Cynthia Bloomenfeld, Smuggler

A Tale of Sail and Tail

By izzy ess of happiness

Cynthia Bloomenfeld was 32.  She was bored and only took up SCUBA diving to occupy her time.  Her enthusiasm increased as she realized she loved the solitude and shadowy, distorted reality of the underwater vista.  Cynthia was recently divorced from Sergei Surawicz, an ambitious, hard-working Russian plastic surgeon.  He was extremely wealthy, here in Napa Valley, California.  Cynthia enjoyed her princess-like existence, but she missed her job as a registered nurse at San Francisco General Hospital.  She had worked there eight years before she quit, becoming a house-wife with a staff of housekeepers, cooks, and gardeners, at home with Sergei.  In fact, Sergei was hardly home.  When they divorced, she hardly knew him and didn’t miss Sergei.  However, she did enjoy the legal, no fault California divorce which made her an independent millionaire.

Cindy amused herself with painting and sculpting but didn’t like her finished products.  She gave up on being an artist and tried several sports, like tennis and golf.  She gave up on those, mainly because she didn’t enjoy the company of the other queens and princesses who belonged to the exclusive, Napa Valley Spa and Sports Centre.  The facilities were grand, and she enjoyed the Spanish architecture and the landscaping.  It was the other women she couldn’t get along with.  They all seemed content to accept the largess of their husbands and paramours, and while away the hours discussing clothes, jewels and gossipy details of other women.  Most of them were slim and trim and spent a lot of time with the young muscular trainers, male and female, receiving soothing massages and many other benefits, according to the gossip she was fed.  Those that were overweight and jiggled, didn’t seem to mind about their appearance and, apparently, neither did their partners.

Cynthia liked SCUBA diving immediately.  There were no conversations!  She had to admit that she liked to be alone with her thoughts and her sensations, feelings and observations.  Sometimes, she composed poetry underwater.  Often, she remembered several lines or couplets and could easily finish the poem later, out of the water.  Also, she noticed that she returned to painting, mainly with water colours and started reproducing the shimmering, distorted vistas of the darkened underwater worlds she saw.  She got the technique of showing the shafts of light from the surface and the waves of sand at the bottoms of the ocean shores she visited.

About six months after she started SCUBA diving, she read about the interesting, unexplored depths of the northern waters, including the Great Lakes and the Hudson and James Bay bodies of water.  She started with a trip to James Bay in the summer for a week and enjoyed it immensely.  She had taken up underwater photography and had purchased a very expensive underwater camera.  She took lessons in underwater stuff and was complimented by her instructors on her ability to capture the feelings and sensations of the world beneath the surface of the water.  Especially, she liked the shafts of light and took some dazzling pictures of the sun’s rays as they struck the water, at noon, just for a few moments, and came far below the surface to light up some things that rarely saw the light, of any kind.

Cindy’s trips became longer and longer.  Finally, she bought a nice, refurbished, old house in Welland at a price she couldn’t believe, based on her exposure to the California Real Estate market.  She was able to buy a house in Welland, on the Welland Canal for under $300,000 which would have cost her at least $3,000,000 on a river shore in Napa Valley, at a time when the Canadian and American dollar were at par.  From Welland and the Welland Canal, she could easily get to any part of the Great Lakes, the Niagara Peninsula, and the streams, lakes, bays, ponds and rivers of the Province of Ontario.  Cynthia had taken her maiden name back and didn’t talk much of her marriage to anyone.

Several of the men in the neighbourhood tried to make time with Cynthia, but she was good at turning them off.  She did, indeed, like her solitude and wasn’t about to get close to anyone, especially a man.  She did buy herself some sex toys and felt the need to play with them and with herself about once a month.  Sometimes, the urges for sexual sensations lasted several days, sometimes a week.  This was rare however; about once a month seemed to meet her needs.  Her needs for an erect penis were easily satisfied by a toy resembling her husband’s erect penis, as she remembered it, large and hard, and uncomfortable.  The toy was just as large, but never uncomfortable.  She figured it out: it was the husband to which the large erectile penis was attached that was uncomfortable, not the penis, itself.  As time went on, Cindy found she liked the artificial penis.  She found one somewhat larger and found that it was more exciting.  In fact, she found herself having some very enjoyable orgasms, unlike when she was married, when she had very few orgasms, with or without foreplay.  She also felt the need for a larger, vibrating, curved rubber penis she found in a sex shop in Niagara Falls, Canada, “the honeymoon capital of the world.”  It was so pleasing and exciting that she started using it more frequently.  Soon, it became a nightly affair.  She found it the most pleasant way to end the day.  Often she fell asleep with her “Rubber Lover” inside of her, still vibrating.  She enjoyed the bizarre dreams of Neptune taking her by force and raping her beneath the surface of the sea.  Often, she dreamed that she could breathe underwater, so that fooling around with Neptune was never a problem.  Often, in her dreams, she was the aggressor and raped Neptune, the beautiful man that lived in the depths of the darkened water.  She loved the feel of his large cold, stony hard, erect penis, which was permanently erect.

Despite, or because of, her new found sexual pleasures, Cynthia Bloomenfeld’s enthusiasm for the cool, deep waters of Ontario, increased, as time went on.  She spent as much time as was feasible underwater, sometimes just relaxing and feeling and observing.  She took some great photographs and published a few in National Geographic.  The Globe and Mail, in Toronto, accepted a full page story with her photographs which attracted a lot of attention.  The Canadian National Geographic Society approached her and offered her a grant to study and photograph the depths of the Great Lakes.  She accepted and produced a great article within six months.  She received more grant money to continue.  She did a spread for each lake.  She was surprised how interesting the Welland Canal and the St. Lawrence Waterway were.  She received a large grant to study the waterways and tie in the historical aspects of the developments of the important canals which could allow ocean-going ships to go back and forth from the North Atlantic Ocean to Lake Superior, part of the border separating the USA and Canada.  Connections in Lake Michigan and Lake Superior, Chicago and Thunder Bay, allowed shipped goods to be easily shipped the rest of the way to the west coasts of the USA and Canada.  Otherwise, the ships would have needed to traverse the Panama Canal and sail up the west coast to ports in California and British Colombia.

Cynthia liked the linking of the waterways to the economy and development of the interior of North America.  She found, also, that the Welland and St. Lawrence sea lanes played crucial roles in the battles between the USA, the French, the British and the native Americans, which established the borders and the large provinces of Quebec and Ontario and of the country of Canada, itself.  Her articles were full of such historical details, geography and landmarks, emphasized with beautiful under the water and over the water photographs.

Cynthia’s commissions for stories and photographs eventually played themselves out.  She had more time to relax and enjoy, without pressure, the beauties of the Southern and Northern Ontario waterways.  Just outside her front yard, the Welland Canal beckoned her.  It was the old Welland Canal, no longer being used for ocean liners and freighters.  Now it was effectively blocked in Welland, itself, inasmuch as the new Canal was built to circumvent the city.  Not even motor boats were allowed in the city.  There were swim meets, rowing and sculling, canoes, casual swimming, SCUBA         diving, instructors and students, from Brock University, in St. Catharines, inflatable rubber rafts for just having fun, fishing and paddling to and from Welland, Chippewa and Wellandport, Ontario, as well as some fooling around by teenagers and adults on hot sultry afternoons.

Cynthia wasn’t even tempted by the beefcake that sometimes abounded during the hot summer days, in the old Welland Canal just a few yards from her home.  She took a few secretly done photographs of some of the scantily clad folks that dipped into the water, right in front of her.  If someone did excite her, she just went into the house and used her reliable and satisfying rubber penis.  She grew to like it as she pushed it deep inside of her and either turned on the vibrator or thrust against it while she thrust it rhythmically into herself.  At night, when she knew she might fall asleep for the night, after using her toy, she liked the pleasant relaxing vibrating mechanism.  Tonight was one of those relaxing nights.  She pictured Neptune coming inside of her as she slid the vibrating rubber erection deeply into herself, raising her knees and spreading her legs.  She let the vibration touch her clitoris, frequently having several small orgasms before she approached the really big climaxes she was now capable of achieving.  She liked to feel the penis fill her vagina completely.  Inside she could feel the tip reaching up beyond her bladder into the depths of her abdomen, behind her belly button.  If she pushed down on her belly button, she could feel the rubber erection against her hand and it increased the feeling of excitement, almost as if she could masturbate like a man.  In fact, she had learned she liked to do just that.  She would lubricate the erect toy penis and encircle it with both her hands.  She would imagine herself a man and hold the toy in front of her pubis and rub it hard with her encircling palms.  Especially if she could rub her clitoris rhythmically while she was thus imitating a man masturbating, she could get some great sexual sensations and long, strong orgasms.

Cynthia was no stranger to Freudian Psychoanalysis.  She had had some depressions when she was studying to become a nurse.  She had seen a psychoanalyst who was associated with her nursing school to get some ordinary counselling.  She was introduced to the idea of penis envy and she realized even then that she had a large amount of penis envy.  She read about it, hungrily, and decided it was OK for her to imitate a man.  She found it fun at bars, before she met her husband, to smoke cigars, stand with one foot on the brass bar and ogle the pretty women with the large breasts.  She knew she was not a lesbian but she flirted with the idea of trying it as the male partner.  Even to this day, she thought about it.  She decided her marriage was not very exciting because of her thoughts about intimacy with a woman, as a man.  But she never played out her fantasies and thought she never would.  Alone in bed at night, it was enough for her to imitate a man masturbating by using her erection toy.  She felt she was a reasonably satisfied, independent woman, with normal urges and ideas about both men and women.

One afternoon, she was SCUBA diving just outside her house, in the old Welland Canal.  She noticed something she hadn’t seen before.  There were compartments in the walls of the canal about 15 feet below what would have been the most shallow level, at one time.  She explored the deep dark outlines of the compartments and saw that she would have needed a key to open the heavy metal doors that were still in place.  She could discern the key-holes and the rusty hinges.  She talked to a locksmith, who turned out to be an amateur SCUBA diver.  He offered to dive with her and see if he could determine what kind of key to look for or make for the doors she had seen.

Cynthia liked Jonathan Charles Smith.  He was good-looking, fit and trim.  His interest in SCUBA diving, piqued her interest, just as it was obvious that she piqued his interest.  She found herself asking if he was single.  He replied that he was divorced several years back and presently had no significant other.  Cindy could not believe her next reaction, which was to huge him hungrily and say something like, “I really relate to your having trouble finding a suitable friend for the lonely evenings.  Would you like to be my friend?”  Jon smiled and said, quietly, “I thought you’d never ask.  Of course I’d like to be your friend.  I’d like to be more, if our friendship is good.  You’re the best thing that’s happened into my shop for a very long time and I’m ready for you, and anything that happens between us.”  Cindy smiled and thought, “He’s more interesting than I would have ever guessed.  I guess it would be OK if I showed him some special parts of my body.  I better slow down.  He’ll think I’m too horny, which I guess I am, after all this time.”  Cynthia left the shop with firm commitments for Jon to come and see her at her house with his SCUBA gear, prepared to go diving where she had seen the compartments.

That evening, Cindy Bloomenfeld felt like a teenager with a crush on the new boy next door.  She experienced the wildest orgasms before she slept, without the use of the rubber penis.  She fingered herself for the first time since she was a teenager.  It was very, very exciting for her.

Actually, Jon did the same.  For the first time since he was a teenager, he took the risk of insanity and hair growth on this hands and masturbated vigourously, several times in the evening and several times during the night, his sleep being disturbed by the exciting images of what he guessed Cynthia would look like naked.

Jonathan appeared at the appointed time of 1:00 pm, the next afternoon.  He was dressed in a flashy green bathing suit and a bright red T-shirt which read, “I’d rather be under the water!”  On the back, it read, “SCUBA DIVERS FLIP OUT MORE!”  Cynthia greeted him at the door wearing a flimsy, see-through robe over a very skimpy bikini.  She felt she just as well have been naked and then felt pleased she dressed exactly that way, more naked than not.  She felt pleased even more when she saw Jon giving her a not so fast looking over.  His eyes had lingered at her pubic area and her ample breasts and nipples, which were clearly discernible, today.  She caught his attention and pointed to her eyes, smiling, “My eyes are up here.  Look at the rest of me at your own risk.  I bite back!”

Both Jon and Cindy enjoyed a hearty laugh.  It would have been obvious to anyone watching that they were falling rapidly in love.  They enjoyed the prepared coffee and coffee cake at the kitchen table and kept looking at each other’s important parts, surreptitiously, but not too surreptitiously.  Sitting side-by-side, Jon put his open hand on her thigh and squeezed a little during a conversation about the compartment she had seen.  She smiled and moved to let his hand linger very near her pubis.  It felt great to her to have someone tickle her fancy and she laughed to herself.  “I wonder which one of my private parts is called, ‘fancy?”  Jon thought, “This is going much better than I imagined.  I don’t think I’ll be masturbating by myself, tonight.”  After the coffee and coffee cake, the happy couple gathered up their very heavy SCUBA gear and walked toward the shore of the old Welland Canal, to a spot, indicated by Cindy, close to the compartments she had seen.

Unabashedly, the couple removed their clothes and started donning their skin-tight rubber SCUBA duds and flippers.  They handled the heavy tanks with ease and slung the backpack of compressed air tanks over their shoulders, while positioning their mouth pieces and rebreathers in front of their mouths.  Simultaneously, they wet their masks and snapped them on over their eyes.  Then they started their air tanks and put their mouth pieces in position between their teeth and their lips, clamping down firmly on the little rubber nipples of the mouth piece to keep it all in position.  Cindy led the way to the stone wall edge of the old canal, turned and fell backasswards into the water.  Jon was beside her and followed suit.  Once under the water, Jon followed the beautiful body of his new friend, Cindy.  She led him to the bottom of the old stone wall of the original canal and pointed.  Sure enough, he could easily see the outlines of two large doors at a depth of about 25 feet.  As Cindy had described to him, they appeared to be very heavy metal doors with a large traditional key-hole under one of the large knobs.  Jon retrieved two large skeleton keys he had brought as possible openers, based on her estimated size.  One of them worked.  Slowly, he turned the key and grunted as he pulled open the heavy doors under a lot of water pressure.  The chamber inside was pitch black.  It was big enough to allow the couple to stand, comfortably, at the entrance, peering inside.  Jon and Cindy both retrieved torches, which they lit, together.  The chamber was huge, perhaps 50 by 50 feet square.  The wall furthest away from the canal was not clearly visible.  The chamber was empty.

At the back wall, Cindy and Jon held high their torches.  They found a door on the ceiling, similar to the one leading to the canal.  They key worked with this door, as well as it had with the first door.  As they pulled it open, the ceiling water lit up.  There was sunlight coming from above.  The couple slowly floated up through the ceiling entry/exit.  The light became brighter.  They broke the surface of the water about 25 feet up and found themselves in a beautiful, marble furnished room, about 25 feet square.  Tables and chairs made of artistically shaped grey and white marble were positioned as if this were a large conference room, suitable for a well-appointed business or professional office.

Another set of locked doors could be opened by Jon’s key.  It lead to another large room with furniture of marble resembling bedroom pieces.  It all looked very comfortable and inviting.  Without saying anything, the couple took off their gear and wet suits and lay on the marble bed, naked.  They entwined and enjoined on a marble surface which felt remarkably smooth and soft to the skin.  Their shared love-making experience was exquisite.  There’d be no self-flagellation, today or tonight.  They both sensed that they’d found a partner who was worthy of his, and her, time.  After an hour of love-making, grunting and sweating, the happy couple arose and started looking around for a pantry or larder.  Both of them supposed that there were closets or pantries or storage areas, somewhere, and that there might still be something edible or drinkable.  Indeed, they found what appeared to be a kitchen with a pot-bellied central stove.  In the locked pantry, there were pots of delicious liquidhoney and bottles of corked very potent port wine, very salty beef jerky and stony hard oatmeal cookies.  Still naked, Cynthia and Jonathan helped themselves to a delicious repast.  Dipping the cookies in the wine and then the honey, made them quite edible, actually quite delicious.  The wine was sipped slowly as they became aware of its potency.  The jerky was excellent.  Fresh water was provided by a natural spring in the middle of the room; it was delivered by a beautiful marble statue of Aquarius, the Water Carrier.

Jon looked at the shapely Cindy and asked, “What now?”  Cindy felt as sexy as she’d ever felt under the influence of the wine, which was making her slightly light-headed.  “Come over here, my young Neptune and lie down on the floor in front of me.”  Jonathan gladly complied.  Cindy fell to her knees at his side and took his manhood into her mouth and tongued it.  Jon started sweating and moaning as his erection became very hard and very large, just like the one of Neptune, for which Cindy had longed, for years.  She looked admiringly at his penis and then stepped over him, a foot beside each hip.  She lowered herself until her knees rested aside his hips, ensuring his penis slid into her moist vagina, up to the hilt.  She could feel Jon’s erection deep inside of her.  She started rocking gently and immediately started climaxing.  She had a dozen or more gradually intensifying orgasms until Jon climaxed with a loud scream, when she had the best she had ever had… ever!  They both screamed together and then started laughing at the noises they were making.  They lay together face to face and smiled and kissed and hugged for a long time.  Jon’s penis stiffened, again, while Cindy’s vagina started moistening, again.  They had a great sexual experience that was slow and delicious.  Cindy achieved orgasms two dozen times, at least, while Jon could hold his erection for more than half an hour before he exploded with pain and pleasure.

Finding and donning their wet suits, the couple felt that there must be another way out not involving going underwater.  Indeed, there was another door which opened into a small cave in a small hill, just south of Welland, on the way to Port Colbourne, in the Mud Lake Conservation Park, beside the old canal, just north of where it branched off from the new canal, which bypassed downtown Welland.  In their hands, they thought they had a treasure. 

First Welland Canal

Main article: First Welland Canal

The Welland Canal Company was incorporated in 1824 by William Hamilton Merritt, in part to provide a regular flow of water for his watermills. The construction began at Allanburg, Ontario, on November 30, at a point now marked as such on the west end of Bridge No. 11 (formerly Highway 20). This canal opened for a trial run on November 30, 1829 (exactly five years, to the day, after the ground-breaking in 1824). After a short ceremony at Lock One, in Port Dalhousie, the schooner Anne & Jane (also called "Annie & Jane" in some texts[citation needed]) made the first transit, upbound to Buffalo, N.Y., with Merritt as a passenger on her deck. The first canal ran from Port Dalhousie, Ontario on Lake Ontario south along Twelve Mile Creek to St. Catharines. From there it took a winding route up the Niagara Escarpment through Merritton, Ontario to Thorold, where it continued south via Allanburg to Port Robinson, Ontario on the Welland River. Ships went east (downstream) on the Welland River to Chippawa, at the south (upper) end of the old portage road, where they made a sharp right turn into the Niagara River, upstream towards Lake Erie. Originally, the section between Allanburg and Port Robinson was planned to be carried in a subterranean tunnel. However, the sandy soil in this part of Ontario made a tunnel infeasible, and a deep open-cut canal was dug instead.

A southern extension from Port Robinson opened in 1833. This extension followed the Welland River south to Welland (known then as the settlement of Aqueduct, for the wooden aqueduct that carried the canal over the Welland River at that point), and then split to run south to Port Colborne on Lake Erie. A feeder canal ran southwest from Welland to another point on Lake Erie, just west of Rock Point Provincial Park. With the opening of the extension, the canal stretched 44 km (27 mi) between the two lakes, with 40 wooden locks. The minimum lock size was 33.5 m by 6.7 m (110 ft by 22 ft), with a minimum canal depth of 2.4 m (8 ft).

Second Welland Canal

In 1839 the government of Upper Canada approved the purchase of shares in the canal company in response to the company's continuing financial problems in the face of the continental financial panic of 1837. The buyout was completed in 1841, and work began to deepen the canal and to reduce the number of locks to 27, each 45.7 m (150 ft) by 8.1 m (26.5 ft). By 1848, a 2.7 m (9 ft) deep path was completed, not only through the Welland Canal but also the rest of the way to the Atlantic Ocean via the St. Lawrence Seaway.

Competition came in 1854 with the opening of the Erie and Ontario Railway, running parallel to the original portage road. In 1859, the Welland Railway opened, parallel to the canal and with the same endpoints. But this railway was affiliated with the canal, and was actually used to help transfer cargoes from the lake ships, which were too large for the small canal locks, to the other end of the canal (The remnants of this railway are today owned by the Trillium RR). Smaller ships called "canallers" also took a part of these loads. Due to this problem, it was soon apparent that the canal would have to be enlarged again.

Third Welland Canal

In 1887, a new shorter alignment was completed between St. Catharines and Port Dalhousie. One of the most interesting features of this third Welland Canal was the Merritton Tunnel on the Grand Trunk Railway line that ran under the canal at Lock 18. Another tunnel, nearby, carried the canal over a sunken section of the St David's Road. The new route had a minimum depth of 4.3 m (14 ft) with 26 stone locks, each 82.3 m (270 ft) long by 13.7 m (45 ft) wide. Even so, the canal was still too small for many boats.

Fourth (current) Welland Canal

Construction on the current canal began in 1913 and was completed in 1932. The route was again changed north of St. Catharines, now running directly north to Port Weller. In this configuration, there are eight locks, seven at the Niagara Escarpment and the eighth, a guard lock, at Port Colborne to adjust with the varying water depth in Lake Erie. The depth was now 7.6 m (25 ft), with locks 233.5 m (766 ft) long by 24.4 m (80 ft) wide. This canal is officially known now as the Welland Ship Canal.

Fifth (proposed but uncompleted) Welland Canal

In the 1950s, with the building of the present St. Lawrence Seaway, a standard depth of 8.2 m (27 ft) was adopted. The 13.4-kilometre (8.3 mi) long Welland By-pass, built between 1967 and 1972, opened for the 1973 shipping season, providing a new and shorter alignment between Port Robinson and Port Colborne and by-passing downtown Welland. All three crossings of the new alignment—one an aqueduct for the Welland River—were built as tunnels. Around the same time, the Thorold Tunnel was built at Thorold and several bridges were removed. These projects were to be tied into a proposed new canal, titled the Fifth Welland Canal, which was planned to by-pass most of the existing canal to the east and to cross the Niagara Escarpment in one large superlock. While land for the project was expropriated and the design finalized, the project never got past the initial construction stages and has since been shelved. The present (4th) canal is scheduled to be replaced by 2030, almost exactly 100 years after it first opened, and 200 years since the first full shipping season, in 1830, of the original canal.[citation needed]

It appeared to be a ship’s log with entries that started on the day the original Welland Canal was opened to connect Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, allowing ocean liners to get to the Midwestern USA and Canada, April 1, 1854.  The last scribbled entry was February 15, 1938.  In hard to read handwriting, the title page read, “Jonathan Charles Merritt, citizen of London, England.”  The entries in the ledger pages were all dated, in sequence, from beginning to end.  All entries appeared to be names, some abbreviated, some in code, from William Jefferson Clinton to Henry Davis, III.  There were loads of Smiths, Jones and Williams.  Jon got a count of over half a million just by estimating the number of entries for most pages and the number of pages in the huge log book.  Each name was followed by a city of origin and a city of destination, plus a numerical piece of data, in eighths, from 1/8 to 16/8, generally, with an occasional 3 or 4.

On her laptop, Cindy searched Google for the History of the Welland Canal and for Merritt/Welland.  She saved all the data and printed all the material.  Jon and Cynthia, naked in bed, spread out the material and opened the log book for reading, in between love-making sessions. Apparently, Merritt, William Hamilton Merritt, was a British enterprising citizen who grabbed large parcels of Crown land between Port Colbourne and St. Catharines, establishing Merrittville, which eventually became the city of Welland.  He foresaw the potential of a canal which allowed big ships to go from the North Atlantic to Lake Superior, competing handily with the USA’s Erie Canal from Buffalo to Manhattan, NY.  William became an extremely wealthy landowner and entrepreneur.  Merritt was smeared all over the area on streets, highways, suburbs, factories and businesses, and still is.  Merritt Island, formed by the Welland River when it was re-routed under the Welland Canal as an aquaduct, is bordered by the Old Canal and the old Welland River, which was the main canoe route for the Chippewa from Hamilton to the Niagara River.  The portage from what is now the town of Chippewa, through the villages that eventually formed the Canadian city of Niagara Falls, to what is now Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, on the shore of the Niagara River at its entry into Lake Ontario.  Historically, these areas formed the battlegrounds which were eventually won by the British over the Americans, were the main reasons that Canada became a sovereign country.  One can get a good idea of the military skirmishes that abounded when when drives on the original portage route, now called the Niagara Parkway, along the western shoreline of the Niagara River from Fort Erie to N-O-T-L.  Fort Erie and Fort Niagara are to a large extent well preserved and feature festivals to re-enact the battles between the colonists and the loyalists, the British, French and Native Canadians versus the American rebels, mainly of British and Teutonic militant, revolutionary immigrants, fast becoming wealthy landowners.  Both sides had components of Europeans and Africans seeking freedom, personal and religious.  Presently, the conflicts around the Welland Canal and the St. Lawrence Seaway are about the possibility of Quebec striving for its independence from the rest of Canada, a very real possibility, depending on how you sniff the winds of political changes.

Cynthia was enthralled by Jonathan and the lively discussions of politics, religion and sex.  Jon was equally thrilled by the prospects of a great relationship with an exciting, beautiful woman.  The mysteries of the log book and the secret compartment were extremely challenging and stimulating.  They liked to re-visit the secret home of Jonathan Charles Merritt.  Googling for geneology information about the Merritts yielded little for Jon Chas.  They couldn’t find a record of his birth or a ships log indicating his passage from Britain to Canada.  The records for the famous Merritt, who left his mark on everything he touched, were easy to find.  The crown land acquisitions and entrepreneurial spirit of the man were outstanding, in retrospect.  That he was the most famous Brit in the Niagara Peninsula easily matched the other famous Brits, Brock, Mackenzie and the rest of the ancient politicians who formed Quebec and Ontario and a grand country of Canada, which has an important place in world economics and politics, today.  Sociologically, Canada rates today as number one for Education and ranks fairly highly in successful economic structure by its banking and trading practices, improving even steadily, today.  The Separatist movement in Quebec may come to fruition.  The French in general are forever politically chauvinistic, it seems.

Cindy and Jon searched each nook and cranny of the underground chambers for clues about the “other Merritt.”  They figured he was about 20 when he started his underground and underwater life.  He must have been driven by the events of his day, including the economic and political changes.  Evidence that there was another occupant of the secret home was missing.  There was no “woman’s” touch.  It seems he was in daily contact with men and women and children moving from America to Canada.  The couple of explorers felt that the Canal was an important part of the “underground railway” route for African folks looking for freedom in Canada.

Many stories of famous American and Canadian folks who harboured escaping victims of slavery were emerging everywhere.  In Illinois, a retired Swedish General of the Northern American Civil War Army, built a grand, one of a kind, Swedish Gothic mansion, distinctly unusual in its area, a Southwestern suburb of Chicago.  The location was strategic, on the edge of the old shoreline of Lake Michigan, a sort of escarpment that was a part of all the escarpments surrounding all the Great Lakes, a remnant of the ice age of 10,000 years ago.  The house featured two towers allowing sighting of escapees for hundreds of yards in advance of their arrival at the Mansion.  The basement was built with blocks of stone, 2 feet thick, allowing no water leakage, at any time.  The three-coach, attached coach house predated the three car attached garage by more than 100 years.  The secret spiral staircase in the kitchen pantry allowed passage through a trap door to the upstairs maid and probable mistress, and allowed visits both up and down.  From the mansion, a secret trip to Lake Michigan, possibly Chicago, itself, some ten miles from the Mansion, would give the escapee access to a water route to Canada by way of the Mackinaw Straits, Manitoulin Island and Sioux Ste. Marie, Ontario.  Some of the escapees might have found safety with kith and kin that already lived in Chicago.

The trap doors and spiral staircases seemed to be a common architectural feature for stations on the escape routes.  It had a distinctly romantic feeling when it was used.  Perhaps there was a mentor somewhere, or sometime, who taught it to the other captains of these secret stations.  But where were the dresses, shoes and other female clothing?  They found some male clothing in the old closets and furniture drawers.  Could this Merritt have been a true loner or was he a homosexual?  Or, was he favoured by the females coming through frequently enough to satisfy is sexual needs?  Finally, after many visits, Cynthia discovered a hidden closet, locked behind a large door with a different key shape, solved by Jonathan.  It contained a wardrobe of 19^th century clothes, obviously for a woman or for women.  They were surprisingly well-preserved.  They fit Cindy, perfectly.  Jon donned some of Merritt’s clothing, which fit well.  They danced and felt romantic.  They made love with the old clothes and without them.  These clothes made Jon and Cindy feel very close to the former occupants of the Welland Canal Station.  They pictured Merritt and his bride as co-captains of the Station, making decisions, together, concerning the fleeing families.

Cynthia, my present wife, told me this story, in confidence, after we were married.  Jon accidentally drowned when his SCUBA equipment failed him.  Unfortunately, he was exploring a secret room behind a locked door, which locked behind him unexpectedly.  Cynthia didn’t know where he was and Jon could not re-open the door without one of his special keys.  When Cynthia missed him and started looking for him, she entered his death chamber much too late to save him.  She brought him to the surface and called the paramedics and coroner who were helpless to save his life.  Cindy managed to report the accident without revealing the existence of their secret Station.

Cynthia Bloomenfeld mourned for over a year.  She kept hidden the log book and the clothing back in the underwater station.  She cried often as she dived to the Station to visit it and the spirit of her deceased lover.  In her home, she built a memorial for Jon and frequently lit candles for the evenings of sadness.  Cindy started feeling better after a year.  She returned to painting and photography and writing about her adventures with Jonathon.  As time went on, her memories of her life with Jon, took on a magical quality which lived in her mind and heart.

Cynthia and I met at one of her art shows, which now attracted many interested devotees of shadowy, underwater photographs and paintings.  I’m a Swiss artist, a devotee of Chagall and Kandinski, Klee and Braque.  Some of my paintings hang in Swiss museums.  I was touring the Niagara Peninsula and the fabulous Niagara Falls, both Horseshoe and American aspects, when I saw a notice of Cindy’s exhibition at the new Scotiabank Convention Centre in NF, ON.  I introduced myself, Izaac Sommerstein.  As went out for coffee at BJ’s Restaurant in Chippawa and the rest is history.  We married about a year later.

Cynthia entrusted me with the story, the location of the Station, the log book, the 19^th century clothing and details of the political atmosphere of the Merritt era in Welland.  We had lived together for over 40 years in Welland, on the shore of the old Welland Canal.  We especially enjoyed each other and the landscape and history of the region.  We painted, side-by-side, in our respective styles, which complimented each other.

Cindy died of the complications of lung cancer last year.  She had indicated that I write her story only after a year after her death.  She died quietly, clutching the log book, looking forward to her re-union with Jon, Jesus and Neptune.  In her last breath, she opened wide her eyes and lifted her arms.  She smiled and whispered, “Jon.”

“Good-bye Cynthia.  Until we meet again, somewhere, I hope this written account meets with your approval.  I remain forever yours sincerely, Itzik, Izaac Sommerstein.”  Amen.

THE END

© izzy sommers, md

Welland, Canada