. After some river and fields we hit Woodbridge, the most Italian place in Canada, smaller at the time. Some random navigation through the new cement-lion-accented-driveway neighbourhoods, breaking to a huge hill towards FREEEEEEEDOOOOMMMMM!!!!
There were the remains of a farm down there and we went there for lunch. Burned out with ancient box springs in the grass and a giant crap-pile. The Humber was out back so we went for a swim. Pretty steep muddy banks so we floated a big fat log to grab on to. Nice cool muddy swim. When I came up to grab the log, staring at me was a spider that was only slightly sub-tarantula.
Pump pump pump pump pump pump pump pump. The road grinds and hills are hard so you learn every single one. Red-winged Blackbirds. A Red-tailed Hawk. It's the grass that sticks with me. The earth under it, the smells. Hills.
Chris and I yelled at each other every once in a while. The goal was Kleinburg: I'd been there and was well aware of and love the Group of 7. I knew that it looked out on a valley that was a rough approximation of the north they depicted so well. We were starving when we hit Kleinberg - a strange, clean, fakey small town. It had a GEM SHOP!!!! A place filled with tones and fossils. Insane! I bought a slice of moss agate.
We ditched our bikes behind Tom Thomson's reconstructed cabin just down he hill in the brush and headed out to find a permanent camp. PERMANENT. It did feel like the north. Cedars, fields and the river. Up here it was kind of skinny and snaky. We trucked across it, shoes in hand, and across another field. Here things got interesting. We were alone with no roads. There was a forest that wrapped around a hump of the Humber and we went in. It was swampy - no one would go there or want to go there. So we went there with glee.
... AND there we mounded up the earth and made it dry
... and there we made fire
... and there we made shelter
That was our first trip. On the next one my bike was broken, so we decided we would walk; that seemed like a challenge also. One wants to be a superhero after all. It was agonizing. Nearing Toronto, legs aching as we walked through a field, we saw a slow-moving train of flatbed railcars. We jumped on and rode it into Etobicoke. It's not as easy to get off a slow-moving train as you might think. We got home around midnight; moaning, destroyed 12-year-olds. Over that year we made that camp nicer, fought the swamp, swam in the river and made tea from plants we found. My parents were fantastically blasé about it. I love them for that. They let us do this. These were the most important things in my life.
-- This Watermark was taken from the article "My Humber" in the June/July 2018 Issue of West End Phoenix
