h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Well, I suppose that's not a very original name for a river which, by global standards, is perhaps not that grand after all. I simply happen to live near this river, and so happen to favour it over all other rivers simply because chance has put it within a short walking distance of where I sit at this very moment. Even so, I probably wouldn't care enough to write about it if it wasn't a beautiful river with a multitude of personalities, and if it wasn't the focus of many of my favourite memories of a time when I could run fast and see my feet just by looking down, when pretty girls grew in the woods like elves, and didn't care when their clothes fell off.

Almost anything factual that I could say about the Grand River I have already said with A210565, an Entry bearing the equally uninspired title The Grand River, Ontario, Canada. I have already said, for example, that it flows 290km north to south from Kitchener-Waterloo to Lake Erie, right through the middle of Southern Ontario. Still, I might think of something new. Here goes...

One new bit of information is that the provincial government has decided to pay attention to the Grand River and its contribution to the growth of the region by declaring this bit of Ontario as "Grand River Country" in an attempt to entice Americans (cutting off the corner between Buffalo and Detroit) from the highway, and enticing some of their money out of their grasp before they disappear over the border again. That's a bit cynical, perhaps. It is nice to see big pictures of the river I played in as a boy as I drive home from work.

When I was that boy, it used to be illegal to play in the Grand, because it was considered too polluted to be healthy. It was certainly never as dirty as a lot of other rivers though. I think the main concern was bacteria bred from the sewage of the cities along its route more than any particular industrial nastiness. There was never any danger of the river bursting into flames, for example, as other rivers have famously been known to do.

Perhaps it is still illegal to go for a swim... I don't know. But the Grand River is a lot cleaner looking than it used to be; and there is now a lot more in the way of wildlife to be seen along its banks. Wennaworalad, there weren't beavers waddling about, biting trees, and slapping the water with their flat tails. Now there are. And there are a lot more white tailed deer to be seen too. There seems to be a lot more fish, as well, mainly because there are a lot more fish-eating birds, like great blue herons and even the occasional osprey. This is a bit funny, if you think about it, because the birds aren't responsible for the increase in fish numbers, except the number that have been eaten by birds. Nevertheless, you have to take their word for it, because the fish are hard to see most of the time.

My old friend Stuart's dad used to say that more kids got sick from backyard pools than from any ill-effects caused by swimming in the river. And he was a doctor. I think that the river's reputation back then for being a dirty embarrassment was probably ill-deserved. Just as nowadays its new role as a tourist attraction is a little overstated. People dream up these notions and the river just continues to flow along. Not many of these people, I suspect, spend much time actually watching it flow by.

That's really the thing that I like best about the Grand. There are a dozen places within a few minutes walk, where the river simply shrugs off the attention of politicians and the concern of environmentalists, the police, and over-protective parents; where the river is the same as it ever was; and whatever nonsense transpired over the past two hundred years may just as well not have happened.

JTG