One of the parking lots to access the trail system around Cootes Paradise Marsh is bordered by a circle of squat oak trees, their acorns pelting the hoods and roofs of cars from August through October. Once I watched Ray,1 when he was three-years-old, delight at the realization he had pockets, spend time filling them until they were bulging, impeding his gait, and decide that he didn’t in fact want to carry them, and then the slow transfer from his pockets to mine, jamming his clammy hand in his pocket, losing his grip, dropping acorns into the grass.

Eventually my pockets had some acorns in them, and we started walking. Walking with a three-year-old is slow; depending on the day, depending on the minute, I could describe the walk as tedious or attentive. Handling the acorns in my pocket releases tension, like a kind of meditation. The sensory experience of holding, flipping, turning, playing with acorns in my pocket is soothing. They are cool and woody, they have a solid feeling but are light. It is always a surprise how sharp the bottom point is; I trace my thumb with it over and over again.

Ray knows that acorns come from oak trees, and if I mention an oak tree he looks for acorns on the ground. Last fall he realized they were also on the branches, and I let him rip some acorns off the low branches of the oaks circling the parking lot. I’m always wondering about the balance of conservation. Ecologist and writer Robin Wall Kimmerer has asked “How are we going to fall in love with the world if we don’t pick berries?” She teaches that instances of engagement are important as the gateway to caring about the natural world, conservation, and biodiversity. She thinks that strawberries must be tasted to make you care. If we want the forest to be unblemished by humans should we never go in there? How are we going to fall in love with the world if we don’t rip acorns off a tree?

I make this calculation on a smaller scale almost daily. Do I let Ray squish the ants? I do, or I have, to learn cause and effect. Do I let him rip off acorns from the tree? I did for a while, but I started to ask him not to hurt the tree by pulling the branch. Do I let him pick a wildflower? Never; my mom always told me that leaving flowers means everyone gets to see them. I don’t know what the right answer is to any of these questions and I’m constantly reevaluating and changing my mind. What is going to help him explore the natural world while inflicting minimal damage, learning an outdoor ethic, the power of his own hands, listening skills, empathy. How many acorns is it okay to take home?

The forest on the north shore of Cootes Paradise Marsh is dominated by oak trees. On a November hike through the trails north of the marsh with Ray’s baby brother Robbie I was surprised by how beautiful everything still looked. Even though each season happens annually, in my memory October is sunlit and gorgeous and November is dark and joyless. But the woods were fiery, bright, and smelled wonderful. This was the very first autumn that I noticed that oak leaves cling to the trees later in the season than other leaves. Other branches were bare, so it felt like oaks were the only leaves, and they were all different colours - green, brown, red, orange, yellow. I looked at the different shaped leaves, smooth and round and deeply lobed. I collected leaves without knowing what kind of oak each came from. They were all lit up by the sun, everything cold and fresh and damp.

At home I studied. Right now the easiest way for me to differentiate them is the shape of the leaves, then the general shape of the tree. I learned that there are two groups of oak trees: White oaks and Red oaks. White oak leaves have round lobes, and Red oaks have pointed lobes. That’s the main difference.

White oaks species in Southern Ontario include Bur oak (quercus macrocarpa) and White oak (quercus alba). Both have leaves with rounded lobes, but Bur oaks leaves are less defined; I’d describe them as blobby. Red oak species in Southern Ontario include Northern Red oaks (quercus rubra), Pin oaks (quercus ellipsoidalis), and Black oaks (quercus velutina). They all have leaves with pointed lobes, a witchier outline to each leaf, sharp and swooping. Red oaks’ leaves turn a deep red in the fall; right now, on the north shore of Cootes, the oak towering over the boathouse on the Anishinaabe Waadiziwin Trail is scarlet red.

Ray attends a daycare where the only trees near the yard are oaks. I think they’re Pin oaks, the leaves deeply lobed, with sharp corners and wide notches. In late October I asked him about the leaves, were they still on the tree? Did he notice the oak trees were turning from green to yellow? Disinterested, he told me about the big bike he rode around the daycare yard.

Two weeks later I picked him up after a big early snowfall.

Wow, I said, the leaves are still on the trees. The urban oaks surrounded by pavement and buildings looked the same as the forest oaks.

See I told you, he said.

Stories about the past and present of the marsh near where I live, Cootes Paradise Marsh.

Belted Kingfisher

The Belted Kingfisher (megaceryle alcyon) is a bird I can easily identify, because nothing else around here looks like it. It is the size of a robin with a giant head, almost like a distorted bluejay. Percy Algernon Taverner, from Guelph, wrote in 1922: “The great ragged crest and slaty blue back of the Kingfisher cannot be very well confused with any other American bird.”

I notice it when I paddle Cootes, flying over the water and into tall trees, sometimes appearing to follow my canoe’s progress. I think when I see them I’m only seeing one. I hope I’ve developed a heightened sense of awareness after spending hundreds of hours on the marsh, but it’s hard to be sure I’m seeing the same Kingfisher while I’m paddling. I have not been able to differentiate males and females. In pictures, illustrations or photographs, it’s clear. Unusually, the female Kingfisher has more colour than male; the males have one blue band across a white breast, while females have a blue and what is described as a chestnut, or rusty, band.

Percy described their behaviour: “All frequenters of Canadian waters know the Kingfisher. It sits motionless on a commanding perch over the water watching for the fish below. Suddenly it dashes off, hangs suspended a moment in the air, and then drops with a resounding splash into the water, rising a moment later with a luckless fish in its capacious bill, and is off around the bend of the stream. Within its daily range the Kingfisher knows every perch and branch from which it can get a comprehensive view of its fishing grounds and returns to them again and again.” What happens next was described by Hamiltonian Thomas McIlwraith in his book The Birds of Ontario: “If a fish be secured, it is carried in the bill to some convenient perch, on which it is hammered till dead, and then swallowed head downwards.”

Neither Thomas, writing in 1894 or Percy in 1922 describe the Kingfisher’s sound. Roger Tory Peterson doesn’t either in 1949’s How to Know the Birds. But the simply named Bird Guide, finding its way to my hands from my great great aunt’s library, published in 1909 does: “a very loud, harsh rattle.” I still find myself unable to isolate or remember the sounds of birds in nature, so based on the sound that I hear on the Cornell Lab of Ornithology’s website, I think it sounds like a squeegee. Cornell describes it as a piercing rattle.

According to Birds of Hamilton and Surrounding Areas, most Kingfishers migrate, some surprisingly far south, but sometimes one or two stay for the winter when there is open water. But they won’t stay if there is a complete freezeup. By the Hamilton Christmas Bird Count, when birders across North America of all skill levels count birds on Christmas day to record population data for conservation, there are usually a few Kingfishers still around. Christmas day Kingfishers peak at 13, the max number counted since 1971, matched in 2018, when an exceptional thirteen historical high species count records were either set or tied. According to the 2018 report: “No doubt the lack of ice in the waterways so far this winter has allowed more of these birds to fish in the local streams and waterways with ease.”

They are hardy birds. Thomas wrote: “They are not sensitive to cold, for in open seasons I have seen them remaining till January, but when the frost forces the fish to return to deep water, the Kingfisher’s supply of food is cut off, and he has to move to the south.” Prolific birder George North wrote that he found a female Kingfisher frozen to a rock at Desjardins Canal in February 1934 during -25°C weather.

The solitary Kingfisher roams extensively appearing in the Galapagos Islands, Hawaii, the British Isles, the Azores, Iceland, Greenland, and the Netherlands. And then they are back by late March, when they set up territories and excavate tunnels in sand or clay banks for their nests.

There was a Kingfisher Point on Cootes Paradise Marsh, but it doesn’t appear on maps recently produced by Royal Botanical Gardens, who manage the lands. I found it named on old conservation reports and plans. I imagine someone once saw a Kingfisher nest tunnelled into the banks there. Kingfisher Point is just southwest of Sassafras Point, on the south shores of the marsh. It is the point between Sassafras Point and Arnotts Point, somewhat unhelpful as Arnotts isn’t used on modern Royal Botanical Gardens produced maps either. Ecologists are still using the name to describe remediation activities that are planned or completed.

According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, the Belted Kingfisher is a species of low conservation concern. Locally, Birds of Hamilton and Surrounding Areas reported in 2006 that “the Kingfisher has changed little in status since Thomas McIlwraith reported it as common along the shores of Hamilton Bay.”

Belted Kingfishers are back on Cootes after a long, snowy winter. iNaturalist, a citizen science social network where users share biodiversity information, lists observations as late as mid November, with two sightings mid January and late February, before regular sightings late March and early April. I haven’t seen one yet but then again I almost always see them from my canoe, and we’re still a few weeks away from paddling season.

Update

This newsletter used to be called Dry Spell. After some time away, I’ll be sending it out quarterly, and expanding what I’ll write about here. In addition to writing about canoeing, I’ll be including reflections on nature, old houses, archival research, and writing.

I like to follow my current interests backwards through history. Right now that’s canoeing, parenting in nature, native plants, residential architecture, and old cookbooks. I spend a lot of time looking at old letters, diaries, maps, newspapers, and scrapbooks. I weave my discoveries into short stories, essays, and larger works.

But I’m a slow writer, and in the meantime I want to be better at showing and sharing my work.

Please feel free to unsubscribe if this is no longer something you’re interested in. But if it is, thanks for reading, and please consider forwarding this email to a friend you think might enjoy my writing.

Turtles: “they are a great treat”

I went canoeing with my friends on the marsh a few weeks ago, my first paddle of the year. As we searched for turtles sunning themselves, I considered the ways our relationship to turtles has changed in the 234 years of recorded history of Cootes Paradise marsh. Isn’t it strange to think that locals used to catch turtles in these waters to eat?

I saw Midland Painted Turtles perched on logs, with dark shells rimmed by red or orange markings, as well as Northern Map Turtles, with fine yellow lines on their heads and limbs. Some dropped into the water as our canoe approached, others continued to soak up sun.

It’s hard to imagine them as ingredients. Turtle soup seems like a long-ago, far-away culinary creation, but once upon a time it was served in Hamilton and it was made from local turtles.

And once upon a time there were seven species of native turtles swimming through Cootes, but now there are four, and they are all species at risk.

*

When Elizabeth Simcoe visited the area in 1796, she described Cootes Paradise as a “marshy tract of land” that “abounds with wild fowl and tortoises.” I assume all seven types of turtles were swimming around Cootes at that time.

She ate one for dinner.

Two days later she wrote, “I found a pretty small tortoise, but boiling it took off the polish from the shell.”

*

It’s turtle nesting season now, through to the end of July. Female turtles migrate away from the marsh to find a dry, sunny spot to lay their eggs. Royal Botanical Gardens, the organization that manages the marsh and surrounding lands, asks the public to report any nesting turtles on their lands.

A big part of Cootes’ history is the shift from the marsh being a place that people lived, worked on, or ate from to a place of conservation. People lived there as a part of the Boathouse Community, and along with others, they hunted and fished to make a living, and ate the fish, frogs, squirrels, game, and turtles that also lived there. City planners, politicians and conservationists slowly worked to make the marsh and surrounding lands a protected place for birds and animals, as well as a tourist attraction and transportation route. By 1927, birds and wildlife were given legal protection, though the people that lived and worked there were displaced soon after.

*

A survey of mentions in The Hamilton Spectator shows reference to turtles as food from the 1850s through to the 1980s. They were advertised as high end fare, with turtle soup was on the menu of inns and taverns 1850s-1880s. In 1899, the Ramblers’ Bicycle Clubs of Hamilton and Guelph held an event at the Royal Hamilton Yacht Club, during which the yachtsmen treated them to a turtle soup supper: “About 100 cyclists were present, and they were entertained most royally. One of the best turtle soup cooks in Canada (W. Williams) had charge of the cooking. Seventeen turtles were used, one weighing 28 pounds.”

Turtle soup was described as a staple in North End homes. The Modjeska Hotel, a fixture at James North and Wood Street East for the first half of the twentieth century, was known for its soup made from local turtles.

A headline from 1937 reads: *“Clevelander Dead Set on Emptying Dundas Marsh of Potential Soup.” Though after 1927 it was unlawful, a man visiting Hamilton took as many snapping turtles as he could catch home to Cleveland for fellow members of the club he belonged to. “His hunting grounds are in the Dundas marsh and he told the Spectator this morning that it was full of fine turtles. Early this morning he set out his lines baited with pieces of meat and to-morrow, shortly after dawn, he will check up on his catch. Starting two days ago, he has to date caught six of the reptiles, ranging from 24 to 12 pounds in weight.”

In a 1956 local news story I can’t believe earned inches in newsprint, four men were fishing in Freelton and found a forty-pound Snapping Turtle. Their wives wouldn’t let them keep it. “The Chinese restaurants had no plans for making turtle soup and the SPCA told the men to take the thing back where they found it.” They released it into the Bay.

In 1967 one man tells a childhood story about four kids catching a giant Snapping Turtle. After their mothers refused the turtle entrance to their homes, they earned 75 cents selling it to a Chinese restaurant on King William Street. Almost the same story as the four men from Freelton, really.

The last time the paper makes reference to locals eating turtles was 1987, when The President’s Club served turtle soup as part of a historic banquet for McMaster University’s centennial.

*

What does turtle meat actually look and taste like? Scalding removes the reptilian skin, leaving two sizable pieces of meat: the tail and front legs, and the front legs and neck. Jack Hitt, in Saveur, describes the meat as savoury, sturgeon-like, more similar to trout than salmon, with a bright, clean and meaty aroma. I looked up turtle soup recipes and was surprised to see contemporary American sources offering recipes with no caveat. Soup ingredients include turtle meat, butter, chopped onions, bell peppers, celery, and garlic, seeded tomatoes, Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, sherry, parsley, and chopped hard-boiled eggs. The earliest recipe I found in Canadian cookbooks was from Practical Cookery, published in Montreal in 1910. It begins with the jarring tip: “The easiest way to kill a turtle is to tie it by the back fins with a string, and let it hang with its back to the wall.”

My brain snags on the phrase turtle meat. I picture the turtles in Cootes, their wet shells glistening in the sunlight as they lay across logs, their tiny limbs and outstretched neck; nothing about that hard and soft green body reminds me of food. But meat is a cultural construct, what animals we consider eating and which ones we don’t. In North America we used to commonly eat oxtail, rabbit, mutton, pheasant, goose, wild game. After the Second World War, the rise of factory farming meant that variety had dwindled to chicken, pork, and beef (Saveur).

As recently as 1975, a wildlife field guide started a species description for turtles with its suitability as food. The Diamondback Terrapin entry begins with: “Most celebrated of American turtles. Their succulent flesh, when properly (and laboriously) prepared, rates high on the gourmet’s list.”

*

In 1927 the provincial government issued an order that under the Ontario Game and Fisheries Act “it shall be unlawful to hunt, take, pursue, kill, wound or destroy or have in possession, any bird or animal,” and designated the Cootes Paradise marsh a wildlife preserve. But, as evident by the Clevelander who harvested Cootes turtles, this was not always enforced.

Ontario’s original Endangered Species Act passed in 1971, and was strengthened and expanded in 2007. The culture changed over time, and appetite for turtle decreased.

But now the current Ontario government has weakened the protection of endangered animals by passing Bill 5. The 2007 Endangered Species Act has been feebly replaced with the new Species Conservation Act, which gestures towards conservation and protection, but only as far as those goals don’t impact development. (For more on this, see The Narwal). Our eight native turtles, four of which live in Cootes, are even more vulnerable.

*

Hatchling season stretches from August to October. Some turtles even spend winter in their nests before emerging in the spring. Most won’t reach maturity; for every 1,400 Snapping Turtle eggs, only one turtle will survive to adulthood. They’re a species at risk because of those odds, but also because of human behaviour, such as roads across their habitats. Humans have looked upon nature as a limitless resource, every turtle a soup. And now with the passing of Bill 5, every turtle habitat is a potential site for development.

There’s an area west of the marsh, where the old canal and Spencer Creek flow out and in between them runs an 80-km/hour highway between Dundas and Hamilton. For as long as I can remember there have been little plastic “Dundas Turtle Watch” signs rippling in the wind on the median. They list a phone number to call if you see an injured turtle, or one in imminent danger.

A week ago, in the car with my family driving back to Hamilton I saw a snapper the size of a dinner plate on the shoulder of the road. After all these years of looking and never seeing one, I felt I might have conjured the turtle with my recent research. Perhaps if we didn’t have a three year-old and a 9 week-old in the car, my husband and I would have turned back to move the turtle out of harm’s way ourselves. Instead, barreling towards the chaos of bedtime, I called the hotline and someone was dispatched to save the turtle.

Hopefully that turtle lived. At least it won’t end up as soup.

Cootes Paradise Exhibit

If you’re in or around the Hamilton area, I worked on an exhibition at the Hamilton Public Library, which is up for another week:

Cootes Paradise: A Marsh on the Mend.

An exhibition of archival material telling the human history of Cootes Paradise.

Cootes Paradise marsh was once a healthy, biodiverse wetland. Through archival material in the Local History and Archives collection, this exhibition explores the human impact on the marsh from environmental damage beginning in the 19th century to recovery efforts today. The treatment of the marsh has reflected the values of the people of Hamilton over time, including how it is described: a dense watery bog, a resort of wild fur animals, a marshy tract of land. A gathering place. A shallow muddy lake. A paradise.

This exhibition runs March 1-June 21, 2025, in the Central Gallery at Central Library. Also, the exhibit had some coverage in The Hamilton Spectator.

In addition to learning about the history of Cootes Paradise, I learned a lot about exhibit writing and design! I am grateful for the opportunity to learn and collaborate with my talented colleagues.

Hamilton’s First Cookbook in Culinary Chronicles

I’m extremely proud of a piece I wrote about the first cookbook to be published in Hamilton, Ontario, which appeared in the Culinary Historians of Canada’s journal. It is rigorously researched and extensively cited, and I was so excited to have my work edited by Fiona Lucas, one of Canada’s preeminent culinary historians.

You can read a short excerpt here, or you can find the whole piece in Culinary Chronicles, Occasional Papers of the Culinary Historians of Canada, New Series, Issue 4, Fall 2024, here; the issue costs CAD $10.

Over the past two years my skill for spotting freshwater mammals has improved. Once my brother pointed out a mink to me for the first time two summers ago my peripheral vision caught their particular kind of loping, the way they throw their long tube-like bodies forward and gallop along the bank, a dark glossy outline against the grey-brown sand-dirt. 

But then I didn’t see a single mink in my local marsh last summer. Instead I saw muskrats. I saw them chugging along the water, towing reeds and grasses and tugging enormous bouquets into their little burrows in the bank of the creek. Or hunched in a ball cleaning their paws on the muddy shore. So I had a mink summer with zero muskrats in 2020, and then a muskrat summer with zero mink in 2021. I’m curious about why and what was different. The mink galloped on the southern banks of the lake-like part of the marsh, and the muskrats swam the creek, but I paddled both areas equally each year. Was I paddling at a different time of day? Do mink and muskrat alternate years in their population surges? 

But the freshwater mammal with the fewest appearances on my canoe routes are beavers. I’ve seen a couple on the marsh, one day I was possibly even the cause of a warning tail slap that echoed down the creek. Last winter I spent some time watching a large lumbering beaver trample the snow near the fishway in the dusk. I kept my eyes peeled in Algonquin as I moved past lodges and dams but no beavers revealed themselves to me.

I don’t know if I’ve improved my chances of beaver sightings from my canoe next year, but I’ve learned enough to make me curious to know more. I’ve rewatched these two documentaries several times:

Beaver Lodge Construction Squad (BBC Earth, 10 min) 

Life of a Beaver (National Geographic, 46 min) 

Highlights for me include: beavers permit tenants in their lodges, like muskrats, mice, and frogs; they keep a “fridge” with underwater access so throughout the winter they can grab food without surfacing; beavers mate for life and are very family oriented; and that they are are nature’s engineers and landscapers.

I’ve heard the phrase “beaver pond” many times but registered it as a quaint name, instead of describing a particularly biodiverse body of water. I’ve learned that when a beaver moves in they change everything. They create channels along the bottom of the pond, creating a dynamic pond bottom that can support more biodiversity. They dam incoming streams which slows the current, causing the water level to rise and flood the land, which brings more nutrients into the water. This made me wonder about the large, ghostly underwater tree stumps I’ve paddled over in Algonquin Park. Did beaver flooding create the wider waterways where I saw them? 

The canoeist Pauline Johnson (1861-1913) is primarily known for her poetry and performance art, but I adore her canoe writing from the 1890’s. On one of Pauline’s backcountry camping trips, which happened to be in Saskatchewan, she saw a beaver for the first time. This surprised me since she grew up paddling the Grand River and by the time she wrote this article in 1897 she’d camped extensively in Ontario. 

“Before six o’clock - owing to our praiseworthy early turnout - we had launched the dugouts, and were silently paddling down stream when a little incident occurred that entirely reestablished our guide in our best graces. He and Mrs. Wentworth were perhaps a boat’s length ahead of us, when suddenly he raised a warning finger, enjoined silence to his bow paddler, and pointed across and down stream. Instantly we were quiet as mice, gazing with greatest intent at a little skill and nose that floated a few yards off our port bow. Closer and closer we drifted in absolute silence, I steering our bulky craft without a ripple to herald her, my breath fairly abated with excitement. We were increditably [sic] near the little animal before he sighted or snuffed us, but no sooner were we discovered than he sounded his customary note of alarm, the sharp warning “whack” of his broad, flat tail on the water, and then skull and nose disappeared. We had seen for the first time in our lives Canada’s national emblem, the beaver, in his own haunts. 

Many an idle day have I spent tramping through the Muskoka forests to hunt out stretches of beaver meadow, that, whether you are looking for them or not, always seems to burst upon your view with a rudeness that surprises you, the long grass-grown levels lie like miniature savannahs in the very heart of the forest, and at their lower edges the inevitable beaver dam, crested with scrub growth, living evidence that its usefulness is long since dead, that the water which in erstwhile days lay on these meandows like a lake have turned their courses into other channels, and the sturdy little animal who planned, and worked, and built his village highways, his secret habitations, his dykes, and his honest reputation at the same time, but with all my dodging about his haunts I never really met him personally until that day on the Saskatchewan, for he is the shyest of all fur-bearing animals, and is now, alas, about the scarcest of them.”    

“With Barry in Bow IV,” The Rudder. 1897. 

Where had they gone in 1890’s? I had forgotten about the fur trade, lasting from the early 17th to the mid-19th centuries and the starring role that beaver pelts played to supply Europeans with fancy felt hats. The sheer number of pelts being exported from North America was staggering, but Frances Backhouse writes that “it was the fur trade’s relentless, colony-obliterating progress across the continent, which wiped the species right off the map even as the cartographers were drawing it.” 

I wondered what this meant for Algonquin Park. Concern over the loss of wildlife was one of the reasons Algonquin Park was created in 1893, though it seems like the creation of the park blatantly ignored the rights and requests of Indigenous people who lived on the land, and who would have likely looked out for the beaver themselves. After the park was established the beavers bounced back, “so much so in fact, that Algonquin Beavers were soon being dead-trapped to help pay the Park’s operating expenses, and also live-trapped to re-stock areas where Beavers had been extirpated.” Mammals of Algonquin Park says: “Even as late as the 1940s Algonquin was still one of the very few places in Ontario where either animal was present, let alone common.” Pauline primarily tripped in Muskoka, the region next to Algonquin, so her experience reflects this. 

Here are some great photographs from the Friends of Algonquin Park’s online archives that illustrate the trapping that went on: 

• 1915 or 1918: Beaver in a live trap caught near Joe Lake by rangers. This beaver's new home was St. Thomas, Ontario. 

• 1916: Mrs. Frances Wollett holding a paddle and standing on a beaver dam.

• 1932: This is an interesting series to see how the park was promoting tourism at the Canadian National Exhibition. A ranger posing pulling a beaver’s tail. Live trapped beaver. The Superintendent of the Park with a live trapped beaver in front of a round log cabin. Probably wearing culturally inappropriate clothing?

• 1946: A park ranger live trapping beaver on the Bonnechere River.

• 1948: Two men carrying a beaver kit in a live trap.

• 1948: Two men  moving a live trap containing beaver for restocking in James Bay. 

• 1958: Live trap with beaver inside, Jack Lake.

In “Rethinking the beaver” in Canadian Geographic, Frances Backhouse writes that although beavers are once again thriving in North America, they fuel a lot of complaints, such as “when they compete with us for timber or meddle with the scenery, we also object when their dams flood highways, farm fields and waterfront real estate.” But a growing body of research suggests that coexisting with beavers will help mitigate the effects of drought brought on by climate change. “We need to rethink our relationship with beavers,” Backhouse writes, “and learn to appreciate them as stewards of our most precious resource.”

Days after announcing that beavers are my new favourite animal, the headline in my local paper was: “A dam problem: should the City of Hamilton kill beavers?”

This was jarring, but fit neatly into what I’d learned. It reminded me of the amazing story in Life of a Beaver where self-styled beaver whisperer Michel Leclair figured out ways to work with beavers to minimize flooding and damage in Gatineau Park, instead of killing them (watch 5:37-13:05). According to the article it looks like my city killed three beavers that built a 20 metre dam, but tries to avoid killing them when possible. Concerned citizens and one city councillor are hoping for a clear citywide policy in the future. Luckily, the managers of my local marsh are "at peace with the beavers” according to a 2014 article. At the time, the head of conservation said "We have about a dozen different beaver lodges.” I think I know the whereabouts of one of these lodges, in the creek. “As a general rule we don't worry about them,” he said. “They go about their business and things are fine." Which is nice to know, and hopefully I’ll get to see the creek beavers while out paddling next summer.

Thanks for reading Dry Spell. I’d love to know what you think; please feel free to leave a comment or reply to this email!

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Last August I was paddling in the marsh when I saw what looked like a little green hand waving just above the water’s surface. It looked bizarre and otherworldly and like some creature was doing a casual, gentle dance below the waterline, submerged in cloudy green water shot through with sunlight. 

I imagined a quirky turtle or aquatic house elf until I paddled closer and recognized the green hand as a large fin. I assumed it was attached to a big fish, but nothing was visible through the murky water. Paddling on, I saw more fins suspended in this way, gently fluttering. 

On the same day I saw little flurries of sediment, like a whirlpool jet, in other places of the marsh. And sometimes I’d be paddling and there’d be a sudden movement beneath the canoe, and I’d feel weight against the blade of my paddle. 

Were these things all connected? Was I imagining any of this? Or was a meaty, muscled fish lurking below the murky wetland waters, ramming into my paddle and stirring up sediment. After months in the marsh with no such fin sightings, their sudden appearance only added to their mystique. But I was pleased that this was another instance in which I confidently noticed a change in the season, perhaps a phenomenon to late August.

Scott and I were paddling with our pal Marie who is nine years old. We headed to an area of the marsh I seldom explored: the southwest corner, an area near the university that isn’t navigable by boat. The reeds were thick and previously I hadn’t bothered to get close to them. 

We heard some erratic splashing and thrashing in the distance. Scott steered us through an opening in the reeds, closer and closer to the ruckus. The cattails closed in on us, softening the sounds. The violent splashing continued. We moved closer and closer. Then the splashing stopped. It was quiet; just the brush of a cattail against the exterior of the boat. 

Then a violent splash exploded from the water directly next to us. It was like a horror movie and Marie screamed. I might have closed my eyes.

I think one of the big fish was next to us or under us and we’d disturbed it, and it jumped or pushed against my paddle. Marie was understandably freaked out, and my heart was beating hard. We didn’t even see the fish. We backed out of the cattails quickly and I tried to lighten the mood for Marie which led to me photographing the setting sky with an exuberance I did not know I possessed for clouds.  

I described what had happened to my friend Jackson who identified the mystery fin and marsh monster as carp. I’d heard about the local carp problem but this was my first close encounter with the invasive fish. Common Carp were introduced to Lake Ontario in 1870s, and by the 1930’s had become the dominant species in the marsh . According to the Royal Botanical Gardens, the conservation body that protects the marsh: “Carp start to harm the environment when they are 50kg of carp for every hectare (50kg/ha). In the early 1990s, there was an average carp density of 800 kg/ha throughout the RBG 300 ha of marshlands.”

Carp love the marsh because the shallow waters are perfect for spawning. Over the years their population exploded and they damaged the delicate balance of the ecosystem. They root around for food on the bottom of the marsh and stir up sediment, degrading the water quality and blocking sunlight from reaching aquatic plants, which inhibits plant growth. When spawning their activity crushes native plants and small organisms.

Overall its a good news story thanks to the work of the RBG. Among other wetland restoration projects, they operate the Fishway, a barrier that keeps the large carp out of the marsh, while allowing the natural flow of water and native fish. Carp leave the marsh to spend winter in the deeper waters of the bay, and are prevented from reentry when they try to return in the spring. So the carp population gets smaller each year.

Since it’s installation in 1997, the density of carp has improved from 800 kg/ha to 23 kg/ha in 2019. Among the many positive outcomes, native fish have increased six fold, and wild rice now grows in thirty locations, after having vanished from the marsh.

This August, when the carp wave their fins above the water’s surface I’ll recognize them. But I won’t be following their far-off splashing into narrow spaces in the reeds!

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Right now I’m listening to a memoir on audio book about birding. The writer’s “spark bird,” the bird that sparked her interest in birding, was the Red-winged Blackbird. I’m not patient enough to be a birder; I don’t want to stand quietly and wait. In fact as much as I enjoy a quiet animal viewing, I have also found that some of my most memorable, soul-baring, and life affirming conversations of the past year have been in a canoe or on a hike. I can be a moderately quiet paddler or hiker, but not a silent one.

But identifying a few birds last summer did spark a casual interest in wildlife watching. In order of their appearance, I was drawn in by the Bank Swallow, Great Egret and Night Heron. 

Midsummer I was paddling with my pal Emily one evening when we saw a bird hunched under the cattails. I’d only paddled the marsh in the morning up until this point, so it was a new part of the day to see the water. The surface was calm and reflected the dusky pinks and blues of the setting sky. I took a picture of the bird and later found him or her illustrated in The Sibley Guide to Birds: a “Black-crowned Night Heron.” My partner confirmed my identification, and I got a thrill from the match, like I was part of a scavenger hunt. From then on when I saw a Night Heron in the marsh I noted it. I see you. I almost always saw them sitting in this same way, lurking quietly at the waterline under cattails.

Their name appeals to me. Night Heron sounds pleasantly creepy. When I was a teenager my brother worked at a certain coffee and doughnuts chain. He frequently mention his colleague: Jed the night baker. That he was not just a baker, but a night baker never ceased to intrigue me. Other shifts didn’t get called the day baker, but the night baker was specific, and held a certain amount of mystique. I imagined Jed in the white baker’s uniform, entering the staff entrance in darkness, baking off sheets of frozen doughnuts and bagels throughout the night, only to disappear at dawn. Do Night Herons get the same mystique? Yes. I’ve known and seen Great Blue Herons all over the place for ages. Suddenly a new heron reveals herself, squat, with different habits and perches and a nocturnal schedule.

Apparently Night Herons fish and forage at night because other herons and egrets dominate the space during the day. I’ve only seen them perched on the edge of the marsh, but they hunt for food on land as well. And now that I know more about their habits, I’m sure I missed some perching in trees, concealed by foliage. I plan to watch more closely this year. 

Environment and Natural Resources Canada estimates between 10,000-25,000 breeding birds are in the country, and The North American Waterbird Conservation Plan estimates over 50,000 individuals on the continent. That seems like a much smaller number than I would have guessed. They are listed as a species of moderate concern, while other marsh birds I’m familiar with such as Great Egret, Caspian and Common Terns, Great Blue Heron, Double-crested Cormorants, and Ring-billed Gulls are not currently at any risk. 

It’s amazing to me how tiny bits of knowledge -
recognizing a few birds, my friend Anna identifying an aquatic plant called Yellow Flag, my brother alerting me to mink scampering along the shoreline, familiarizing myself with the changes in wind and temperature on the water, the waterline rising and falling throughout the season
- add up and suddenly I feel like I know the marsh. I have so much more to learn, and I’m looking forward to watching another season unfold. 

Black-crowned Night Heron: A chunky, short-legged Heron; black-backed and whitish below. Young birds are brown with light spots, and resemble Bitterns. Its note quok!, is often heard at night.

How to Know the Birds, 1949.

Links:

• Black-crowned night heron: Night herons are probably monogamous, and they “nest colonially, often with a dozen nests in a single tree. Colonies sometimes last for 50 years or more.” [The Cornell Lab of Ornithology]

• “Colonies of Black-crowned Night-Herons can provide good indications of overall environmental quality, because night-herons forage at the top of food chain, nest in colonies (where they are fairly easy to study), and have a wide distribution. They tolerate disturbances such as traffic, so they are especially useful in revealing environmental deterioration in urban environments.” [The Cornell Lab of Ornithology]

• Black-crowned Night-Heron: “Seen by day, these chunky herons seem dull and lethargic, with groups sitting hunched and motionless in trees near water.” [Audubon]

• Black-crowned Night Herons on their nest in Toronto: Very cool pictures of nesting night herons on Leslie Street Spit. “The Spit has the largest colony (1,200 pairs) of Black-crowned Night Herons in Ontario.” [Frame to frame - Bob & Jean]

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Last summer when I saw a thin, white bird on spindly legs with an S shaped neck, I thought it was a rare white Great Blue Heron. 

The first couple of times I paddled with my friend Emily I was concentrating hard just to move the canoe where I wanted it to go, usually almost where I wanted it to go. I was learning to steer in the moment, inefficient and noodle-armed. I could easily identify the Great Blue Heron, folded up on skinny legs and perched at the shoreline, or crossing the horizon with huge flapping wings, so casually spectacular. 

But I remember the July day we saw a thinner, spindlier version. A white heron! we thought, bleached of pigment. Remarkable, maybe even rare? Days later my friend Natalie, an expert canoeist and nature interpreter for the marsh, joined us for a paddle and to give us pointers on our strokes. I pointed out the special bird and Natalie told us it was a Great Egret. 

It was so special the first time but by summer's end I admired a half dozen Great Egrets during each paddle in the marsh, flying low, perched in tree branches or wading in shallow water. I’d probably seen them many times before last summer when I walked the trails around the wetland. Now that I’ve acclimatized to the marsh, and to steering the canoe while looking at the same time, I’ve learned the names and habits of many familiar birds that spend time there. But what else am I missing?

Slowly and surely, just as my stroke becomes marginally better with each canoe outing, the world of wildlife becomes more detailed and familiar. 

Links:

• Great Egret: “More than 95% of the Great Egrets in North America were killed for their plumes in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Plume-hunting was banned, for the most part, around 1910, and Great Egret populations quickly began to recover. Since the 1930s, the egrets have had to contend with major habitat loss and degradation, as well as threats like contaminated runoff from farm fields or sewage treatment. However, their populations appear stable.” [The Cornell Lab]

• Great Egret: “A tall, stately white wader of quiet waters.” [Audubon]

• “What Do We Do About John James Audubon?” The Great Egret became the symbol of Audubon after it was saved by conservationists. Black American ornithologist and birdwatcher J. Drew Lanham writes about his relationship to Audubon, the historical figure - and a more inclusive way forward for birdwatchers and nature lovers. “What do we do with a racist, slave-owning birding god almost 200 years dead?” [Audubon Magazine]

• A paint colour called “White Heron,” for the most ardent admirers of the bird. [Benjamin Moore]

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I

Mid-June, local marsh. I was paddling with my brother when I saw my first mink. Rob spotted him, having grown acquainted with them before at his friend Emma’s cottage. Dark brown, almost a cross between squirrel and ferret, on the bank. We saw another one a few minutes later. I watched people walk the trails just a few feet away, completely unaware of the mink scampering along the bank below them. I thought about how many times I’d strolled along the edge of the marsh unknowingly beside the agile animal.

Later, on our way back to the boat launch Rob pointed. “Look, another one.”

I looked, but all I saw was a wide, flat silver fish, seemingly walking on the sandy strip along the bank.

“It’s a mink carrying a fish,” Rob said.

“Oh!”

“What did you think?” Rob said. “That we were seeing evolution happen?”

The mink-fish disappeared into the side of the bank.

We laughed. “This must be what Darwin saw!” Rob joked.

II

A few weeks later, I knowledgeably pointed out a mink running along the shore to my friend Emily.

“I see it,” she said, before we realized she was looking at a different mink running 30 feet away. The mink were running towards each other.

"They're going to have a meet cute," said Emily. I laughed. The distance between them shrank as they ran.

"Oh look, one just dropped his books," she said. 

III

Late June, local marsh. On a hot sunny day, it was my ten-year-old friend Marie’s first time canoeing and she wasn't sold on it. She waited for me and my husband to put the canoe in the water at the dock, unhappily standing in a brand new lifejacket we'd purchased just for her.

Then: "Grace," she said. "I think I just saw a beaver." I was half paying attention to her as I tossed our paddles in the boat. Overstimulated and desperate for her to like the activity, my attention flickered all over the place.

"It was probably a squirrel." I demonstrated how to balance her weight as she lowered herself into the canoe.

Later, we were paddling across an inlet in the south part of the marsh when she pointed at the far shore where an adult and two small mink were scampering across the shore.

“There, that’s what I saw earlier,” Marie pointed. “See?”

Not a squirrel. She was absolutely delighted by my mistake.   

IV

July, Lake Simcoe. I was staying at friends' island cottage skimming their archive of every print issue of Cottage Life. I came across an article about mink in a back issue and learned an amazing fact that I haven’t been able to substantiate since. CL online archives don’t go as far back as 2007 and the magazine hasn’t returned my email, so from memory, it was this: that a pregnant mink can become pregnant with a second litter, and then pause the first pregnancy so that she gives birth to all of her offspring at the same time.

I told my husband who is a bit of a know-it-all and he was unfazed.

When I told Emily during our next paddle, she was also amazed, and it was satisfying.

But is it true?

V

Late July, Grand River. I headed to the river for a paddle with my partner and father-in-law.

The water level was low, too low, and we needed to pay attention to rapids and rocks ahead so we could avoid crashing or acquiring additional scrapes across the bottom of the boat.

Up ahead I saw a low section, some rocks, but we had time, maybe 30, 45 seconds, and I pointed out a mink swimming across the river. We watched her progress, and were directly next to her when she dove into a hole at the water's edge.

I experienced a moment of wonder and connection as I thought about all the den entrances I'd paddled past the last few weeks, when Scott pointed out four baby mink on the opposite side of the river, energetically I might add, so my father-in-law and I swiveled our heads to the right to look and, you guessed it, that 30 seconds was up and – crunch.

“Guys,” Scott scolded us, the lookouts. Neither of us even glimpsed the four mink babies.

VI

September, Algonquin backcountry. Two mink playfighting flung themselves across my campsite, rolling over each other and exciting my Jack Russell terrier, Dash.

I regarded the scampering mink as I might a kind and attractive colleague, but one that shared a boring anecdote at a work party: with interest but no longer the naïve sense of discovery and enchantment of before.

The two mink chased each other off into the woods, and Dash laid down.

I love the design and illustration of this little nature guide. The handwriting on the title page shows that it was awarded as the second prize at camp to my husband’s uncle in 1973, before my husband inherited it.

Mink links~~

• Mink [The Canadian Encyclopedia]

• Mink and the Coronavirus: What We Know: "Mink are the only animal known to both catch the virus from people and transmit it to them." [NYT]

• A booming niche industry goes bust, quietly taking millions in public money with it: "A CBC News analysis of bankruptcy and government records suggests that, since 2014, upwards of $100 million in provincial and federal money has been spent in Canada trying, often unsuccessfully, to keep individual mink farms afloat, or is tied up in loans by Crown agencies that will likely never be repaid." [CBC]

• Is This the End of the Mink Coat? "And 2020 has brought a new set of challenges for the mink coat, both environmental and cultural." [NYT]

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