Resurrection of Hope in Thundering Waters

When we sang “O Sacred Woods Now Wounded” at St. Barnabas Anglican Church, St. Catharines, the tune, although bravely expressing hope, was virtually a dirge of despair. The hymn following firm Anglican beliefs in the principles of the incarnation, fuses the pain of Jesus’ suffering on the Cross, with the wounds inflicted upon the Earth from human sin.

With some trepidation, I journeyed to the Thundering Waters forest on my 70th birthday, on November 25, 2024. I had the good sense before embarking on this journey for the collection of seeds for the threatened wildflower, Liatris Spicatica (Dense Blazing Star), to first attend a Morning Prayer service at St. George’s Anglican Church, St. Catharines. The celebrant was the Reverend Michael Degan, then assistant curate of St. George’s, now rector of St. James and St. Brendan in Port Colborne.

Degan spoke with me about the remarkable historical setting of St. George’s church, which in the 1890s was in what was a Latin Quarter of scholars for the Niagara Region. Across from St. George’s in what is now an apartment building were tenements which housed students of the St. Catharines Collegiate Institute, then located in what is now the Folk Arts Center.

Among those who journeyed a great distance from Fort Erie to the St. Catharines Collegiate was the future rescuer of Ontario from desertification, Edmund Zavitz. Degan told me he admired how Zavitz attended the Collegiate here as a mature student, since he has recurrent nightmares of having to attend high school again as an adult.

I sought to harvest the seeds of the Dense Blazing Star to aid in the efforts of my friend and tenant. Woodard seeks to re-establish a meadow based on this wildflower at the Malcolmson-Eco Park. He is hoping to restore a Dense Blazing Star community established from seeds collected during an occupation of the site, which survived for several years.

The words of Psalm 24:1-6, read at Morning Prayer, were especially appropriate for my journey. It reads,

“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world, and all who live in it; for he founded it on the seas and established it on the waters. Who may ascend the mountain of the Lord? Who may stand in this holy place? The one who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not trust in an idol or swear by a false god. They will receive blessing from the Lord and vindication from God their Saviour. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek your face, God of Jacob.”

My journey’s timing was further blessed in that it took part on the feast day of St. Catharines of Alexandria, the saint to whom the Roman Catholic Cathedral next to St. George’s Church is dedicated to. The kinship I feel with this saint is that she was a scholar who effectively debated opponents of Christianity assembled by the cruel Roman Emperor Maximian, whose son was defeated by Constantine in the epic battle of the Milvian Bridge, which ended the persecution of our faith in the Roman Empire.

The prayers that blessed me were helpful when I arrived at Dorchester Avenue in Niagara Falls, south of the Canadian Pacific rail line. I initially received some hostility from a foreman who was directing complex construction activity here. I explained to him that the purpose of my visit was not sabotage but to collect seeds of the threatened Dense Blazing Star. He had not known that the threatened species was located on the property.

The foreman subsequently googled Dense Blazing Star and read from its description in Wikipedia. He read to me using a Blackberry-type device, how “Liatris spicata is excellent for attracting pollinators and beneficial insects. These include butterflies such as the monarch, tiger swallowtail, clouded sulphur, gray hairstreak, Aphrodite fritillary, painted lady, red admiral and wood nymphs. The flowers attract bumblebees, digger bees, long-horned bees, leaf-cutting bees, skippers and birds, including hummingbirds.”

After I succeeded in gathering the seeds, the foreman was impressed that I had discovered them in a desolate landscape of construction. It was dominated by giant mud piles and a temporary parking lot, complete with a Johnny on the Spot. When accompanied by a conservationist, Derek Jones, a few months later, I visited the site again, and it was much cleaned up, and the wildflower grove appeared to be safe from being buried in excavation for adjacent infrastructure.

The successful prayer-aided pilgrimage to Thundering Waters bore fruit as a result of the need for the company which owns the southern half of the area, Centennial Homes, where the visitation took place, to have zoning amendments for their sought-after reallocation of parkland. This followed a discussion about the area at St. Barnabas Church by the priest-in-charge at the time, the Reverend Michael Mondloch, at an event called the Niagara Estuary. The following day, in the Niagara Falls City council, a representative from Centennial Homes announced that 75 acres, the very old growth forest area discussed at the Niagara Estuary, would be donated as parkland by the company to the City of Niagara Falls. This shows the power of what is termed the Christian doctrine of “Faithful Persistence” to protect the Earth from the most powerful of adversaries.

My Mohawk friend, Danny Beaton of the Turtle Clan, journeyed to the Niagara Falls City Council to speak out in defence of the Thundering Waters forest. Through his and the faithful persistence of many others, a relic of the old growth forests present when the Treaty of Niagara was signed in 1764 still grows to greater strength.