Queenston powerhouse under construction

Niagara Falls (Ontario) Public Library.

My coat is the same one I wore my final winter at Loretto, seven years ago. Twice I have raised the hemline, but there is nothing to be done about the worn cuffs and unfashionably nipped-in waist. For the past several years I have put off wearing it until the snow flies and then packed it away at the first sign of a thaw. As a result, I have spent many a cold morning shivering in a sweater, thinking I really should get down to the business of sewing myself a decent coat.

The coat I am making is narrow at the midcalf hem, broad through the waist, broader still through the hips. My first thought was velvet, but my practical side overruled and I am using a chestnut wool, as soft as cashmere but not nearly so dear. I had not quite made up my mind about the fabric for the collar and cuffs, but then Tom showed up with a typeset invitation, and I knew I would cut them from silk. If I was to wear the coat in the company of Premier Drury and Sir Adam Beck, it needed to be more than just warm.

Tom brought the invitation home from work on a Tuesday. Mr. Coulson had hand-delivered it to him that afternoon and said management thought the workers ought to be represented at the official opening of the Queenston powerhouse. “We’d like to include everyone,” he said to Tom, “but we can’t, and you’re the one we chose.”

I was delighted, but as Tom spread the invitation on the kitchen table, he said, “I’m not so sure.”

We get few invitations, certainly none as grand as the opening. There were to be speeches and pomp at the powerhouse, and then dinner and dancing in the ballroom of the Clifton House. I wanted to go. “I don’t think Mr. Coulson would understand if you declined,” I said. “It’s an honor to be picked.”

“I’d get mixed up about which fork to use.” I had explained it to him once, about starting with the utensil farthest from the plate, and he had shrugged his shoulders but never since made a mistake.

I raised my eyebrows, waiting for the truth.

“I’d feel like a phony, celebrating.”

I shifted my attention from the invitation to the saucer I was wiping dry. “You can accept or decline,” I said, aiming for nonchalance. “I won’t bother you about it either way.”

“You’ve got your heart set on going.”

“I wonder if Kit might be there with her husband.” Foolish or not, I was hopeful. It had been four years since Edward was killed, four years since I had seen the hostility in her gaze as she sat listening to the Niagara Falls Citizens Band. What is more, I came upon her in the street a short while ago and as usual she glanced away, but afterward I was almost certain of a moment’s hesitation before she did. Maybe enough time had passed.

“Let’s go,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind shaking Drury’s hand.” Since he became premier, Drury’s government has set out policies more sweeping than Ontario has ever seen for replanting forests and conserving water, and Tom very much approved. Still, I knew he had changed his mind on account of me.

I smiled. “I’ll finally get going on a new coat.”

“But I like your black one,” he said.

We drive along River Road in the Packard Mr. Coulson sent for us. The walk from Silvertown to the powerhouse is four and a half miles, and Tom regularly makes it on foot. But today the road is muddy and rutted, and the slush along the sides is at least six inches deep. Had we walked, we would have been spotted with dirt long before we arrived.

I made Tom’s overcoat as a Christmas gift the year before, and his suit has hardly been worn since our wedding day. The seams were ample, and I let out the trouser legs, also the waist of the jacket. His figure is as trim as ever, but a boxier sort of tailoring has come into style. I bought him a charcoal gray bowler with a small, speckled feather tucked into the band. He says he looks a fop in it, but he is wrong. Without trying, he is elegant. A quick shave and a comb through his hair. That is all it takes.

I had plenty of dresses to choose from and tried on one after another, remembering Isabel in the frock, heading off to a tea or in solemn procession at her graduation. When I got to my white concert dress, the memory was of me, hauling a trunk at Loretto, a section of skirt hiked up and tucked under the sash around my waist. A too long hemline is easy enough to fix, but women cast off the boning and lace collars and heavy skirts of the dresses ages ago, during the war, once they had learned to hoe potatoes and grind the noses of artillery shells.

There was no time for an entirely new frock, not if it was to have a bit of beadwork, but hidden away in my old trunk was the gown Isabel had meant to wear on her wedding day. Mother had put hours of work into beading the overskirt. I had never forgotten how lovely it was, with swirl upon swirl of seed pearls aligned end to end. It had always seemed such a waste.

So I am decked out in a midcalf-length chemise with an outer layer made from the overskirt of Isabel’s wedding gown. The frock was a cinch to make with the beading already done. The underlayer is pale pink, a silk georgette that feels luxurious against my skin, even more so when I think of the low whistle Tom let out as he saw me coming down the stairs. “I’ll have to make sure some rich fellow doesn’t run off with you,” he said. Because the dress easily stands on its own, I wear no jewelry other than Isabel’s aluminum bracelet, which is always clasped around my wrist.

Two more of my designs will debut tonight at the Clifton House. Mrs. Harriman chose a chic suit of sea green, sequined French serge, which Mrs. Coulson had insisted on inspecting when I made the mistake of mentioning it. She had traced a finger along a lapel and let out a satisfied humph. “Lovely, but I prefer my own,” she said. I decided against showing her my chemise. The beadwork is exceptional, and what is more she is curvaceous and the newer styles are more suited to women with the flat chest and narrow hips of a boy. At long last my figure is in style and my dress is perfect and Tom is handsome in his bowler and we are being driven in a Packard to the party of the year.

Before descending to the powerhouse at the river’s edge, Tom leads me over a series of planks to the rim of the gorge. Nine immense troughs have been at least partially gouged into the cliff face. Only two have been laid with the giant pipes through which the water will fall. Solid walls exist for the southern end of the screen house at the top of the gorge. The northern end is a hodgepodge of girders and scaffolding roughly marking out what has yet to be built. And at the base of the gorge the massive building meant to house the turbines and generators is as ramshackle as its counterpart above. “It hardly seems ready,” I say. I am not disappointed. The newspapers are correct; it will be another five years before all the generators are switched on, another five years of steady income for Tom.

Inside the powerhouse a crowd of men in bowlers and overcoats has gathered around a single enormous drum. There is no rope guarding it, yet the men maintain a gap of several feet between themselves and the gleaming generator, as though it were a shrine of sorts. I survey the crowd and find Leslie Scott. With my tendency to ask about him and to perk up my ears at the mention of his name, Tom has accused me of a schoolgirl crush. He chuckles as he says it, knowing full well I am only trying to glean what I can about Kit. She is not among the men at the powerhouse, which is hardly a surprise given it is four o’clock in the afternoon, not yet closing time for the businesses on Erie Avenue. The other wives, it seems, have mostly opted to stay home and make their entrances at the Clifton House, but I am glad I have come. There is excitement in the air, and Tom is holding my arm, and men nod in our direction, tentatively, as though their greetings might not be returned. Eventually one of the younger fellows comes over and introduces himself. “I’m Gerald Wolfrey,” he says, “and everyone knows you’re Tom Cole.” A colleague of Mr. Wolfrey wanders over and joins our small circle, then another and another. I had not expected it, but even the administrators and engineers charged with overseeing the workers digging the forebay and canal are deferential to my riverman.

It is easy to pick out Sir Adam Beck, with his high starched collar, regal profile, and tired eyes. Surely it has been a grueling few months. True, his dream is finally more than blueprints and excavated dirt, but his wife died several months ago, and the mudslinging is at an all-time high. The cost overruns are staggering, and his pat answers—conditions that could not have been foreseen, results that could not have been anticipated, wartime inflation, and shortages of men—no longer seem to suffice. His daughter is at his side, looking defiant and bored, as though she had accompanied her father against her will. I cannot yet see what she has on underneath, but my coat is not out of place alongside hers. Premier Drury’s suit is finely tailored, yet he looks every bit the farmer that he is, with his hair disheveled and his tie askew. Though he has been feuding with Beck in the newspapers, here they seem on friendly enough terms. I suppose it is only a premier’s job to scold when the books have been so sloppily kept and budgets so easily ignored.

Beck moves to the podium, clears his throat, waits for the crowd to hush. Then he begins:

He goes on to thank the citizens of Ontario for having had the foresight to vote for the hydroelectric generating station five years ago. He says they have rid themselves of coal embargos and blackouts, and will pay less for electricity than anyone else in the world. With their source of abundant, cheap power, they will brighten their homes and places of work, and lighten the burden of farm and household chores, and more cost-efficiently run the factories and thus ensure more jobs and lower prices, placing more goods than ever before within reach of the common man. He thanks the administrators and the laborers, but most particularly he thanks the engineers, whom he says designed the most efficient power plant yet built.

While the others in the room applaud, Tom’s hands remain at his sides. I clap, tentatively, and wonder whether anyone else has noticed Sir Adam Beck’s adeptness at recognizing others while, at the same time, patting himself on the back. And when Premier Drury speaks, he is just as shrewd. Though the room is filled with businessmen, his words focus on the contributions of the laborers, the men who elected his party. He had correctly guessed there would be reporters scribbling. He had expected the flashes of the newspaper cameras in the crowd.

At the close of his speech, he flicks a switch, and a sign behind him reading THE LARGEST HYDRO-ELECTRIC PLANT IN THE WORLD lights up. The crowd applauds on cue, and I strain to pick out a sudden mechanical whir. But the room was loud with conversation when we arrived and is louder now with whoops and applause. I scrutinize the generator, looking for some hint of activity, but nothing has changed. Tom leans toward me and says into my ear, “It’s been on since last Wednesday.”

But the crowd is filing from the room, seemingly satisfied. “You’re sure?”

“The river dropped a half foot.”

The Clifton House ballroom is as I remember, with polished hardwood, Corinthian columns, giant ferns, and tasseled chandeliers, yet it seems grander, too, maybe because I am no longer used to opulence. The first strains of a fox-trot fill the room, confirming the thought I had just begun to think: I do not belong at the Clifton House, not anymore. The only steps I know are from before the war, learned at Loretto, practiced in the cozy little clubroom of the Gamma Kappa fraternity, one hand on Kit’s shoulder, the other on her waist. Fortunately the next song is an older one-step, and Tom’s hand is reassuring on my arm.

As we make our way around the ballroom, the odd flask is pulled from a pocket, tipped against the rim of a half-full glass. It seems a badge of honor, so grandly is the liquor offered, so openly is it poured. The Ontario Temperance Act has surely failed in the eyes of the legislators, unless, as some suggest, the laws are deliberately lax, meant only to shush the debate for a while. Whatever the case, just now I would like nothing more than a splash of rye whiskey in my ginger ale.

The women in the ballroom are glittering in beads and sequins, diamonds and pearls. I point out my handiwork to Tom, and he says it is the best in the room. Only Marion Beck’s dress is in the same league, and she is hiding it behind her crossly folded arms.

More men recognize Tom and lift their flasks in offering. He holds out his tumbler, then points to mine and I am poured a bit of rye. They want to hear about the ice bridge, and he tells the story as I have heard it told before, with modesty, as though anyone in the room would have done exactly as he did. And then they want to hear about Fergus and the workers knocked from Ellet’s bridge and the fellows rescued from the riverbed the day the falls stood still. He is laughing and at ease, and they offer their flasks again. Their wives compliment my dress and ask where I got it. When I tell them I made it myself, several take down my details and tuck the scraps of paper into their tiny drawstring bags. Eventually Mrs. Harriman finds me in the crowd and asks me to call her by her first name and says, “You really are a marvel,” and looks longingly at my frock. Mrs. Harriman, or rather Mabel, looks longingly at Tom as well. Mrs. Coulson only waves from across the room and then later, as she passes by, points to my dress, smirks, and says, “Best of the lot.”

I am standing among a small gathering of women, keeping an eye out for Kit, when a woman called Mrs. Jenkins turns to me and says, “How did you and Tom meet?”

“I was on my way home from Loretto, on the electric trolley. I had a trunk with me and he offered to help.”

“I’m a Loretto girl, too,” she says, patting my arm now that we have been identified as kin of sorts. “Class of 1906.” She waits, ear cocked, for me to say my class.

“I left in 1915.” Then, before I am cornered into confessing that I did not graduate, I say, “I lived at Glenview, and my sister and I spent half the summer reading on the veranda, but really waiting for Tom to pass by on River Road.”

“And it seems he did,” says another woman, Mrs. Henderson, clasping tiny, lily-white hands together in feigned delight.

“He came by with a pike one day, and then he kept it up, coming every day, always with a fish.”

“Just imagine,” Mrs. Henderson says.

The rosy picture I have painted does not include Isabel convalescing on the veranda, half-starved, pregnant, and unwed. I wonder for a moment at my seeming desire to fit in.

I check over my shoulder for Tom, and there he is, looking in my direction, smiling his lopsided smile, raising his glass to me. I lift my own in return. And then I feel the light touch of a hand on my forearm, and I turn to see Kit. She stands silent, breezily elegant with her simple gray silk tunic and hastily pinned up flaxen locks. I cannot help but notice that her fingernails, while no longer chewed to the quick, are clipped as short as a man’s.

“I was hoping you’d be here,” I say.

“Leslie told me your husband was on the guest list.”

We both laugh, nervously, and then we step away from the other women. “When I’m on Erie Avenue, I’m always looking into your shops.”

“I saw you once,” she says.

“I’ve wanted to go in and tell you I was sorry about Edward. I’ve promised myself a hundred times I’d call you the next day, but I never worked up the nerve.”

She hugs her arms around her waist, as though she were cold.

“That time in Queen Victoria Park with the Niagara Falls Citizens Band,” I say. “I’d remember that and it’d seem hopeless, speaking to you.”

“I told myself Edward wouldn’t have enlisted if you hadn’t broken off with him. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t true. I wasn’t in my right head.”

“If I’d been thinking straight I wouldn’t have gone to Tom without explaining myself to Edward first.” Though her gaze is as intense as always, I do not shy away. “It just didn’t register that I had no business burying a choker he’d given me.”

We stand in awkward silence a moment or two, until she finally says, “I still have the note you sent after he was killed. It took me ages to open it, but when I did, I could see you knew how I felt. You’d spelled out my bewilderment; you know firsthand about someone becoming nothing at all. You understand.”

“I don’t understand, not really,” I say.

“But that’s exactly it. You didn’t say he’d gone to a better place or died gloriously. You didn’t give me some pat answer.” Her gaze falls to the floor, and her shoulders creep up, her palms opening toward the ceiling. “It was wrong of me to miss Isabel’s burial. I’ve been to her grave a dozen times, not that it makes up for anything.”

“Did you leave irises?”

“No,” she says, a rare flash of confusion coming to her face.

“Someone left irises.”

She shrugs, and I ask about Edward. “Is he buried somewhere?”

“He’s outside of Mons. Someday I’ll go.” She shakes her head. “But enough of that sort of talk. Just look at your frock. It’s stunning. It really is, but then everyone says you’re the best dressmaker in town.”

I think better than to say that any credit should be shared with Mother, that she beaded the overskirt, for Isabel, for her wedding gown. “That shade of gray is lovely on you.”

She gathers a bit of skirt in her hand. “I’m sure everyone here is deathly tired of it. You could make me a new one?”

“We could catch up properly.”

“Let’s have supper, with my Leslie and your Tom, the boys, too.”

Our dining room is without a table and in our kitchen we sit on benches Tom rigged up, not that the old Kit would mind in the least. She was one of the few at Loretto who had not bothered with trinkets—a pair of bookends, a framed painting—to mark her room as her own. “We barely have a stick of furniture,” I say.

“Throw a picnic blanket on the floor or come to our place first. That’ll put you at ease. Furniture store or not, I’m not much for decorating.”

We linger, though the waiters are ushering everyone to their tables. Eventually Leslie and Tom come, and there are handshakes all around, and Leslie says he knows a hundred wonderful stories about me, and Tom says, “I know at least as many about Kit.” Then the two of us are wedged apart and escorted to our seats.

The guests are assigned to tables of eight for dinner, and I am alarmed to find my place card between Premier Drury’s and Tom’s. “I won’t be able to swallow a bite,” I say to Tom.

“He was a farmer a lot longer than he’s been the premier.”

As it turns out, Premier Drury is keenly interested in the grievances of the town’s workers. And because I live in Silvertown, where the men walk to International Silver each morning, or travel by trolley to T. G. Bright, Norton, and Cyanamid, I often hear over the clothesline just how fed up the labor force is. Whether it is silver, wine, abrasives, fertilizer, or hydroelectricity, the workers want better wages and an eight-hour day. I tell him, too, that there is a hopelessness among the men that was not there a year or two ago, before the high unemployment made it so easy to replace anyone who suggested the workers organize. I do not suppose for a minute I have told him something he has not heard a hundred times before. But he is attentive and kind enough to say he is glad to find himself beside a sympathetic ear.

The Coulsons are at our table as well, Mrs. Coulson ignoring me, Mr. Coulson monopolizing Tom, so I am surprised, on my return from the powder room, to find Premier Drury in my seat, his arm draped over Tom’s shoulder. Then I see the camera pointed at the two of them. A split second after the flash, Tom’s eyes are on the camera and he is pulling out from under Premier Drury’s arm. But it is too late.

The picture, which appears on the front page of the Evening Review and page three of Toronto’s Globe, shows Tom and the premier, mid-laugh, glasses raised. The headline in the Evening Review reads RIVERMAN CELEBRATES THE OPENING OF THE QUEENSTON POWERHOUSE WITH PREMIER DRURY. The Globe headline is innocuous enough: PREMIER DRURY TOASTS QUEENSTON POWERHOUSE. But the body of the article is not: “In his opening remarks Premier Drury praised the contributions of the laborers at great length. Niagara riverman Thomas Cole (of ice bridge tragedy fame) was among the workers enjoying the evening’s festivities.”

Tom thwacks the Evening Review with the back sides of his fingers. “Drury planned that photo. He thinks I’ve got clout with the workingman.”

“It’ll blow over.”

“He’s all for siphoning off half the river, and it looks like I am, too.”

“I don’t know what to say. I know that it matters. I know that it matters a whole lot to you.” As far as he is concerned, it is all there in black and white; Tom Cole is a hypocrite.