When night falls below Bridge Street

The murmur of traffic catches in the maples as the chime from the clock tower of Picton United Church descends from the hill. Headstones climb the rise of Mount Olivett cemetery while the grounds of Glenwood lie nearby. The bark of dogs at play; a woman carries two terriers across a footbridge; end-of-day light chases the creek through cattails.

There are pages written in the soil of this ravine setting. O-ga-wa-da, the ‘place of the butternuts’ was how the site was known to the Mohawk tribe of Kente. The findings of the late Willis Metcalfe tell of how in the early years of Picton, vessels navigated high into the bay to about where I stand. Here, in what was called the Town Marsh, two ships came to rest; masts and timbers buried beneath my feet, names lost and forgotten.

The maker of the vessels was likely John Tait, the son of an Amherst Island shipwright. Renowned up and down the Great Lakes as a master at his trade, Tait built most of the vessels of Prince Edward with a number of them plying regular routes across the Atlantic. He built ‘fore-and-afters’ and ‘three-and-afters’, slang terms to denote the number of masts. It was said of Tait that “in his mind’s eye every ship was made of glass, with all the hidden work as plain as the outer planking and all the stresses as evident as though chalk marked.”

The December calendar marked the close of the sailing season in the days when prosperity was tied to ‘the centreboard and ploughshare’; when accounts were rendered and the records of crossings filled journals of tall ships and coastal boats. The days when captains itched to make ‘one last run’ to Montreal or Oswego, New York to carry the stuff that balanced books.

In the finest of weather the outer waters of Prince Edward were treacherous but now, at this time of the year, when the ‘winter breeze’ carried from the west and gained teeth over a hundred miles of open water, the ‘Marysburgh T r i a n g l e ’ earned its reputation. On November 20, 1879, the Daily Ontario, published in Belleville, wrote that “two thirds or more of the shipwrecks on Lake Ontario take place between Point Petre and the Main Ducks.” Eleven years later, the Murray Canal was built to bypass the danger.

I follow Marsh Creek down toward the harbour, down past Arnie’s Garage and through the long back yards of East Mary Street. Empty park benches bask in pools of amber streetlight that filters through high branches.

A car honks as I cross Bridge Street where the stream runs below. I stand by the rail overlooking the bay where over a century ago, a Picton photographer captured the steamboat Aletha pulling into the Bridge Street dock. It was an all-out event when the boats came in, when crowds jammed the waterfront to greet passengers, crew and loved ones. The ships carried news from the ‘outside’ while in their holds were boxes of tea and casks of rum, hardware, paint and fine china.

The Aletha was owned by A. W. Hepburn of Picton, who ran the largest fleet on the Great Lakes. In his time, one could spot along the shore the coal, lumber yards and sawmill that belonged to his holdings. Further out stood ‘the ways’ where the Hepburn vessels were built and repaired, and where a winter’s wage kept bread on the table for hundreds around.

I grab the railing and step down to the dock where seagulls gather for the night. “Picton is a very beautiful place viewed from the deck of the steamer,” author Suzanna Moodie noted in 1853. “Its situation is novel and imposing, the number of pretty cottages that crown the steep ridge that rises almost perpendicularly from the water, peeping out from among fine orchards in full bearing, and trim gardens give it quite a rural appearance. The steamboat enters this fairy bay by a very narrow passage; and, after delivering freight and passengers at the wharf, backs out by the way she came in. There is no turning a large vessel round this long half-circle of deep blue water. Few spots in Canada would afford a finer subject for the artist’s pencil than this small inland town, which is so seldom visited by strangers and visitors.”

Shore lights dance like fireflies on slack water; snow begins to fall. I pull in my scarf against the cold of darkness when out from the hidden creek, masts and rigging of the Morning Star rise. Sailing in her wake, in the light of the quarter moon comes a tall ‘three-and-after’, the ship they called the Mary June.