Waypoints

Spindrift n. i. Blown sea-spray; ii. Spume; iii. Wisps of spray curling off the crests of waves in extreme winds.

—Nautical lore

The sea is a powerful archetype. It strikes unique emotional resonances when we experience it. This is also true when we experience it second-hand through the words of others. As captured in various cultural and literary traditions, the sea conjures up sublime images of power and majesty, of hazard and daunting challenge. The sea reveals undercurrents of myth, memory and imagination. It inspires haunting poetry. Just what this means for the Canadian experience of the sea is the subject of this book.

Our collection gathers responses to a fundamental question: what is the recorded relationship of Canadians to the sea? More pointedly, how has the sea—as a medium, and as an experience—shaped the Canadian consciousness? By contextualizing passages drawn from a wide selection of authors—seafarers and non-seafarers among them—we have let each voice speak for itself. Each witness brings a unique perspective and flavour to what emerges as a compelling mosaic. The authentic tones and moods of these stories and reflections embrace all modes of expression from lyrical to dramatic. Canadian maritime experience—whether in home or foreign waters—is central to the nation’s cultural tradition and lore.

Our principle of selection from among this rich diversity is clear: memorable writing that is brief, representative and engaging. Had we included everything that we had wished, this volume would have run to well over six hundred pages of revealing testimony. Clearly, we have had to adjust our sails to weather and wind: trimming, shortening and even bare-poling to complete the voyage. We have therefore restricted ourselves to those cultural documents which—taken together—reflect the spirit of what Canadians have experienced. What we now offer is “spindrift—wisps of spray curling back off waves.” While we have always sought intrinsically good writing, we have not hesitated on rare occasion to dip into the local and popular. But we do so only if it illuminates some dimension of the Canadian experience.

Of course, other published collections have addressed the topic of Canada and the sea, each one with different emphases and focus. One thinks, for instance, of Allan Anderson’s compilation of interviews with seafaring workers in Salt Water, Fresh Water (1979); or of the regional perspectives in George Nicholson’s self-published Vancouver Island’s West Coast, 1762–1962 (1966) and Meddy Stanton’s We Belong to the Sea: A Nova Scotia Anthology (2002). Rainer K. Baehre’s Outrageous Seas: Shipwreck and Survival in the Waters off Newfoundland, 1583–1893 (1999) provides yet another graphic regional focus. Reflecting on Newfoundland’s historical record, he writes that the “influence of the sea has been pervasive, and it has left a deep cultural imprint, particularly in Newfoundland and Labrador.” By casting our net even wider, we have found such cultural imprints wherever Canadians have put to sea.

Writers who envision this broader canvas tend to argue for a particular seabound, geopolitical view of Canada. We see this, for example, in Victor Suthren’s edited work Canadian Stories of the Sea (1993), or in his historical survey The Island of Canada: How Three Oceans Shaped Our Nation (2009). Here he tacitly endorses the perspectives so often repeated in naval and nautical journals. “There is no nation with a greater physical connection to the sea than Canada,” he explains, “and yet there are few people with such a stunning wealth of seacoast who are as unaware, or unknowing, of that connection as Canadians.” His point is well taken.

The written record projects “the sea” as a predominantly male domain: visceral, aggressive, challenging and subject to mastery by commanding figures. By contrast, it portrays women in their traditional roles as the supporters and mourners of male endeavour, and as the strength in family and community. Significantly, however, the actual Canadian experience of the sea has been gradually changing that image. For with the engagement of women in leading marine roles from deckhands to skippers, a new reality has emerged. Strikingly, however, the written lore of the sea has not yet caught up with these contemporary social changes. Our collection necessarily reflects this conventional reality. Ultimately, “the sea” sets the scene for a world of self-realization, beauty and tragedy, which embraces the experience of both women and men alike.

The geographical context of Canada explains just how important such experience actually is. The nation lies gripped on three lengthy and rugged sides by the Pacific, the Atlantic and—by far the smallest of the world’s oceans—the Arctic. These form the primary focus of our exploration. They constitute a natural three-ocean frontier. Together they form a realm of maritime endeavour that has, since the earliest days of Canadian history, inspired the major share of nautical reflection. They bear the burden of proof for what the sea means to Canada.

Yet we recognize that Canada has also been shaped by the Great Lakes, a remarkable inland sea. The largest body of fresh water on earth, it has been the scene of human endeavour matching anything the world’s oceans could offer: enterprise, migration and war among them. Mariners on these lakes have experienced all the weather conditions they could find deep-sea. The completion of the St. Lawrence Seaway in 1959 opened this maritime heartland to ocean-going vessels. With its fifteen locks, the seaway now takes ships over two thousand nautical miles from the Atlantic into all five of the Great Lakes. Embracing over one hundred ports, it carries over 160 million tons of cargo. Fifty percent of the cargo runs between international ports in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Like the sea, the Great Lakes have also engaged the creative imagination. In the final analysis, however, we recognized with regret that traveller and poet Henry James got it right in 1871 when he observed: the Great Lakes are “the sea and yet just not the sea.” Their written heritage belongs in a separate volume.

Significantly, Canadian heraldry has long proclaimed the centrality of the sea for Canadian identity. Certainly, the Latin motto A Mare usque ad Mare—From Sea to Sea—on the Canadian coat of arms expresses both a political and strategic vision. The motto is taken from the biblical proclamation of God’s all-encompassing grasp as expressed in Psalm 72:8, “He shall have Dominion from sea to sea.” Drawing on this, one might well argue for an overarching metaphysical vision of nationhood. One nation under God. Indeed, we owe that insight to Sir Samuel Leonard Tilley, one of the thirty-three Fathers of Confederation who gathered in Charlottetown in September 1864 to discuss the draft British North America Act. It was the devout Tilley who suggested the name “the Dominion of Canada” for the new nation, a concept which the other Fathers endorsed. The sea, at this point, would seem to have been a boundary marker. In this light, all that lay between the Pacific and the Atlantic was an immense land to be bound together and, where necessary, mastered.

Nor does the heraldry end there. Chiselled over the front entrance of the Parliament buildings in Ottawa stand the words “The wholesome sea is at her gates … Her gates both East and West.” Carved in stone in 1920 when the Peace Tower was being built, they evoke yet another range of possible meanings for the national motto. Though still regarded as a bounded land, Canada now has “gates”—like those of a fortress—encompassed by a single, “wholesome sea.” The author of this poetic insight was Ottawa lawyer and occasional poet John Almon Ritchie (1863–1935), remembered now perhaps solely for these words set in stone. Yet many have found the words both stirring and prescient. Take, for example, the reflections in Jeffrey V. Brock’s naval memoirs The Dark Broad Seas (1981): “Thrilling in their simplicity, they awaken the imagination and speak eloquently of a land that is not bound by physical horizons. Any pride and satisfaction that may result from contemplating Canada’s future should be tempered by the reminder that gates remain but prison bars unless the roads beyond are free.” This assertion about the freedom of the seas has particular significance for Canadian strategic thinkers and naval historians. In short, the phrase is a plea for navalism, national security and national defence. Here the sea has become a moat. Or perhaps a bridge for commercial and economic—or military—power projection.

Our Spindrift: A Canadian Book of the Sea, by contrast, illustrates a much more multifaceted and nuanced experience than this. It reveals our human relationships to the oceanic environment, and how that environment fascinates and forms those who encounter it. The collection explores the interfaces between sea and shore, and evokes reflection on the meaning of human endeavour and purpose in great waters. While localized in expression, the themes are timeless: survival and isolation, loneliness and restoration, hope and despair, awe and dread, steadfastness and mastery. Beneath the surface of the experience “sea” runs an undertow and rip current marked by adventure and exhilaration, and by reflection on the sea as the setting for rites of passage. Always poignant, sometimes passionate—and even pacific—the sea emerges in these witnesses to Canadian experience as a key to understanding this vast three-ocean land.

A diversity of experience—immediate and personal, or vicarious and national—invests the sea with meaning. Indeed, writers have shown how local experience can develop into a national tradition. Like the Atlantic schooner Bluenose, which is celebrated not only in song, postage stamps and popular lore, but also on the obverse of the Canadian dime, their writing projects a national vision.

Within these pages, Canadians—with occasional foreign writers among them—celebrate the unique ties that bind us intimately to the sea. Out of the nautical diversity of their accounts ­emerges a striking unity. Like the eighteenth-century understanding of “wit”—a cast of mind that brings together objects that are normally kept separate and apart—our book presents a new kind of Canadian mosaic. Here the “wholesome sea” is not merely “at our gates.” It is an intrinsic part of our national identity.

—Michael L. Hadley