"I'm in love with Canada. I'm carrying on affairs with both coasts simultaneously…." That's
"Oh, Canada!" poet Wanda Schubmehl speaking in one of her responses to the "round-robin" interview published in these pages
and to which I respond: "I couldn't have said it better!"
Her evocative words instantly called to mind the memory of a foggy morning on the shore at Twillingate
in northern Newfoundland. That morning my husband Roger and I stood staring at the remnants of an iceberg that had floated
into the cove. Earlier, a jovial native at the village's breakfast spot had told us that a ship from St. John's, the provincial
capital, had recently weighed anchor offshore, and its crew set to work on the berg, hacking off great chunks to tow south
to a distillery. The objective was to capture and then melt the ice and use it to create a premium brand of vodka that would
be marketed with the claim: "Made from 10,000-year-old water!" We marveled at the ingenuity of such an enterprise; we chuckled
about the audacity of their plan; and we mourned the orphaned remains of what had been a glacial mountain, one destined not
for a slow death in warm seas but a quick one in a steamy vat, with its molecules destined for silver martini shakers.
Later in the day, the thoughts I had about that scene off Newfoundland's north coast with its
harvested iceberg took a ghostly tack. What could drive people to farm the ocean in such a peculiar manner? Desperation, I
concluded. By 2001, the codfish were almost fished out, and the moratorium against cod fishing had imposed a depressing economic
reality on Newfoundlanders all across the island province. The newly-minted lobster fishermen we watched heading out from
Twilingate were as sad a commentary on the costs of overfishing as was an iceberg reduced to the size of a seaside cottage.
We were witnessing a hundreds-of-years-old way of life coming to an end.
Yet my final thought was a positive one: What hardy people, what survivors they are! And though
I knew that it would not put brewis* on the table that damp Newfoundland night, I offered my envy to the gray skies, gray
seas, and those robust souls: "Oh to be a Newfie of such pluck!" Then I set about writing my poems to honor both the fish
and those fishermen.
Read "Three Pieces of Cod" in my section of this issue to feel the impact that this time
and place had on me.
~~~
Wanda's brief words also called to mind a temperate rainforest on Flores Island in Clayoquot Sound
off the west coast of Vancouver Island, home to the Ahousaht or
Nuu-Chah-Nulth First Nation. One of the tribe members led Roger and me on a hike through that forest of towering cedars, telling us about
a legend in which a young, red-haired girl became entangled among the dense stands of ancient trees and their thick roots,
and then turned into one of those towering giant redwood cedars!
While I can no longer recall the end of the story, I vividly remember the difficulty we had on
the overgrown trail. We measured each step to secure our footing. Gnarled roots could easily trip us and turn an ankle. Wet
peaty interstices between those tight roots grabbed at our sneakers. Each footstep counted. If we wanted to admire ferns on
the forest floor or the crowns of mighty redwoods, we had to stop, stand still, brace an arm against a trunk to steady ourselves.
Though only a couple of miles long, the hike was one of the most demanding we had ever taken. It required our full attention,
our intense concentration, our patience, for nearly two hours. What prolonged plodding, but what complete, satisfying mindfulness,
too.
Years later, when I was seeing a behavior modification counselor to help me develop strategies
to cope with a particularly difficult time at work, she advised me to come up with a soothing image that I could summon, a
scene to visualize at will to get me through the rough spots. The image I used was of the Flores Island rainforest. Whenever
anxiety started to strike, time and again I saw myself in slow motion, saw again the painstaking step-by-step journey through
the forest to the beach.
With that visual aide, like the little red-haired girl, I would be charmed into serenity and become
a tree for as long as it took to slow the beats of my agitated heart.
~~~
So, when Wanda wrote of being in love with Canada, I knew exactly what she meant.
"I've been cheating on my country for years," is how I expressed it in the opening line of my
foreword to
Godwit: Poems of Canada. Canada has been a generous lover over the years since I first stepped foot on
her soil forty-four years ago as an eleven-year-old girl. I gave back to Canada my book of poems, and now I give back to her
again with the work I have done for this issue of
The Centrifugal Eye. There is such a thing as a labor of love. This
is how I give thanks to Canada.
I am thankful, too, that Eve included a selection of poems from the new book (just out this fall
from FootHills Publishing here in New York state). And that she welcomed me wholeheartedly as the guest editor for "Oh, Canada!"
What a marvelous journey it's been, eh?
Lastly, I hope our readers will explore these pages with the zest of adventure, discovering Canada
in the words of native poets, transplanted poets, and poets like Wanda and myself, who dwell below the 49th Parallel with
maple leaves imprinted on our souls. I've learned that Canada is a place in the imagination where I've been able to turn a
faded sign reading "Beware of Bait-Stealing Raven"—seen, I kid you not, in Butedale, British Columbia—into the
poetic tapestry titled
Godwit. And now, as guest editor of
The Centrifugal Eye, I hope my Canadian muse has
prevailed and I have been able to craft for you here another tapestry—with the myriad inspiring voices of "Oh, Canada!"'s
assembly of poets.
* brewis: a small round hard cake traditionally served with dried salt fish baked in a gravy enriched with
browned cubes of fat back pork
Karla Linn Merrifield
Guest Editor
The Centrifugal Eye, Autumn 2007
