Quinte shorline

The rains have charged the waters of the Moira; they hurry into the quiet of the Bay of Quinte stirring into a whirlpool that swallows the setting sun. A family of mallards pushes upstream; crimson light on emerald backs. The laughter of children carries from a nearby park; a couple ambles at water’s edge, reflections waltzing in the channel. The tranquil is severed by the angst of an eastbound train. I count as car after heavy freight car crosses the iron bridge over the river; the voice of steel on steel travels through the harbour lands of Belleville. At the end of the 19th century the story of this community could be told through the collection of people and industry that jammed the piers and wharf structures that lay at the bottom of Front and Pinnacle streets.

I imagine the log booms and pointer boats resting at ease along the river banks. Manoeuvred by river drivers with pike poles, the boats worked the round-up of logs that, cut from the forests of Hastings, galloped freely down the Moira. The sturdy pointer vessel built for shallow, fast water was known as “the boat that could float on heavy dew.”

Over here I picture, like cattle at feeding time, row upon row of parked schooners, their bow sprits suspended over wooden planked docks; a tangle of masts swaggering in the evening sky. Ship holds were emptied and ship holds were filled by swing booms and sweating men; inbound goods from New York State filled the shops along Front and Bridge Streets while outbound loads of lumber, flour and whisky were shipped to points near and afar. In the midst of where I stand, fishing boats competed with steamers for moorage. The lake air, scented of fish, tobacco and beer, was laced with the songs and high-pitched arguments of the Irish, Brits, Yankees, Scots and French that rose from the innards of Margaret Simpson’s waterfront tavern.

The shoreline hosted Belleville’s Victoria Park, a favorite picnic spot from which you could take the ferry to Prince Edward County. The pleasure steamer, ‘Annie Lake’, ran between Belleville and Massassaga Park, another favorite picnic ground. The ‘C.H. Merritt’ of Belleville would take the Brick Methodist Church Sunday School picnic to Twelve O’- clock Point.

And it was here in the former shipyards that the sailing yacht ‘Atalanta’, Canadian challenger for the America cup, was built in 1881. Her rough muddy bottom gained her the ungracious nickname of the “Canadian Mud Turtle” by workmen on the Erie Canal. Yet, with a stick of solid pine cut from a 100-foot tree, she was the first single-mast yacht to compete for the America cup.

Cedars and willows are silhouetted in the twilight as I find my way farther up the bay. I watch as the lights of Rossmore and Rednersville on opposite shores go on one by one. Of the families that were a part of Belleville’s 19th century life, John Dunbar Moodie and his author wife Susanna Moodie are noted.

When John retired as the first sheriff of the District of Hastings, the Moodies gave up their Bridge Street limestone “wilderness Georgian” cottage to their son Dunbar. They rented a small clapboard dwelling overlooking the bay not far from where I stand. Susanna would watch as schooners unloaded bulkheads of coal at dockside before sailing return to Oswego, New York with a cargo of lumber.

John died in October 1869, and Susanna, lost without her life partner, moved about, staying for awhile with her sister Catherine Parr Traill at Lakefield before going to Toronto to live with son Robert and then in her last year with daughter Katie. Susanna died on Easter Sunday, 1885, and arrangements were made for her remains to travel by train to Belleville. In tribute to his parents, Robert Moodie commissioned a large, white marble family monument to be built and crowned with an angel. It is here along the shore in the Belleville cemetery where the stone angel can be found. She towers high above my head this early evening; her right arm reaching to the east. In her hand she holds a star: perhaps the North Star, the morning star;,the star of the mariners? I watch as through the trees a blood-red sliver of the new moon appears. Slowly it rises until it greets the angel’s hand. It is the first moon of November, the Frost moon, and it is here to tell us of the changing season along the shoreline.