LITMIR.BIZ

      When you think about it, what exactly is it that makes the Canadian shore of Lake Erie so special? It’s not its physical features, for it lacks the soaring cliffs of the Bruce Peninsula, the white mountains of Lake Huron, or the giant red outcrops of Superior’s magnificent coastline. Nor is there anything like the smooth, sculpted pink shoals that line the Thirty Thousand Islands of Georgian Bay. Rather, it offers a rather dreary coast consisting of a monotonous cliff line punctuated by marshes and long sandy spits that jut far into the lake.

      It’s not its developments, for the towns and villages that line it are small and often little-changed over their existence. No CN Towers here, no “Distillery Districts,” Ontario Places, or Gardiner Expressways.

      What makes it special are in fact exactly those things — the absence of the grand. Rather, it is a place to explore the past, the ecology, the places — all of which are little known outside of its own sphere.

      Here you find the northern reaches of the lush Carolinian forests, plants found nowhere else in Ontario. Here too is one of Ontario’s only three UNESCO World Biosphere Reserves, as well as cactuses, tall grass prairies, and one of Canada’s Heritage rivers. The waters of the lake are among Ontario’s most dangerous, their shallow depths littered with hundreds of doomed ships. It is a lake of unpredictable tidal waves and, some say, its own “monster.”

      Its shores harbour a string of active fishing ports, home to the world’s largest freshwater fishing fleet, and indeed the last fishing fleet on the Great Lakes. Picturesque harbours contain fish stores, net sheds, and historic light houses, and in one case, a castle. In other cases, the Erie shore can be a “ghost coast.” Where schooners once set sail with barley or lumber, only rotten cribbing lies, hotels and stores sit empty, mill sites have only their overgrown ponds to tell of busy milling days.

      Then there is its human history — fugitive slaves escaping their humiliating servitude, heroines rescuing the crew of a sinking ship, a “witch” doctor, an imperious “emperor” after whom many a place has been named, nefarious rum-runners, and the mysterious, little-known pre-historic inhabitants.

      Yet for those who know Erie’s shores, and love them, they are anything but forgotten. But for those who live in Ontario’s sprawling metropoli, or are more used to the traditional cottage country, Erie’s shores are little known. For most of Ontario, Lake Erie is indeed Ontario’s forgotten south coast.

PART ONE

       The Story of a Lake

1 THE MAKING OF A LAKE Tidal Waves, Monsters, and Dead Zones

      Compared to the millions of millennia

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