The Ottawa Citizen, 2001

“Reopening the floodgates”

by Kathy Dobson

A mystery novel set during the time when six towns were flooded to make way for the St. Lawrence Seaway has struck a chord among those who were there at the time, writes Kathy Dobson.

Maggie Wheeler was working with adult students in Cornwall 10 years ago when a class assignment ended up disturbing her so much, it would haunt her for the next decade.

The students were asked to write an essay about a special or important childhood memory, and many chose to write about the creation of the St. Lawrence Seaway and construction of the hydro power project. On July 1, 1958, 30 tons of dynamite led to the flooding of six villages, three hamlets and the farming community of Sheek Island. It was considered one of the greatest engineering feats ever. For Ms. Wheeler’s students, who at that time were only four, five and six years of age, it was a trauma they had never forgotten. They were among the 6,500 who lost their homes, their villages, and an entire way of life, all in the name of progress.

Ms. Wheeler’s students’ remembered watching as their homes were gutted, burned, then bulldozed into the ground.

“I felt embarrassed that I had been living here for over 20 years and had never before considered the people side of the story,” says Ms. Wheeler.

“I knew all about the power dam and the seaway story, but never was it discussed, either in the schools or even over the backyard fence, the human cost of having to go through all that.”

Ms. Wheeler says silence was just part of that generation’s personality. You didn’t complain, you didn’t stand in the way of progress, and certainly didn’t buck authority. But some of the essays were so filled with pain, that Ms. Wheeler knew she was “going to have to some day address.”

This summer, after two years of research, Ms. Wheeler’s novel, A Violent End, was published by General Store Publishing House. The history of the flooding plays a crucial role in the plot. A die-hard mystery fan all her life, Mrs. Wheeler decided years ago that one day she would write her own mystery novel. As a longtime resident of Ingleside, one of the villages created after the flooding, Ms. Wheeler says it eventually dawned on her just how perfect a fit the local history would be with her murder mystery.

“How many times can you write a story where the hero has to come in - almost blind - and solve a 40-year-old murder mystery and there are no markers left? And it’s not a case of the crime scene having been cleaned up, or there having been a fire in the intervening years:  The building is gone, The entire landscape is gone. There’s nothing left.”

Here’s her description of the start of the flooding in her book: “The blast came at 8:01. As if to spite the fanfare, the explosion appeared to those on the dike as only a puff of dust in the distance. The Standard-Freeholder would later dub it ‘an unspectacular whisper.’ The aftershock was not. One minute later, it struck. Those waiting in cars on the highway felt their vehicles lift simultaneously off the road for a few breathtaking seconds. But the wave did not come.

For an hour, nothing came. Then the first trickle of water appeared. Instead of one wrenching moment, the flooding would last four days.  For four days, the villagers would say goodbye.”

It was this long farewell that Ms. Wheeler discovered so many found so difficulty. “For the villagers it was like pulling the tooth out slowly , instead of just one quick yank. It meant having to say goodbye over and over again, Some would spend the whole day watching, following the river along, watching it slowly eat up everything that they had loved.”

Ms. Wheeler was always acutely aware of what was at stake in writing her novel. Not only was it based on history - she wanted to ensure the story was as accurate as possible - but i was also about a community she calls home.

George Hickey, who can trace his family’s Loyalist roots back generations, grew up and later taught in Aultsville, the second largest of the six villages that were flooded. He ways Ms. Wheeler’s novel captured the spirit of life in the village perfectly. “The whole time I was reading the book I was back in Aultsville. I heard my own voice coming out of the characters’ mouths. She brought it all back.”

The last chapter was particularly emotional for him. “When I heard those voices whispering, all of those voices from the past, from people I had known.” Mr. Hickey, who was in his early 20s at the time of the flooding, stops to wipe his eyes. “I still can’t talk about it without getting emotional. He turns away.

Like dozens of other locals who have read and adored the book, Mr. Hickey wrote an emotional letter to Mrs. Wheeler, praising the novel’s authentic portrayal of village life.

Ms. Wheeler writes, “After they moved the houses, a lot of the older folks found it very disorienting to have a completely different view out of the windows they’d lived with their whole lives. It was depressing to them.”

Mr. Hickey now lives in Ingleside. “A lot of the old timers are gone now. Today people are from the cities; Montreal, Ottawa, and even Toronto. It’s more like a city suburb. There’s a warmth here, but not as warm as it was in Aultsville.”

Jim Brownell says some people were actually better off after the flooding. Mr. Brownell grew up in Aultsville and today is the president of the Lost Villages Historical society which operates a museum on Highway 2 featuring several buildings from the lost villages.

For some people the seaway project meant receiving municipal services for the first time in their lives. “And a lot of people were excited about having running water and bathrooms:”

But Mr. Brownell, nine years old at the time of the flooding, acknowledges there were sad moments: “I remember my best friend standing on the front step of Mille Roche Public School, crying his eyes out because there were burning his home. It couldn’t be moved so they had to destroy it. They day that they set it on fire, he just stood there. It’s one of the most sad things that I remember of the whole thing.  That was a really bad day, the day his house was burned down.”

Ms. Wheeler felt a strong responsibility to the community, to tell the families’ side of the story just right. When her publisher said he wanted to change the art work on the cover of her novel, Ms. Wheeler fought him tooth and nail.

“He said he wanted to get rid of the road, that it didn’t make any sense to have a drawing of a road that seemed to be running into the water,” says Ms. Wheeler. “So I explained to him that around here, we’ve got roads running into the water all over the place.”

Ms. Wheeler got to keep her road on the cover; a road that seems to lead to nowhere - unless you know the story of the lost villages.  Then you know that it leads to a part of Canada’s history which Ms. Wheeler says we must never forget.

“We don’t as a rule lose our homes,” says Ms. Wheeler. “We don’t lose our villages, we’re not scarred by war and we don’t have armies coming through irradiating things. They don’t drop bombs on us, either. This was an unusual situation and to lose your markers, to lose your references, must be very disturbing.”

With the publication of Ms. Wheeler’s book, the floodgates were opened once again, but this time it’s an outpouring of feelings. For the first time, after having read Ms. Wheeler’s book, many of the survivors of the lost villages are finally talking about their loss and their bitterness.

And most of all, their sadness over the knowledge that for them, they truly can never go back home again.

Journalist Kathy Dobson lives in Ingleside. For more information about the lost villages you can go to www.lostvillages.ca.

Site last updated June 10, 2008. Copyright © 2001, 2006-08 Maggie Wheeler. All rights reserved.