Tiny Imperfect Strip of a Beach

I had to walk down 70 stairs to get to the beach. Of course, that meant walking 70 steps back up. I know there are 70, as I helped my father build them after he had a house built at the corner of Main Road and Birch Hill Road in Hudson in 1974. We made the steps of former railway ties, stones and old beams. One misstep and an extended tumble would be in the offing, especially in the winter. The steep hill was well-treed, so little direct sunlight reached the ground during the warm months. That protective canopy and moist earth from a small underground stream meant it was covered in ferns every spring. That attracted a few fiddlehead pickers braving the last of the snow and the muddy slopes during the late spring, cutting the fern tops for salads and stir-fries.

Once you reached the bottom, there was a seldom-used train track to cross. When I lived there, the single track was graced by three commuter trains running each way between Rigaud to the west and to the east, Windsor Station in downtown Montreal every weekday. The Transcontinental train also went through at about 11 am heading west to Vancouver, and at about 6 pm, heading east to Montreal. It was the iconic train with the glass-domed observation deck. I never got to ride it, but I saw it twice a day, seven days a week, as it clattered by. Speeds were never high on this stretch of the track. The track hugged the shore of Lake of Town Mountains for several hundred metres. If the commuter train was heading to Rigaud, it would have just left the Hudson Heights platform and would be gaining speed. For the Transcontinental, the fact that it was in a residential area with any number of level crossings and the curved track by the lake meant it had yet to reach top speed.

Even though I knew the train schedules off by heart, I always looked both ways because once a self-propelled track inspection cart zipped around the corner without warning, I had to dash while the operator tried to slow it down.

Once across the tracks, there is a scramble down a short but steep path to the beach. It’s a narrow beach primarily covered in trees, seagrass and small bushes. Oh, and some poison ivy. More about that later on.

From the beach, I could look southward to the yacht club and in the distance, I could make out the church steeple in Oka on the other side of the lake. Directly across is a small island, Dowker's, but everyone in Hudson called Pig Island, as apparently some pigs were marooned there many decades ago. Behind the island sits the former Trappist (formally known as the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance) monastery where Oka cheese originates. It, in turn, sits in front of what used to be one of the two mountains for which the Lake of Two Mountains is named. There used to be two mountains until a mining company removed the minerals they were looking for and, in the process, chopped off most of one of the mountains. Looking to my left is Pointe Aux Anglaises (English Point), where two yacht clubs provide access for sailors, and the residents are all French. It probably was an English-speaking cottage enclave at one point, hence the name.

The beach is flooded every spring as the Lake of Two Mountains climbs in height and breadth from the snow melt carried south by the Ottawa River from northern Quebec and Ontario. That always clears out the underbrush, leaving fine silky sand and driftwood - perfect for beach fires.

The actual beach varied in width depending on the time of year. By August, there will be a 10-15 foot strip of sand, which can grow to 20 feet wide or more in the fall. But in the late spring, it is a narrow strip barely wide enough for a folding chair tucked up in the seagrass.

It wasn’t a beach for swimming. The bottom was a thick, soft sand/mud goop that you would sink down into. That morass was filled with bits of branches, water plants and whatever debris was washed down the lake and sank before it reached the shoreline. You had to wade out a long way, maybe 100 feet, in order to actually swim. That’s because there is a small point upstream that the current bounced off, leaving silt to collect.

It was a beach for lounging and launching shallow draft craft like my mother’s canoe and Laser sailboat. The sailboat was tricky because of the shallow water. You couldn’t put the centreboard down; the rudder could only go partway in. This made it difficult to steer, and if the wind was strong, you tended to sail sideways instead of forward. Best of all, the beach was an excellent place to bring a book, a towel, and a nap while catching a few rays of sunshine before the trees and crest blocked it in the early afternoon.

In the winter, the beach was a place to take your cross-country skis down for skiing across the frozen lake. The Lake of Two Mountains is locally noted for its winter activity. Multiple ice-fishing communities pop up every winter. At the southern end of Hudson, there is a toll road across the ice to Oka and at one time, there were car ice races on Sunday afternoons. Many people clear patches of ice for skating as well. But for me, it was strapping on the skis and taking a trip down to the Willow Inn for a beer and a burger. Several factors are involved in deciding whether to make the trip.

First of all, how cold is it? Winter temperatures can dip to minus 20 Celsius. Secondly, as it is a lake, there is no shelter if the wind picks up. If the wind is at your back, you can almost sail along if the wind catches your jacket from behind. Going the other way, into the wind? Not so much fun. Finally, the condition of the ice is critical. Ice on the Lake of Two Mountains usually is pretty bumpy. The current pushes the ice down from the Ottawa River, and the wind can quickly turn a smooth surface into a pitted mess. The trek downriver to the Willow Inn (right beside the winter ice road to Oka) can take some time and involves skiing around a couple of different points. Count on an hour minimum. Then once you arrive, thaw out and drink your beer or possibly an Irish Coffee; half the time, you end up hitching a ride home because it’s dark by the time you finish your beer (well, it’s now two or three beers), and the wind has picked up. You really don’t want to get frozen solid again, let alone become the cover story in the Hudson Gazette because the volunteer fire department had to come and rescue you.

And one summer night so many years ago, the tiny imperfect strip of a beach was a great place to have my 21st birthday party.

I was back for the summer working at one of the town’s two golf courses behind the bar. In the fall, I was heading back to Toronto’s Ryerson Polytechnic Institute (now Toronto Metropolitan University) to continue my journalism degree.

Usually, I’m not big on birthdays, but I seem to have had some good ones in Hudson. The previous summer, my birthday was like a car rally. Friends sent me from one bar to another, where a drink and further instructions awaited me. In a town with several bars, this took a while to complete. I had given up finding them when they surprised me with a party in a friend’s basement rec room, drinking purple Jesus (vodka and grape juice for the unsophisticated among the readers). Don’t ask for details; I would have to make them up.

So this year, I wanted to take control and do something different. So, a beach party. My parents were away on some cycling or boating trip. Not that they would say no, as they were known to enjoy a party themselves. But it was just easier. Friends were told, and they told some of their friends who told others. I remember buying some beer from the Depanneur (a convenience store to the rest of the country) down the street from the house to get the party started when the police stopped me. Back then, the Hudson Police Department was just a handful of officers who dealt mainly with speeding, drunks and break-ins. I was friendly with this officer, who was relatively new to the force and dating a friend to boot. He was a bit freaked out about the party. He had heard through the grapevine that a massive party was happening and wasn’t sure about how to handle it. He ended up stationing his cruiser on the side street across from my house to ensure that no rowdies disturbed the neighbours. He wasn’t about to clamber down 70 steps and across the tracks by himself into a party zone with no backup.

The day of the party arrived, and I had gathered up firewood and actually strung a series of extension cords down the hill so that we could have music. By the time the electricity hit the music machine, there was barely enough to get a squeak or two out of the system.

People started to trickle down the hill, letting me know that Hudson’s police cruiser was stationed up top, checking out who was descending.

A couple of people paddled up from town in a canoe. Then we watched as a sailboat dropped anchor offshore. This party was starting to shape up, and barely a beer had been consumed!

The beach was about 15 feet wide that year and stretched on for about 70-80 feet. There was room for the crowd that had begun to gather. I could hear beer bottles open, and someone started the beach fire. The sailboat crew rowed into shore in their inflatable dinghy, with friends shouting out greetings and doubting their ability to anchor the boat properly. The common theme was the boat would drift downstream with the current and end up impaled on a rock or cradled against some unsuspecting dock.

The happy and slightly inebriated chatter completely drowned out the music, but it didn’t matter. No one cared - it was a beautiful warm July evening, and we were simply glad to be on a sandy beach enjoying each other’s company. Aside from a few closer friends, there weren’t many birthday greetings. But that didn’t matter. I was drinking a beer, feet in the warm sand and enjoying the friendly vibes of the now-crowded party.

Like all good parties, I never remember many of the details. I sort of floated between groups of friends and tried to figure out how everyone else was connected to me. I didn’t drink much beer. I didn’t need to get hammered, and I needed to enjoy the feeling of being surrounded by friends. There were no long and involved conversations. We joked about sailing mishaps and the latest gossip from our town of 2,500. People seemed to stay in their familiar groupings of friends. A few tried swimming or paddling up and down the beach in one of the canoes or inflatable dinghies. Judging by the clothing and condoms, I found the following day, farther along the beach, a few of the conversations became very intimate.

After the party wound down, I crawled into the small two-person tent I had brought down to house the music machine in order to get some sleep. Somehow, it wasn’t trampled by drunken partiers stumbling in the now churned-up sand. When I woke at roughly 5:15 am because of the rising sun, it was a scene quite unlike I had ever seen before. My parents had many large parties, but they always cleaned up before they went to bed. Assessing the chaos, I appreciated their approach but certainly didn’t pick up on that attribute until later in life. The fire was smouldering. The sailboat crew had somehow managed to row back to their boat, raise the anchor, and, I’m assuming, safely made it to their home port. Chip packages and empty bottles were strewn about. The fine sand I had so carefully raked out the day before was chewed up, and any vegetation was trampled. My head hurt from too many beers, my eyes ached from the bright sun that exposed last night’s debauchery, and my body ached from dancing in the sand and the numerous trips up the 70 steps to ensure no one did any damage coming or going.

There was no water or soft drinks to deal with my beer-induced dehydration, so I resorted to splashing lake water on my face to revive me. A glance around the tent revealed an unopened packet of potato chips. Et, Voila, breakfast. Now restored, except for the grumblings from my stomach over the continued abuse, I decided to do a more extensive survey of the damage. I started to walk up the path towards the railway tracks and saw a pair of feet poking out from some shrubbery. Those feet were attached to a pair of legs, and as I pushed a bush aside, I could see that they were clearly connected to the torso of a male. He was only wearing a pair of shorts. Still asleep and probably sleeping off the beer, I was able to look closely at his face and realize I had no idea who it was. I was going to step in closer and make sure he was ok, and then I realized he chose to sleep it off in a patch of poison ivy. Now, I had warned as many people as I could about the poison ivy, but I didn’t speak to everyone. Plus, I’m not sure this fellow, if I had told him, would have remembered during a beer-fueled party.

I bent over, grabbed his ankle and shook it, whomever it belonged to. After a few more shakes, the reveller began to stir from his poison ivy bed. I repeated the phrase “Good Morning, you are sleeping in poison ivy” about three times before he realized he was in trouble. When he realized what I was saying, he jumped up with a wild look in his eyes, realizing all at once he had no idea what he was doing on a beach in only a pair of shorts, soon to be covered in a very itchy rash.

After watching him slowly make his way up the bank and across the tracks while checking his body out for a rash and no doubt fighting off an urge to scratch, I turned my attention back to the mess. I had packed garbage bags and started picking up the garbage when I saw the next-door neighbour kid - about ten years old - making his way down the stairs with a bag in hand, picking up empty beer bottles to cash in. Here was the solution to my morning work! I called him over and told him he could have the beer bottles if he cleaned up the garbage too. He rolled his eyes and started to complain when I told him, “My party - my bottles.”

With that, I handed him the garbage bag, packed up the tent and music, wound up the multiple extension cords and headed up the 70 stairs for a long shower and a nap leaving our narrow strip of beach to recover until the next time it was invaded.