Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Plunges into Canada Read online

  Kirk Jones

  Date: October 3, 2003

  Method: Clothes on back

  Result: Survived

  At least 20 people a year accidentally fall or commit suicide by jumping into Niagara Falls. Only three people are known to have survived going over the falls with just the clothes on their backs. One of them was Kirk Jones from Canton, Michigan, who somehow survived an unprotected trip over the falls in 2003. Jones climbed over a barrier and entered the river in street clothes, floating down the rapids on his back until he hit the falls, which he described later as like sliding through “a giant tunnel, going straight down surrounded by water.” When Jones hit the water below, which is pretty much like hitting concrete from that height, he incurred no damage besides some sore ribs.

  Declining a free ride from a tour boat, he swam to the shore. After the fact, he told stories of believing he knew a spot where a person could go over without damage, that a drunk friend was to take videos but couldn’t figure out the camera, and that he had been planning the stunt for years. Others speculated that his fall was really a failed suicide attempt. Whatever the case, Jones made some decent money giving talks about his experience. Good thing, too, because he had to pay off a $4,500 fine for “mischief” and performing an illegal stunt.

  What Ever Happened to Uncle Tom?

  For the title character of her groundbreaking book Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe needed a real-life model That’s when she “borrowed” from the autobiography of Josiah Henson, an escaped slave living in Canada.

  Harriet Beecher Stowe loosely based her book Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the story of Josiah Henson.

  Good Artist’s Copy

  “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!” Supposedly, that was what Abraham Lincoln said when he met Harriet Beecher Stowe. He was talking about her antislavery novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which fired up antislavery sentiment in Canada, Great Britain, and the northern United States, while angering slaveholders in America’s South.

  Stowe needed a good slavery story to make people support abolition, but she was an affluent white woman from Connecticut. She’d never owned slaves or lived under slavery, never traveled undercover out of the South or through the North, where slave catchers had the right to capture suspected runaways. For that, she borrowed from a book with one of the long, unwieldy titles that were popular at the time: The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, As Narrated by Himself.

  Henson’s Story

  Born in Maryland in 1789, Josiah Henson worked as a field slave for most of his first 41 years and managed to save $350 to buy his family’s freedom, only to be told—after he’d paid the money—the price had risen to $1,000. He didn’t have the rest. Under the threat of being separated from his family and being “sold down the river” to harsher conditions in the Deep South, he gathered up his wife and four children and, in the dark of night, headed for Canada.

  Josiah Henson spent much of his life at this Marylandhome, as a field slave to a man named Isaac Riley.

  The family settled in Ontario, and Henson became a furniture maker. He was getting paid for his labors, and his family could afford some small comforts. He learned to read—with his 12-year-old son as teacher. He also met some of his old friends and acquaintances who asked him to begin preaching on Sundays. It was a skill he’d acquired while living in the American South.

  The Dawn Settlement

  As the center of a growing community of several hundred black people, Henson soon noticed that others had done the same thing he had: fled to Canada, settled wherever they landed, and made a living working for others. But many were inexperienced and didn’t make good business decisions or negotiate fair deals, so Henson preached to them about the importance of wages and securing the profits of their own labor.

  He also began thinking about establishing a collective farm for former slaves where they could learn skills and thrive in their new country. To help make this a reality, he received donations from supporters in the United States and England, with which he bought 200 acres in Dawn Township near Dresden, Ontario, and named his venture the Dawn Settlement. It eventually prospered, becoming a lumber exporter to the United States and Great Britain, and home to 500 people. The settlement included a farm, lumber mill, brickyard, and school. Around this time Henson wrote The Life of Josiah Henson (published 1849).

  Stowe-Away

  The timing of Henson’s autobiography was perfect for Stowe, who eventually acknowledged she loosely based her characters’ experiences on the life of Henson. She wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin first as a 40-week series in an abolitionist newspaper and then, in 1852, sold it as a novel. Within four years, 2 million copies had sold, and it ultimately became the second-best-selling book of the 19th century (after the Bible). Henson embraced his part in Stowe’s work. In fact, in 1858, he came out with an expanded edition of his own book that included an introduction by Stowe and which had a new title: Truth Stranger than Fiction: Father Henson’s Story of His Own Life. Later, in 1876 (seven years before his death, aged 93) Henson made the Stowe connection even clearer with another edition: Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life:An Autobiography of the Rev. Josiah Henson.

  Posters advertise an 1886 stage play based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

  Dawn’s Slow Settlement

  Henson’s Dawn Settlement didn’t have that kind of lasting success, though. It had been founded as a demonstration project to prove former slaves could make the transition to self-sufficiency and freedom. But new arrivals came faster than the community’s modest profits could support. Henson made a number of lecture tours through the United States and England in the 1840s and 1850s to raise money to keep Dawn going. Eventually, though, even hard work wasn’t enough to keep it afloat. The school closed in 1868, and within a few years, nearly all the settlers had moved on…although Henson and his wife stayed until their deaths. Henson became one of the most famous escaped slaves in North America, and to honor his life and accomplishments, in 1983, the government in Ottawa made him the first black man to appear on a Canadian postage stamp.

  Argh, Mateys!

  Pirates and privateers: both require the same skills, but one works for himself and the other enjoys the sanction of a government. Here are some legendary Canadian swashbucklers.

  A 1905 painting by Howard Pyle shows pirates attacking a Spanish galleon.

  Robert Chevalier de Beauchêne

  Even before Robert Chevalier de Beauchêne became a privateer, he lived a storied life. Whether the stories were true is another matter. He had a reputation of exaggerating. In 1693, at the age of seven, Chevalier ran away from his home near Montreal (or maybe was kidnapped…no one knows for sure) and was adopted by an Iroquois tribe. His parents retrieved him a year or two later, but Chevalier had already gotten a taste of adventure. He soon ran away again, this time attaching himself to a band of Algonquins who had sided with French colonists fighting British invaders. While helping to defend the settlement of Louisbourg, Nova Scotia, Chevalier met up with a group of Acadian privateers. He was so dazzled by their tales of life on the high seas that he joined their crew. After an apprenticeship spent pillaging English colonies along the North American coast, he got a ship and crew and struck out on his own. Canada remained his home port, but Chevalier died in France in 1731 while dueling for a woman’s affections.

  Peter Easton

  Peter Easton

  Not all pirates start out bad. Peter Easton was a naval officer from a distinguished military family. In 1602 Queen Elizabeth gave him three warships and sent him to Newfoundland to protect its fishing fleet from pirates and the encroachments of the Spanish. Easton had a great year in piloting his ship, the Happy Adventure, through a series of lucrative encounters—but the next year something terrible happened: peace broke out. When James I succeeded Elizabeth, he promptly negotiated a treaty with Spain and canceled all privateer commissions. Easton, suddenly out of a job, decided to ignore hi
s new orders. Over the next few years, he bought more ships and “recruited” large crews. (Actually, he press-ganged Newfoundland fishermen to work on his ships.) He continued to attack Spanish vessels, but also decided to diversify, demanding protection money from English ships as well. Eventually, he became one of the most successful pirates of the 17th century. And sometimes crime does pay. Around 1610, after several years of pirating, Easton retired to Savoy in France with about £2 million worth of gold. There, he married a noblewoman, attained the title of Marquis of Savoy, and lived for at least another 10 years before apparently dying peacefully.

  John Nutt

  English-born John Nutt became a pirate without going through the legal pretense of first being a privateer. Nutt visited Newfoundland as a gunner on a ship in 1620. He loved the town of Torbay and resettled his family there before embarking on a life of piracy in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence and the Irish Sea. Nutt was an equal-opportunist who offered protection to English and French settlements alike. He also recruited sailors by offering regular wages and commissions, a pay and benefit package that lured many men away from the Royal Navy.

  We don’t really know what happened to Nutt; he almost died by hanging in 1623, but George Calvert, an English politician who had been one of Nutt’s protection clients, intervened and had him released. Nutt was still pirating as of 1632, but after that, he disappeared.

  Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville

  A replica of the Pélican, d’Iberville’s ship

  Pierre Le Moyne d’Iberville

  Born in Montreal, but with family ties to France, d’Iberville was a sailor and privateer. He became renowned for siding with the French to drive English settlers out of Newfoundland. Despite a 1687 “live-and-let-fish” treaty, which allowed the English and French to coexist and fish in the Grand Banks, d’Iberville led raiding parties that terrorized towns along the coast. Over four months in the winter of 1696–97, d’Iberville and his men destroyed 36 settlements. For his splendid work, the French government sent him to the area that’s now Louisiana so he could set up a garrison to ward off English ships. In 1706 he captured the English-held Caribbean island of Nevis and made plans to attack the Carolina colony on the North American mainland. He traveled to Havana, Cuba, to recruit Spanish aid for that venture. There, d’Iberville caught yellow fever and died. Colonists up and down the North American coast breathed a sigh of relief.

  A pirate ship travels the high seas.

  Joseph Baker

  Some pirates weren’t worthy of waving the Jolly Roger. Take Canadian-born Joseph Baker. In 1800 he signed on to the merchant schooner Eliza. With two other crewmen he’d recruited for his plot, Baker attacked the first mate during a night watch and tossed him overboard. Then the men went after the captain, William Wheland, wounding him in a brief skirmish and taking him hostage. But during a discussion of where to sell the ship’s cargo, the mutineers realized that none of them actually knew how to navigate the ship. Sensing an opportunity, Wheland offered to sail them anywhere they wanted…if they spared his life. Baker agreed, but he wasn’t an honorable man. When Wheland learned that Baker intended to murder him as soon as they sighted land, he locked the other conspirators in the hold, caught Baker by surprise, and chased him up the mainmast.

  Wheland kept Baker up there, lashed to the mast, until they landed on St. Kitts in the West Indies, and then turned him over to the authorities. After a four-day trial in April 1800, Baker and his pals were hanged.

  Pirates make a sailor walk the plank in this 1887 illustration.

  A 1921 illustration shows captain William Kidd burying his treasure.

  The Saladin

  In the mid-1800s, Peruvian guano (seabird excrement) was a valuable commodity for manufacturing fertilizer and gunpowder. In 1844 the Saladin, a British ship, sailed from Peru carrying a huge load of guano and a small fortune in silver. Onboard were George Fielding and his 12-year-old son. The elder Fielding was a guano smuggler on the run from Peruvian authorities. He convinced a half-dozen crewmen to take control of the ship and kill the captain and five others. Later, though, the mutineers became suspicious of Fielding and threw him and his son overboard. Near Country Harbour in Nova Scotia, they ran the ship aground and made off with the cargo. Canadian authorities eventually caught the mutineers: Four were found guilty and hanged. Two others were acquitted.

  Buried Treasure

  Did pirate captain William Kidd bury an undiscovered treasure trove somewhere in Canada? Maybe. Canada has two sites where X might mark the spot.

  •Oak Island, Nova Scotia: The presence of a mysterious pit has led to speculation that excavation might reveal Kidd’s hidden treasure. (Other theories say the pit contains Blackbeard’s treasure, Marie-Antoinette’s jewels, or the Holy Grail.) On the other hand, some spoilsports note that sinkholes located elsewhere on the island come from underground limestone giving way, and that this is just another one of those.

  •Grand Manan Island, Bay of Fundy, New Brunswick: Local legend claims Kidd buried his treasure in “Money Cove” on the west side of the island. The main problem with this theory is it hinges on a widow’s dream that “a headless Negro” told her Kidd had killed him to force his truncated spirit to guard the treasure for eternity. No treasure has been found yet, either.

  Canadian on the Rock

  The prisoner who spent the most time in the notorious prison on San Francisco’s Alcatraz Island was Canadian. Alvin “Old Creepy” Karpis was born (without the nickname and with Karpowicz as his last name) in Montreal in 1908. By his 10th birthday, he’d shortened his last name and fallen in with a bad crowd that corrupted his morals.

  First arrested for burglary in 1926, Old Creepy got hired into an entry-level position in the murderous Barker Gang and quickly worked his way up the ladder to an upper management position, increasing gang profits by innovating a successful strategy of kidnapping industrialists for ransom.

  Victims included William Hamm Jr. of the Hamm’s Brewing Company (netting $100,000, the equivalent of $1.5 million in modern money) and Edward Bremer, president of a Minnesota bank ($200,000 then/$3 million today).

  As proof of his commitment to the organization, Karpis had his fingerprints surgically removed so he couldn’t be traced easily.

  U.S. bureaucrats caught him anyway and arrested him in 1936, sending him briefly to Leavenworth prison in Kansas, and finally to Alcatraz. When Alcatraz closed in 1962, Karpis was transferred to McNeil Island Penitentiary in Washington where he taught a young Charles Manson (whom Karpis called “lazy and shiftless”) how to play guitar. In 1969 he was deported to Canada. He died in 1979.

  Canadian Alvin “Old Creepy” Karpis spent 25 years imprisoned on Alcatraz Island.

  We Love Canada, Part III

  Here is why we love British Columbia, Alberta, and Saskatchewan.

  Della Falls is the tallest waterfall in Canada.

  British Columbia

  •Canada’s tallest waterfalls are in British Columbia, but the province is so used to them that some of the largest don’t even have names. Of those that have been named and measured, Canada’s tallest is Della Falls on Vancouver Island (440 meters/1,443 feet). But seeing it isn’t easy: you have to ferry to Vancouver Island, drive to Great Central Lake, boat 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) across to a base camp at Strathcona Provincial Park, and then hike up a 15.5-kilometer (9.6-mile) trail to the base of the falls.

  •Totem poles aren’t gods, they aren’t magical, and they aren’t even particularly ancient. They have been around since about the 1700s, but their heyday was in the 19th century, when they were used as status symbols to show a family’s wealth and prominence. At that time, First Peoples tribes along the British Columbia coast were getting wealthy from the fur trade with Russia, and totems changed from modest indoor carvings to whole-tree extravaganzas of colorful image upon image. The bigger a family’s totem, the more money and status it had.

  •Although beaten out by Quebec as the province with the highest percentage
of recreational cannabis smokers, B.C. can claim the nation’s high in pot growing, responsible for 40 percent of the total Canadian crop. It also has its own pot party, the British Columbia Marijuana Party, which lobbies for the drug’s legalization.

  •There are seven national parks in British Columbia, including Mount Revelstoke, the world’s only inland temperate rainforest.

  Alberta

  •This province has some great city names. Among the largest are Red Deer and Medicine Hat. Things get even weirder as you get into Alberta’s small towns: Hairy Hill, Wood Buffalo, Driftpile, etc.