Preview - Through A Country Window by Eric E. Wright

A television crew waits to interview a slim blonde in a black wet suit as she wades ashore from a raft made of giant inner tubes. Her face and hands are red from the cold. Extending a mike toward her, a crewman in a warm ski jacket asks, "How many years have you been entering the Ganny race?"

"Five years," she replies as she stretches to rescue a paddle floating by.

"Why do you do it," he queries.

"I'm crazy," she answers with a shiver and cockeyed grin. She turns away to join her crew in hoisting their weird craft unto their shoulders for the run to the finish line in the centre of town.

Three hundred and fifty odd participants have joined her in plunking down good money to enter the annual, "Float Your Fanny Down the Ganny" race. This strange local ritual harks back to 1980, the year the placid Ganaraska River swelled over its banks to flood downtown Port Hope. As the town returned to normal, they decided to do something to commemorate their suffering. But instead of commissioning a dirge they created a celebration.

What started out as a local catharsis for the winter blahs, now draws fully a third of its contestants from outside the area--some from the United States. This is no warm water, summertime romp. It's the first week in April and the Ganaraska River is swollen with frigid water from snow and ice melting in the Northumberland Hills. Overhead a stiff North wind blows leaden clouds over a grey landscape. Temperatures hover between five and ten degrees Celsius.

The opportunity to see mad mariners brave bone-chilling water in a slapstick attempt to bid winter good bye brings spectators from far and near. At every road crossing along the Ganny north of Port Hope spectators line the bridges. A huge crowd gathers at Corbett's dam, where participants must portage. In the centre of town thousands more throng the riverbank. Many bring lawn chairs, picnic coolers and thermoses of coffee. The crowd spans the generations. Old timers joke with teens. Parents push baby strollers. Family groups recline on blankets. Dogs of every description race through the crowd.

Laughing, gesturing, eating, drinking--people celebrating the end of winter bury the gloomy memories of the great flood that started it all. Hot dog vendors bark their wares. Guides sell cookies. A line snakes up the hill to a steam-belching French fry wagon. Cars choke the town for a mile around. The nearby United Church advertises a Ganny Craft Sale and Hot Lunch.

Forty feet up in a cherry picker that extends out over the river sits the MC in top hat and tux. Later that day, he will be Washboard Hank belting out a hilarious mix of music and noise at the Ganaraska Hotel. He taps his mike to get attention. "Folks, I think that's the local police rounding the bend. Oh, oh, they've got trouble. Their raft's comin apart. Hey that's Jerry trying to grab the runaway barrel. To serve and protect? I don't know about their competence, folks. If they can't build a raft that stays together how can they protect us? Hold on folks, Jerry's got the barrel but is he going to be swept under the rope? No, he's got it! But there goes his paddle. Well, let's give em a hand--they look pretty wet and miserable."

Two ropes stretch across the rapids in the middle of town, a quarter mile upstream from where the river empties into Lake Ontario. If participants are swept past the landing stage, they can grab the ropes and hang on until local firefighters can reel them in. Some are swept on only to beach in the shallow water farther down. Debris from jerrybuilt crafts drifts by. First aid workers with the St. John's Ambulance organization wait near the landing stage. Both an ambulance and a fire & rescue vehicle are also parked below the cherry picker. Some contestants shiver around a log fire blazing off to one side. Ominous! Rescue personnel, however, act more as insurance than anything. No one gets badly hurt.

The race begins at a conservation area nine kilometers upriver. It is run in two stages. Canoeists and kayakers begin their race at 10:00 a.m. When they reach the landing area in Port Hope, they have to bodily lift their boats out of the water and run with them to the finish line in the centre of town. The main street soon looks like a scene from a disaster movie.

At 11:00 the crazy crafts take to the water. They come in every shape and size. Two inner tubes with plywood decks drift by to the cheers of the crowd. The lone navigator on the first craft wears multi-coloured pants and a hat decorated with plastic fruit. Trailing behind him on a second inner tube, his Labrador-wearing a dress, sits calmly watching the crowds. A few minutes behind a strange craft flying the American flag floats by. Their raft is fabricated from steel barrels and inner tubes. The five men dress in a motley assortment of wetsuits, clothing and life jackets. They paddle as fast as they can to catch up with four men in an even stranger dugout wearing; I can't believe it, short-sleeved T-shirts! Upon approach the Yankees douse them with their paddles.

Three plywood rafts on huge inner tubes tied together drift sideways across the river as their crews desperately try to avoid capsizing. They are quickly drenched by the flying paddles of a crew on another raft made of a hodge podge of styrofoam and inner tubes. Their victims, abandoning any attempt to steer, rise up with giant water pistols to retaliate.

A raft made completely of sealed tubes of aluminium comes into view. Stable but not buoyant! Its crew tries vainly to control the craft while they sit submerged a foot below the surface. They look like a mini-sub surfacing for repairs. A raft of cedar poles crewed by a wild group of howling men and women lumbers by. Another crew, seated in regal splendor on white plastic chairs, suddenly capsizes dumping everyone in the drink. Paddles, chairs, bits of lumber, styrofoam, inner tubes and hats float away.

Men and women take part. Many wear wet suits to ward off the chill. A considerable number, however, make do with rubber boots, galoshes, blue jeans, raincoats. All of them arrive drenched. Their faces are red and their hands are raw after fighting each other and the current and lugging their contraptions around Corbett's Dam. Some even substitute snow shovels or brooms for paddles. Through it all, the spectators hoot and cheer and laugh and nudge each other while they drink coffee and scoff dogs.

Walton Street is thronged with people. Some take their kids on elephant rides. Others taste samples from the Chili Cook-off, voting for the best chili in the county. A husband and wife team serenades the crowds with their violin and guitar. A clown shaped like an English cucumber with stars painted on his face makes balloon animals for the kids. At the main intersection canoes and crazy craft surround a flat bed truck with a speaker system belting out country music, comments and announcements about the day's events.

Its spring fever, Ganaraska style. It's April foolishness. Just the kind of craziness to banish the winter blahs. But don't ask me to climb into one of those contraptions.