Beauty, Mayhem & Sleeping Giants in Chippewa Park
Chippewa Park was lifeless, but the drive would not be a waste; a rest on the shores of Lake Superior helped me reconnect with the Sleeping Giant to receive the gift of a new memory.
The park was on the opposite side of the city, giving me the chance to drive along the shoreline while Nancy Wilson sang about living another life through every second of the night. I dared glances at the Sleeping Giant peninsula on the horizon as I neared the park.
When I was young, Chippewa had rides, games, cotton candy, a beach where I was always waiting half-an-hour after eating before I could go swimming, and a rocket ship I could climb to the top of and fly away in.
The rocket ship play structure during Chippewa Park’s glory days. (Image: Karen Findlay)
Now, there were only traces of what was. The parking lot was empty, the facilities were boarded up and streaked with graffiti, and the rocket ship was replaced with a desolate patch of rough sand and an old, ripped play tire. The old rides along the boardwalk were torn down for the year.
Even the nearby beach where we watched the Canada Day fireworks every year seemed different; smaller, empty, with a higher shoreline. It was disappointing. Not wanting to waste the evening, I used Google to find a more interesting looking strip a few kilometres deeper into the park, on a bend in the road called Grand Point.
Unlike the main park, this hidden beach’s parking lot was full, and there was a large playfield with an old set of wooden swings. Down at the water, there were dozens of families enjoying the day. The Sleeping Giant was on full display.
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Under the Sleeping Giant’s Spell
The Sleeping Giant is a peninsula that rests comfortably across the Thunder Bay shoreline, from which its silhouette is as a stoic, slumbering god. I didn’t realize it then, but this beach is the closest point from the shore from which to view the peninsula.
I was tired after a long drive, so I grabbed a blanket and a can of beer from my trunk and found a soft, grassy knoll between the beach and a large patch of purple wildflowers, off to the side and away from the crowds. The smell of lavender was strong, but pleasant.
I put my hands behind my head and relaxed, really curling up and gazing out at the Giant and thinking about how far I had come. The waves continued to advance like steady, strong hands, sneaking up on those with their backs turned to the water.
The families socialized among each other freely, with no clear division between the groups of people, and plenty of heavy touching and breathing among those who did not arrive together. I kept vigil at my end of the beach, safely under the thrall of the Giant.
The Rising of Lake Superior
As the evening wore on, the Giant’s hands crept further up the beach, reaching for the sun-tanners, the children playing in the surf, and the teens chatting in excited, defiant circles.
The waves took the first boy by the ankles, and before anyone could help, he was knocked off his feet, laughing in surprise. He tried to get up, but the next wave knocked him down again, and he slid kicking and screaming into the surf.
The Giant’s hands found more, and an elderly man with a white sun cap ran to the rescue with long, blue floaties, sharing one but needing the other as pressure closed around his waist and pulled him out to sea. The tide inched up the sand, pulling more families away by the handful.
An older woman sitting on an inflatable ring waved to her children on the shore as she spun away, hooting with laughter and holding her arms out to her sides.
“Goodbye, mom,” a couple shouted, while their daughter jumped up and down, waving a pinwheel at her grandmother’s departure.
A few screaming boys refused to be left behind, and barrelled down the beach with their inflatable rings and launched themselves out into the water. Other groups held hands in a circle, treading water and maintaining their conversations as they drifted out into the lake.
The people gathered along the bank all turned around and got back into their cars, chatting with each other as they opened their car doors, before ducking inside, starting the lights up and driving away.
A Parting Gift from the Sleeping Giant
As the waves retreated, there I was, as a young, black-haired boy, building a castle with a red plastic bucket, which he filled with sand and flipped to plant the battlements. My sister and cousin sat off to the side of him in deep discussion.
My father and uncle, the eldest of a brute-strong and handsome, but bolshy brood of Portuguese Canadians, appeared at the edge of the beach. They were carrying a white styrofoam cooler, the sort you could find in most hardware stores during the eighties.
“Okay, time to go,” they called.
My mother and aunt, the bombshell small-town best friends who my father and uncle met and married, responded from the sand, where they lay on towels with my brother, who was then a small toddler.
“Okay, I think we’re leaving. Pick all of this up,” they said, gesturing toward the shells, shovels and ships that were scattered around me.
I must not have wanted to leave, so I took my time as the waves crept back up the shore and brushed at the legs of the girls.
I tried to warn them from my end of the beach, but I was paralyzed. And just as they noticed the waves closing around their ankles, they were gone, pulled out into the Great Lake.
Then there was just me, collecting shovels and shells in a red plastic bucket. Every time it seemed like I was done, I found more behind my leg or a fold of sand.
But then I was gone too, and there was only the Giant, bathing beneath the soft moonlight.