Days 56 & 57: St. Thomas to Long Point, ON

Car trouble stopped the trip and made us anxious on Sunday night. On Monday the 5th, Jim got up early and took the truck to the dealer while Sara and I waited in our luxurious hotel rooms. At 10 am Jim returned with good news: one of the brake lines had rusted through, and the repair was relatively minor and quick. We were back on our bikes by noon.

St. Thomas was not on our route and we didn’t see much of it, but there was one notable thing. Jumbo the elephant, an international celebrity and the star of P.T. Barnum’s circus, died here 123 years ago. His death was a high point for yellow journalism. Here is the dispatch from the New York Sun of September 18th, 1885:

“After the show in St. Thomas, the elephant driver started down the track with Jumbo and the baby elephant, Tom Thumb, to where the Grand Trunk Freight train was standing. There are a great many tracks at that point, used in switching cars on the Grand Trunk Air-Line, which there joins the main track. There was a train and on the other a steep embankment. As a train came around the curve the keeper tried to induce Jumbo to go down the embankment, but he would not.

“The reason at first was not apparent. The baby elephant was in the rear, and as the train approached Jumbo began to bellow and swing his trunk. The little elephant seemed dazed, but did not get out of the way. As the engine was closing upon them Jumbo raised on his hind legs as though to protect the baby, and then quick as thought dropped down and grabbed him in his trunk and hurled him with great force over all the tracks and against a freight car, twenty rods away, where he dropped down, whining like a puppy with a sore foot. Jumbo in saving the life of his protégé, entirely neglected his own chance to escape. The locomotive struck him will force in the side, crowding him against some cars on the siding nearest him and fairly squeezing the life out of him.

“When they came to the end of the switch the engine left the tract with five freight cars that stood on the siding. Then there was a scene never to be forgotten by those who witnessed it. The mangled beast roared with pain, and the little elephant roared as loud as he could in sympathy. The crush was too heavy to leave any chance of recovery and the bystanders could only wait for Jumbo’s death. It was not long delayed. In three minutes he turned over on his back dead. It was found that the baby elephant sustained a broken leg and as there was no help for him, orders were given that he be put out of his misery, which order was carried into effect yesterday afternoon.”

Other sources don’t support the story that Jumbo died trying to save a baby elephant’s life, so this may be another P.T. Barnum tall tale. But like so many of them,it stuck.  A century after Jumbo’s death, the community collected donations and erected a life-sized statue of the beast on the edge of a high embankment. It is a fine statue and a good story, and it makes me suspect that this must have been the biggest thing that ever happened in St. Thomas. Like Elvis or JFK, Jumbo became bigger in death than he ever was in life.

Barnum stuffed the hide of Jumbo and exhibited it for several years, and Barnum is the reason why we now say that something is “jumbo” instead of staying it’s extra big. After Jumbo’s hide stopped drawing crowds, Barnum donated it to Tufts University, where it became the official mascot. The hide was destroyed in a fire in 1975. According to Wikipedia, the ashes of Jumbo are kept in a 14-ounce Skippy Peanut Butter jar in the office of Tufts’ athletic director.

We said goodbye to Jumbo and drove to the provincial highway where we had stopped the day before. We started east around noon, with just 45 miles to go to our campsite at Long Point Provincial Park. The wind had shifted and was coming from the northeast, so we rode into it for most if the day. This slowed us down and might also have made us more observant. The road swung close to the lake and went past well-kept farms harvesting sweet peppers, apples, soybeans, potatoes, and corn. There aren’t many places in Canada where a farmer can make a good crop of sweet peppers, but the north shore of Lake Erie is one of them.

We stopped in Port Burwell at a restaurant that served fish from the lake. Jim made a face when he was offered perch, but I had a fine pickerel sandwich. Even more satisfying than the sandwich was the smug knowledge that I had eaten local food, as all good Greenies should. Sara had the same idea. She went to a farm stand and got delicious fresh peppers, potatoes, and tomatoes for us to feast on for dinner. East of Port Burwell we started to see wind turbines, which went on for 15 miles along the lakeshore. A roadside plaque explained that these were the Lake Erie Shores wind farm. There are 66 towers generating 99 megawatts of electricity here, enough to power 24,000 homes,

Not everyone is happy in this paradise of local food and clean electricity, however. We also saw lots of drying barns for tobacco that had been abandoned. The owner of a small general store in Clear Creek explained that the government had set aside $286 million to buy out tobacco farmers, but the money hadn’t arrived yet and the farmers were running out of options. He also explained to us why the Canadian shore of Lake Erie is not lined with second homes and cottages, as is every lakeshore in New York. Canadian farmers in this district are prohibited from subdividing their land, he said. Most of the shore is in an agricultural reserve program and is legally required to remain in production. He was not happy about this. It reminded me of the Adirondack Park, a place that city people treasure as a natural jewel while the locals grumble about not being able to make a living.

Day 57: Long Point Provincial Park

We entered the Long Point Biosphere Reserve, where a 25-mile sand spit that juts into Lake Erie is reserved for the use of migrating birds. The peninsula itself is a mixture of privately owned land that is protected by a Nature Conservancy easement, and a national wildlife refuge that is accessible only by boat. The government of Ontario, local citizen groups, Ducks Unlimited, the United Nations, and even the State of New York have contributed money and time to make sure that this area remains prime waterfowl habitat. Farms are paid to ensure that there’s lots of waste corn for birds to eat. No-nonsense signs keep you from walking into the bird areas. The fine for trespassing is $225.

The star of the show here is the Tundra or “Whistling” Swan, which is pure white except for a black bill and has a eight-foot wingspan. The swans descend on Long Point in late February and stay until mid-March, stopping to rest and refuel on their way from wintering grounds in Florida to their nesting sites in the arctic. When they’re here, the ranger said, they sit in the huge marshes that line the inland side of the peninsula and make an incredible racket. You have to see it to believe it, she said. But the big preserve is a mixed blessing for ducks, because you’re allowed to hunt them. We heard shotgun blasts until dusk.

The most remarkable thing about Long Point is that the public is not allowed to walk onto the spit itself. Five or six miles of private land separates the provincial park from the wildlife refuge, which runs to the tip of the peninsula. The private land is a hunting camp owned by a group of wealthy Americans and Canadians. The Nature Conservancy brokered an easement on this land, along with the donation that created the wildlife reserve. Unless you have a boat, you can’t get to the good stuff. Very clever. I was reminded once again of the way land conservation works in the Adirondacks.

We took Tuesday off and went into a nearby town to do some errands. We also walked around the Provincial Park, which was about to close for the season and was almost empty. But it was a clear, warm day, which gave me the unexpected but exquisite treat of sitting on a deserted beach in a camp chair and staring at the waves until my brain waves resembled a dial tone. We finish our Ontario ride on Wednesday and Thursday, and on Friday we start through New York.