Content Warning—sexual assault Along the western shores of Lake Ontario, the water splits the land and pools into a marshy inlet webbed with bike trails and bridges. I walk these paths every day, just wandering about, here and…
I had known for a while that I wanted to write about my relationship to Lake Ontario and, more specifically, to the marshy inlet called Cootes Paradise. Visiting this place has become part of my daily routine, and I often feel as though I can map the last few years of my life onto Cootes’ shoreline. Certain rocks, bridges, and benches seem to vibrate with memory. Yet, this memory is complex and weblike; it has no respect for the traditional story arc. How could I tell a story about a place so multilayered, so personally affecting? I almost gave up before beginning. But then a friend sent me a link to CRAFT’s EcoLit Challenge, and I knew it was finally time to put some thoughts together.
I scribbled the first draft of “Here and There at the Lake” in a notebook, sitting by the shoreline, staring out over sunlit waters. As I wrote, I imagined my reader walking the lake paths with me, and instead of recounting a single, chronological story, I began telling them about the different places that we passed—Look, over there, do you see that? Let me tell you what happened there. And there. And there. Some of these places are significant in very personal ways, while others are part of histories that long predate me. The nonlinear nature of “Here and There at the Lake” allows these histories to mix and mingle; no single account takes precedent. I wanted to express an experience of this place that was simultaneously political, personal, traumatic, and healing. My life story is also part of this lake’s story, just as the lake’s story has become a part of mine. I am not the only one: this lake has woven its way through countless lives, and so gesturing toward the experiences of other lake-visitors became an important part of my writing as well. Our histories and our lives are our own, and yet they are not just our own. We are interconnected; we come into being through each other, and we bring our stories into all of our relationships.
Sometimes, our stories and our memories can feel unbearable. Many of my lake-memories are hard, and I don’t shy away from them. And yet, despite centuries of mistreatment, I’ve watched this lake continue to sustain and produce life, and the resilience of the natural world offers me hope. This hope does not erase the traumatic memories that are attached to certain places, just as decades of pollution do not disappear every time a flower blooms. Yet, the promise of continuing life adds new layers of storytelling; new resonances grow with and around the more difficult memories. Thus I wanted to end my piece by noting that my relationship to this lake is not subsumed by the past: I continue to go to the lake, and every day, I find a new way to remember these waters.
JANICE VIS is a creative nonfiction writer, course instructor, and PhD candidate in the Department of English & Cultural Studies at McMaster University. She was the winner of the 2023 Susan Crean Award for Creative Nonfiction, and her work has been published in various academic and creative venues. Find her on Instagram at @janice.elaine.vis.
