By Mike Heenan
Literary Editor
True North Perspective
Here’s a rural legend from The Ottawa Valley told to me as a wide-eyed, 10-year-old kid by “Peg-leg Pete”, an old Logger & Raftsman who worked the Bush and the River when they still had massive logging drives downriver to the E.B. Eddy Lumbermill in Hull, Quebec.
Pete froze his leg off in the River by slipping off the Ice Bridge on an over-refreshed late night journey home to MacLaren’s Landing from Gavan’s Tavern in Quyon.
He claimed he was told this tale by the Gaelic-speaking Irish descendents whose forebears arrived in Canada in the mid-nineteenth century and settled in the Gatineau Hills northeast of Quyon, Quebec.
The story describes the long-awaited spring breakup of the ice on the Ottawa River. Usually this happened without fanfare over a long, slow melt between St. Patrick’s Day and Easter.
Once, every decade or so when conditions are just right, it happens very suddenly with an earthshaking roar and ear-splitting clatter in the middle of the night.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have experienced it three times in 65 years after very cold winters followed by suddenly warm springs.
“Peg-leg” said they called it “St. Patrick’s Horn” in English and I set it to verse a few years ago.
Padraig’s Horn
Up the silver-ribboned Valley where Mohr’s Island bends the River
A sparkling crystal village strains against her frozen bay.
MacLaren’s Landing, like her sisters, locked in icy manacles
All along the Ottawa, awaits the wakening sway.
The robin does not herald spring, nor do the maples smear
Their roughened sides’ sweet bleeding from sharp wounds,
And none waits here for mountain ash, lime-leafing, to appear.
All living things lean north and west alert for slightest sounds
And listen for St. Patrick’s Horn, that mighty rolling blast,
That startling harbinger of spring, to shatter winter’s clasp.
This very week the word from the beginning has been sent
And answered with Caesarian force from Paddy’s Horn this Lent.
From Temiskaming to Ottawa’s cold shores one night this week
The River splits right open with a crackling Banshee’s shriek.
From shockened shores wolves keen and send the cattle into bawling,
Red foxes bark, dark night birds cry, and dogs bay their amazement.
Sharply-wakened families rush out to hear the howling
As the River rips right down her midst, ‘neath tilted firmament.
Way up The Swisha past Sheenboro she tears through frozen water
And, racing down the line, cuts wide past Shawville and Chats Falls
Through Quyon where it’s said, some men lock up their daughters,
Past The Landing, Crown Point, Constance Bay, as quick as lightning crawls.
Some call it Paddy’s Horn because its brassy, clattering thunder
Rings like ancient Celtic huntsmen riding to their horns
Alaruming the villagers with cries of awe and wonder
While rousting nature’s children from old Ea’s frozen arms.
You can hear its crack resounding off steep Gatineau’s granite sides,
As it whips up shards and splinters from The Narrows’ icy tides,
Then it slithers down past Pinhey’s Point and whips across the Bay
Like the last snake out of Ireland that St. Patrick struck away.
And so, before Our Man of April rises from His tomb,
The way’s been cleared by Paddy’s Horn, as clear as Mary’s womb,
And the children of the River now lean warmly towards the dawn,
With a new rebirth of wonder and fresh miracles of song.
© Mike Heenan, April, 2001, Ottawa.